Maps -- Color plates -- Preface to the sixth edition -- Abbreviations -- Musical life and thought in ancient Greece and Rome -- Chant and secular song in the Middle Ages -- Beginnings of polyphony and the music of the thirteenth century -- French and Italian music in the fourteenth century -- England and the Burgundian lands in the fifteenth century -- Age of the Renaissance: Music of the low countries -- New currents in the sixteenth century -- Church music of the late Renaissance and Reformation -- Music of the early Baroque period -- Opera and vocal music in the late seventeenth century -- Instrumental music in the late Baroque period -- Music in the early eighteenth century -- Sonata, symphony, and opera in the early Classic period -- Late eighteenth century: Haydn and Mozart -- Ludwig van Beethoven -- Romanticism and nineteenth-century orchestral music -- Solo, chamber, and vocal music in the nineteenth century -- Opera and music drama in the nineteenth century -- European music from the 1870s to World War I -- European mainstream in the twentieth century -- Atonality, serialism, and recent developments in twentieth-century Europe -- American twentieth century -- Credits -- Maps.