THE revised edition of the second volume of the Oxford History of Music covers the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of musical history in Europe, beginning with the formation of schools in England, France, and the Gallo-Belgic Provinces. With the limits of the subject set up as described, it follows that the bulk of the work is concerned with choral forms of music. Instrumental music during the Middle Ages was confined to single instruments such as organs, spinnets, lutes, and flageolets, of which the various masters had their individual styles and communicated them to the pupils. These influences checked the production of written instrumental music, while choral forms come down to the present day in great abundance, primarily because the singers had to have copies of songs they are rendering.

For the student of musical history, and even more for the chorus leader, this period forms an unceasingly rich source of that stream of musical composition which flowed from the royal chapels of Europe. Up until the mid-sixteenth century the development was a national one. The spread of printing, the tendency of composers to look to the horizontal aspect of their music as well as the vertical one, and the perfection of the art of diatonic composition have a unifying effect on the choral music performed after that time. Mr. Wooldridge devotes generous portions of his book to a discussion of Lassus, Byrd, and Palestrina.

The period covered is of tremendous importance in the development of music in general, and of church music in particular. Moreover the book has a truly musical structure in that space is devoted more to the printing of the compositions themselves than to the discussion of them. The reader may not find the music very tuneful; he may be piqued not to find a favorite bit of Lassus included in the collection of reproductions. But considering that the number of Lassus's compositions has been estimated at 1250 and upwards, possible oversights of this kind can be accounted for. Beyond the covers of the book Dr. Davison provides Harvard readers with many interpretations of the motets of the period, and of plainsong of still earlier times, since much of the music used in the Memorial Church has been gleaned from this formulative period in the history of choral music.

The sonatas of Beethoven, largely due to that composer's excited and undecipherable penmanship, have long afforded musical technicians all entertaining field of controversy. Mr. McEwen's introduction to an Unpublished Volume of the Pianoforte Sonatas of Beethoven, dealing as it does with the intricacies of editorship, is a book primarily for experts. The blunt layman who undertakes one of Beethoven's Sonatas, or even an excellent amateur, for that matter, after observing the general marks of performance appearing in any of the various editions, can best answer the question of "How should this music be played?" by the best interpretation which he himself can give it. Some benefit, of course, may be gained from Mr. McEwen's writings, especially if followed by an examination of the Sonata editing itself when it finally appears. Discussion turns to general pace or rate of movement, mood, or emotional character, ornamentation, duration, time-variation, and so on. The book is a thorough treatment of a musically significant problem. The problem itself, however, is of advanced character and is intended for advanced students.