What is the point of reading about the music written before 1600? There are two good reasons. First, much of it is very beautiful and most enjoyable. The timeless dignity of plainchant, the mellow consonance of Dufay's chansons, and the dramatic delights of the Renaissance madrigals - these count among life's great pleasures to those who know them. Second, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European musicians, theorists and craftsmen laid the technical foundations for their successors, the foundations of the classical music that is enjoyed across the world today.

Music both influences and reflects the times in which it was created. In the Middle Ages, the previous Dark Ages, the Crusades, and the feudal system all impacted the types and forms of music in the period. Charlemagne standardized the church mass and promoted the Gregorian chant, to the point of threatening excommunication if any other were performed. Musical notation -- the staff line -- was developed during the period. The troubadours of France, Meistersingers of Germany, the Cantus Firmus of Italy, and the instruments that played the music are all included in this thorough guide to music of the middle ages.

Topics include: the British Isles, Dance Music, Eastern Europe, France, Germanic Lands, Harps, Italy, the Low Countries, Spain, and more.

A comprehensive catalogue of the surviving polyphonic song repertory 1415-1480 in any European language. The catalogue will be an essential work of reference for anyone interested in the music of the 15th century.

Among the most memorable innovations of music and poetry in thirteenth-century France was a genre that seemed to privilege sound over sense. The polytextual motet is especially well-known to scholars of the Middle Ages for its tendency to conceal complex allegorical meaning in a texture that, in performance, made words less, rather than more, audible. It is with such musical sound that this book is concerned. What did it mean to create a musical effect so potentially independent from the meaning of words? Is it possible such supermusical effects themselves had significance? The Sense of Sound offers a radical recontextualization of French song in the heyday of the motet c.1260-1330, and makes the case for listening to musical sound against a range of other potently meaningful sonorities, often premised on non-verbal meaning. In identifying new audible interlocutors to music, it opens our ears to a broad spectrum of sounds often left out of historical inquiry, from the hubbub of the medieval city; to the eloquent babble of madmen; to the violent clamor of charivari; to the charismatic chatter of prayer. Drawing on a rich array of artistic evidence (music, manuscripts, poetry, and images) and contemporary cultural theory, it locates musical production in this period within a larger cultural environment concerned with representing sound and its emotional, ethical, and social effects. In so doing, The Sense of Sound offers an experiment in how we might place central the most elusive aspect of music's history: sound's vibrating, living effect.

This annotated chronology of western music is the third in a series of outlines on the history of music in western civilization. It contains a 120-page annotated bibliography, followed by a detailed, documented outline that is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter is written in chronological order with every line being documented by means of abbreviations that refer to the annotated bibliography. There are short biographies of the theorists and detailed discussions of their works. The information on music is organized by classes of music rather than by composer. Also included are lists of manuscripts with descriptions of their contents and notations as to where they may be found. The material for the outline has been taken from primary and secondary sources along with articles from periodicals. Like the other two volumes in this series, Music History from the Late Roman through the Gothic Periods, 313-1425 and Music History During the Renaissance Period, 1425-1520, this volume will be an important research tool for anyone interested in music history.

The Divine Office--or, the cycle of daily worship services other than the Mass--constitutes the most important body of liturgical texts and music for medieval studies. It is a collection of spiritual works that is central to the culture of the Middle Ages. This volume addresses the Office from a variety of points of view, allowing the reader to grasp the current state of research and to make connections.

Juxtaposing artistic and musical representations of the emotions with medical, philosophical and scientific texts in Western culture between the Renaissance and the twentieth century, the essays collected in this volume explore the ways in which emotions have been variously conceived, configured, represented and harnessed in relation to broader discourses of control, excess and refinement. Since the essays explore the interstices between disciplines (e.g. music and medicine, history of art and philosophy) and thereby disrupt established frameworks within the histories of art, music and medicine, traditional narrative accounts are challenged. Here larger historical forces come into perspective, as these papers suggest how both artistic and scientific representations of the emotions have been put to use in political, social and religious struggles, at a variety of different levels.

Essays illuminating a complex and sophisticated musical manuscript. The Segovia Manuscript (Cathedral of Segovia, Archivo Capitular) has puzzled musicologists ever since its rediscovery at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is unique: no other manuscript of the period transmits a comparable blend of late fifteenth-century music, consisting of 204 sacred works and vernacular pieces in Flemish, French, Italian, and Spanish. An important group of pedagogical pieces by French and Flemish composers may preserve transcriptions of instrumental improvisation. This summary might suggest a messy collection, but on the contrary the manuscript is arranged with care, copied by one proficient scribe (except perhaps for the Spanish texts), who obviously followed a predetermined master plan. But which plan, who designed it, and why was the person responsible so interested in this combination? The essays here aim to treat every dimension of this fascinating source. New discoveries help date the manuscript and explain how it came to Segovia; particular attention is paid to the main scribe, now determined to be Flemish, and his relation with northern composers and repertory, above all that of Jacob Obrecht, Alexander Agricola, and Henricus Isaac; and the vexed question of the conflicting attributions is considered afresh and found to affect only a few of the fascicles. The contributors also look at questions of ownership and function. . WOLFGANG FUHRMANN is Professor of Musicology at Leipzig University; CRISTINA URCHUEGUIA is Professor of Musicology at the University of Bern. Contributors: Bonnie J. Blackburn, Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Honey Meconi, Emilio Ros-Fabregas, Cristina Urchueguia, Rob C. Wegman

John Taverner's lectures on music constitute the only extant version of a complete university course in music in early modern England. Originally composed in 1611 in both English and Latin, they were delivered at Gresham College in London between 1611 and 1638, and it is likely that Taverner intended at some point to publish the lectures in the form of a music treatise. The lectures, which Taverner collectively titled De Ortu et Progressu Artis Musicae ("On the Origin and Progress of the Art of Music"), represent a clear attempt to ground musical education in humanist study, particularly in Latin and Greek philology. Taverner's reliance on classical and humanist writers attests to the durability of music's association with rhetoric and philology, an approach to music that is too often assigned to early Tudor England. Taverner is also a noteworthy player in the seventeenth-century Protestant debates over music, explicitly defending music against Reformist polemicists who see music as an overly sensuous activity. In this first published edition of Taverner's musical writings, Joseph M. Ortiz comprehensively introduces, edits, and annotates the text of the lectures, and an appendix contains the existing Latin version of Taverner's text. By shedding light on a neglected figure in English Renaissance music history, this edition is a significant contribution to the study of musical thought in Renaissance England, humanism, Protestant Reformism, and the history of education.

Mapping the Motet in the Post-Tridentine Era provides new dimensions to the discussion of the immense corpus of polyphonic motets produced and performed in the decades following the end of the Council of Trent in 1563. Beyond the genre's rich connections with contemporary spiritual life and religious experience, the motet is understood here as having a multifaceted life in transmission, performance and reception. By analysing the repertoire itself, but also by studying its material life in books and accounts, in physical places and concrete sonic environments, and by investigating the ways in which the motet was listened to and talked about by contemporaries, the eleven chapters in this book redefine the cultural role of the genre. The motet, thanks to its own protean nature, not bound to any given textual, functional or compositional constraint, was able to convey cultural meanings powerfully, give voice to individual and collective identities, cross linguistic and confessional divides, and incarnate a model of learned and highly expressive musical composition. Case studies include considerations of composers (Palestrina, Victoria, Lasso), cities (Seville and Granada, Milan), books (calendrically ordered collections, non-liturgical music books) and special portions of the repertoire (motets pro defunctis, instrumental intabulations).

This is the first dedicated study of the musical patronage of Roman baronial families in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Patronage - the support of a person or institution and their work by a patron - in Renaissance society was the basis of a complex network of familial and political relationships between clients and patrons, whose ideas, values, and norms of behavior were shared with the collective. Bringing to light new archival documentation, this book examines the intricate network of patronage interrelationships in Rome. Unlike other Italian cities where political control was monocentric and exercised by single rulers, sources of patronage in Rome comprised a multiplicity of courts and potential patrons, which included the pope, high prelates, nobles and foreign diplomats. Morucci uses archival records, and the correspondence of the Orsini and Colonna families in particular, to investigate the local activity and circulation of musicians and the cultivation of music within the broader civic network of Roman aristocratic families over the period. The author also shows that the familial union of the Medici and Orsini families established a bidirectional network for artistic exchange outside of the Eternal City, and that the Orsini-Colonna circle represented a musical bridge between Naples, Rome, and Florence.

After Robert Armin joined the Chamberlain's Men, singing in Shakespeare's dramas catapulted from 1.25 songs and 9.95 lines of singing per play to 3.44 songs and 29.75 lines of singing, a virtually unnoticed phenomenon. In addition, many of the songs became seemingly improvisatory-similar to Armin's personal style as an author and solo comedian. In order to study Armin's collaborative impact, this interdisciplinary book investigates the songs that have Renaissance music that could have been heard on Shakespeare's stage. They occur in some of Shakespeare's most famous plays, including Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and The Tempest. In fact, Shakespeare's plays, as we have them, are not complete. They are missing the music that could have accompanied the plays' songs. Significantly, Renaissance vocal music, far beyond just providing entertainment, was believed to alter the bodies and souls of both performers and auditors to agree with its characteristics, directly inciting passions from love to melancholy. By collaborating with early modern music editor and performing artist Lawrence Lipnik, Catherine Henze is able to provide new performance editions of seventeen songs, including spoken interruptions and cuts and rearrangement of the music to accommodate the dramatist's words. Next, Henze analyzes the complete songs, words and music, according to Renaissance literary and music primary sources, and applies the new information to interpretations of characters and scenes, frequently challenging commonly held literary assessments. The book is organized according to Armin's involvement with the plays, before, during, and after the comic actor joined Shakespeare's company. It offers readers the tools to interpret not only these songs, but also vocal music in dramas by other Renaissance playwrights. Moreover, Robert Armin and Shakespeare's Performed Songs, written with non-specialized terminology, provides a gateway to new areas of research and interpretation in an increasingly significant interdisciplinary field for all interested in Shakespeare and early modern drama.

The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers is a landmark collection of non-idiomatic compositions from the sixteenth century to the present day, providing a comprehensive introduction to an area of choral music that has been historically under-represented. This unique anthology seeks both to improve representation in the historical canon and to showcase the music of some of the best names in choral music today.

This volume of essays draws together recent work on historical music theory of the Renaissance. The collection spans the major themes addressed by Renaissance writers on music and highlights the differing approaches to this body of work by modern scholars, including: historical and theoretical perspectives; consideration of the broader cultural context for writing about music in the Renaissance; and the dissemination of such work. Selected from a variety of sources ranging from journals, monographs and specialist edited volumes, to critical editions, translations and facsimiles, these previously published articles reflect a broad chronological and geographical span, and consider Renaissance sources that range from the overtly pedagogical to the highly speculative. Taken together, this collection enables consideration of key essays side by side aided by the editor's introductory essay which highlights ongoing debates and offers a general framework for interpreting past and future directions in the study of historical music theory from the Renaissance.

Secular music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encompasses an extraordinarily wide range of works and practices: courtly love songs, music for civic festivities, instrumental music, entertainments provided by minstrels, the unwritten traditions of solo singing, and much else. This collection of essays addresses many of these practices, with a focus on polyphonic settings of vernacular texts, examining their historical and stylistic contexts, their transmission in written and printed sources, questions of performance, and composers' approaches to text setting. Essays have been selected to reflect the wide range of topics that have occupied scholars in recent decades, and taken together, they point to the more general significance of secular music within a broad complex of cultural practices and institutions.

This book presents one author's view of the range and depth of recent scholarly study of sacred and liturgical music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as represented in a range of nineteen articles published in the last twenty or so years. It reprints, and contextualises, groups of articles on music of the French and Flemish Low Countries, Italy, Germany, England and Spain. Spanning a broad range of scholarly approaches, the anthology aims to inform aspiring scholars in the field, and to stimulate future studies in these and related areas.

The practice and composition of music require patronage and institutional support, and they require it in a different fashion from that found in other forms of art. This collection of essays brings together the most recent and important contributions by leading scholars in the field to this crucial aspect of Renaissance musical culture. The articles approach the topic from a number of perspectives and consider the institutions and individuals engaged in supporting music; the systems of employment, benefices and sponsorship put in place to facilitate the support; and where, how and why music was sung and played. Taken together, these articles enable conclusions to be drawn about the interests of patrons and about the social and artistic status of musicians and composers within the courtly and urban context.

for SSSA unaccompanied. Palestrina's setting of the Marian motet Alma Redemptoris Mater seamlessly interweaves each of the four independent voices based on the solemn tone of the corresponding chant. Offprinted from The Oxford Book of Upper-Voice Polyphony.

for SSA unaccompanied. This motet in two parts is devotional in character, with each section opening with homophonic writing before elaborating on close imitative polyphonic lines. The motet demonstrates a mature writing style that would be expected of a composer years beyond the age of the young Monteverdi. The text is based on the first two stanzas of a prayer attributed to Pope Gregory I that contemplates the Passion of Our Lord. Offprinted from The Oxford Book of Upper-Voice Polyphony.

for SSA unaccompanied Clemens composed two settings of the Marian text Ego flos campi, one scored for mixed choir of seven voices and this other, more intimate, setting for three voices. Here the voices weave beautiful counterpoint with attractive independent melodies.

The Oxford Book of Upper-Voice Polyphony is a collection of carefully curated and edited Renaissance works. Scholarly yet practical, this volume is an invaluable addition to the library of any choir looking to explore this rich genre in liturgical or concert settings.

One of the most remarkable tales of recent resurrections in the field of early keyboard music concerns the music of Heinrich Scheidemann (c. 1595-1663). Long considered a minor master overshadowed by such figures as his teacher Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck or his fellow student Samuel Scheidt, a number of major source discoveries made in the second half of the twentieth century - the most important one being the discovery of the Zellerfield tablatures - have gradually raised his stature towards what it should now be, namely that of the paramount figure in North German organ music of the first half of the seventeenth century, equalled only by Buxtehude in the second half. Pieter Dirksen, one of the leading scholars on early German keyboard music, shows how Scheidemann was a central personality in the rich musical life of Hamburg and stood on friendly terms with colleagues such as Jacob and Johannes Praetorius, Ulrich Cernitz, Thomas Selle, Johann Schop and Johann Rist. The sources for Scheidemann are for the most part contemporary and stem from all periods of his career, and beyond that until one or two decades after his death.His keyboard music was never published in his lifetime but circulated widely within professional circles. Dirksen considers the transmission of Scheidemann's music as a whole in Part One, where each source is analyzed individually, and the repertoire itself is examined in Part Two. A number of specialized studies, including a detailed investigation into the background of one of the sources as well as adressing questions of organology (an account of the famous Catharinen organ as it was during Scheidemann's era) and performance practice (a study of the fingering indications and observations on registration practice) form Part Three. A wealth of appendices also detail a relative chronology of the music; a geographic overview of the transmission and two hitherto unpublished, fragmentarily transmitted Scheidemann pieces. The book will therefore appeal to organologists, harpsichordists, musicologists and historians of seventeenth-century German music as well as historians of keyboard music.

Though individual pieces from the late fifteenth century are widely accepted as being written for instruments rather than voices, they are traditionally considered as exceptions within the context of a mainstream of vocal polyphony. After a rigorous examination of the criteria by which music of this period may be judged to be instrumental, Dr Jon Banks isolates all such pieces and establishes them as an explicit genre alongside the more commonly recognized vocal forms of the period. The distribution of these pieces in the manuscript and early printed sources of the time demonstrate how central instrumental consorts were to musical experience in Italy at this time. Banks also explores the social background to Italian music-making, and particularly the changing status of instrumentalists with respect to other musicians. Convincing evidence is put forward in particular for the lute ensemble to be a likely performance context for many of the surviving sources. The book is not intended to be a prescriptive account for the role of instruments in late medieval music, but instead restores an impressive but largely overlooked consort repertory to its rightful place in the history of music.

Synopsis of Vocal Musick, by the unidentified A.B., was published in London in 1680 and appears to have only ever had one edition. Its relatively short shelf-life belies its importance to the history of early British music theory. Unlike other English theoretical writings of the period, the Synopsis derives many of its aspects from the continental theoretical tradition, including the first references in English theory to the modern fractional time signatures that had been invented in Italy in the mid-seventeenth century, the first references in English to compound time and the first explanations of tempo terms such as Adagio and Presto. In these respects the treatise forms an important link between English and continental theoretical traditions and may have encouraged the adoption of Italian principles which became a common feature of English writings by the early eighteenth century. The treatise is essentially in two parts. The first section of the book comprises rudimentary instruction on understanding notation and intervals, descriptions of common vocal ornaments and instruction in the process of learning to sing. The second part consists of a selection of psalms, songs and catches which are provided as exercises for the singer, though several of them require a reasonably advanced degree of skill. These pieces provide valuable insight into the way both sacred and secular music might have been performed by amateur musicians in the Restoration period. They include 14 rare English madrigal settings by the Italian composer Gastoldi - further evidence of the Italian influence which pervades the text. This is the first modern edition of the Synopsis, and indeed the first edition to appear since its original publication.