Musics Historial Significance.

In music we get not only an insight into the mind of a composer but into a way of life, a way of thought, a type of character in a period of history. We fancy ourselves hearing Bach in a German Cathedral. With Palestrina we are at St. Peters, Rome, in the middle of the Reformation. In listening to negro spirituals we may understand slavery as a social institution of history.

—P.C.