General Musical Instruction

Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795-1866) was an influential music theorist, critic, composer and pedagogue. He believed that music should be part of everyone’s general education and lobbied the Prussian government for a comprehensive national music-education scheme. This English translation by George Macirone of Marx’s 1839 Allgemeine Musiklehre was published in 1854 as the first work in the series Novello’s Library for the Diffusion of Musical Knowledge. The series, described by the publisher as ‘a collection of standard treatises on the art of music written by the most esteemed English and foreign masters’, was devised in response to a growing demand for training books and manuals to support domestic music-making. It also included Berlioz’s famous treatise on instrumentation (also reissued in this series). Marx’s work covers the basic elements of music theory, musical instruments, compositional techniques, forms of music, performance advice, and the importance of musical education in general.