This collection investigates the concept of modernity in music and its multiple interpretations in Europe and Asia. Through contributions by both European and Asian musicologists it discusses how a decentered understanding of musical modernity could be matched on multiple historiographical perspectives while attentive to the specificities of local music and their narratives in Asia and Europe. The essays connect local, global and transnational history with sociological theories of modernity and modernization, making the volume an important contribution to overcoming the Eurocentric dichotomy between western music and world music within the field of historical musicology.