Mr. Hoppin has been dead for over twenty years, and this book is still as good as it gets in terms of Medieval music history. It is great for undergraduate or graduate study because it is so detailed and accurate. If you can get through this book, you will have everything you ever need to know about Medieval western music unless you're doing postgraduate work in musicology.A few notes, though:- It is an older book, so the prose can be pretty dense at times. This is not light reading.- It is pretty daunting to read this book if you don't know anything about music history in general. If you really have never read about music history, I would start with Grout first, and then try to tackle this book and the others in the Norton series.