This book describes for the first time the development of English liturgical chant as performed in the Church of England and transmitted to related churches in Scotland and America. This music evolved from the pre-Reformation Latin rite. The most familiar of several forms of chant is used for psalms and canticles by many choirs and congregations. Commonly known as Anglican chant, its origins have, until now, never been satisfactorily established.

First full-length study of the role and duties of the medieval cantor. Cantors made unparalleled contributions to the way time was understood and history was remembered in the medieval Latin West. The men and women who held this office in cathedrals and monasteries were responsible for calculating the date of Easter and the feasts dependent on it, for formulating liturgical celebrations season by season, managing the library and preparing manuscripts and other sources necessary to sustain the liturgical framework of time, andpromoting the cults of saints. Crucially, their duties also often included committing the past to writing, from simple annals and chronicles to more fulsome histories, necrologies, and cartularies, thereby ensuring that towns, churches, families, and individuals could be commemorated for generations to come. This volume seeks to address the fundamental question of how the range of cantors' activities can help us to understand the many different waysin which the past was written and, in the liturgy, celebrated across the Middle Ages. Its essays are studies of constructions, both of the building blocks of time and of the people who made and performed them, in acts of ritual remembrance and in written records; cantors, as this book makes clear, shaped the communal experience of the past in the Middle Ages. Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Martin's University; Margot Fassler is Kenough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame and Robert Tangeman Professor Emerita of Music History at Yale University; A.B. Kraebel is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity University. Contributors: Cara Aspesi, Anna de Bakker, Alison I. Beach, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, David Ganz, James Grier, Paul Antony Hayward, Peter Jeffery, Claire Taylor Jones, A.B.Kraebel, Lori Kruckenberg, Rosamond McKitterick, Henry Parkes, Susan Rankin, C.C. Rozier, Sigbjorn Olsen Sonnesyn, Teresa Webber, Lauren Whitnah

Son of a town trumpeter, Jacob Obrecht became one of the most prominent composers in Europe in the late fifteenth century. In Born for the Muses, Rob Wegman enlarges our picture of the social and cultural conditions that framed his world, drawing on a wealth of new archival sources and a newly discovered dated portrait that sheds light on his development as a composer. Obrecht's greatest contribution lay in the field of mass composition. In a penetrating stylistic analysis, Wegman treats each of the thirty-odd surviving masses as a historical record, tracing influences and establishing a rich context for the development of Obrecht's musical language. This new assessment of his creative achievement and historical significance entirely changes the face of Obrecht studies and of late fifteenth-century music in general.

This book opens a door long closed on an important era in the history of Venice. It presents, for the first time, an introductory, contextual study of three centuries of musical activity at the four eleemosynary foundations of the former Venetian Republic: the ospedali grandi. It provides a comprehensive account of the institutional, social, religious, and civic dimensions of these welfare complexes, with particular reference to their musical subsidiaries, or cori.

Involving over 300 external professional male composers and music teachers and over 800 internal professional women musicians, the history of the cori also incorporates a vast repertory of over 4,000 original works - sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, solo and choral - little known today but recognized as key elements in the historical evolution of musical genres. Responsible for this phenomenon through their association with the ospedali grandi and the figlie del coro were such figures as Lotti, Legrenzi, Vivaldi, Hasse, Galuppi, and Cimarosa. It is their relationship to the ospedali and the concert series in the churches and music salons annexed to them that Dr Berdes explores. In the process she proves the significance of the cori as reflectors of a range of cross-disciplinary scholarship from the history of art and architecture to the history of culture and social policy, as well as medical care and aspects of women's, children's, and Venetian studies.

Amassing a wealth of information from primary sources, this book constitutes a repository of information and references for a multitude of new investigations. Above all, it will facilitate rediscovery, performance, and analysis of the repertoire commissioned for and first performed by the women musicians of the cori, a repertoire of unique richness which may be seen as the mirror of a lost Venetian civilization.

Monteverdi's Unruly Women examines the composer's madrigals and music dramas for what they can tell us about the musical and cultural world of singing and the voice in early modern Italy. Monteverdi's music demanded trained, female voices to make dramatic and expressive statements. At a time when singing was not entirely acceptable for respectable women his music allowed women to use their voices to gain power. Bonnie Gordon also explores the social and musical environment in which the singers lived and worked. Using key primary source material such as singing treatises and Renaissance writings on medicine and acoustics, Gordon contributes to two distinct disciplines: she brings an increased engagement with medical and literary representations of the female body to the growing field of scholarship treating gender and music, and adds to a well-established industry of scholarship devoted to the perception of gender and the body in early modern Europe.

This innovative and multi-layered study of the music and culture of Renaissance instrumentalists spans the early institutionalization of instrumental music from c.1420 to the rise of the basso continuo and newer roles for instrumentalists around 1600. Employing a broad cultural narrative interwoven with detailed case studies, close readings of eighteen essential musical sources, and analysis of musical images, Victor Coelho and Keith Polk show that instrumental music formed a vital and dynamic element in the artistic landscape, from rote function to creative fantasy. Instrumentalists occupied a central role in courtly ceremonies and private social rituals during the Renaissance, and banquets, dances, processions, religious celebrations and weddings all required their participation, regardless of social class. Instrumental genres were highly diverse artistic creations, from polyphonic repertories revealing knowledge of notated styles, to improvisation and flexible practices. Understanding the contributions of instrumentalists is essential for any accurate assessment of Renaissance culture.

During the eighty years from approx. 1535 many thousands of Italian madrigals were composed. Here are 55 for mixed voices covering the whole range of types, and the whole period. All have been chosen for their musical value - they are small masterpieces.

This book presents 60 of the very best madrigals for SATB, chosen from the many hundreds of possible candidates. The major composers of the genre are each represented by several madrigals and the lesser figures by one or more.

A richly detailed portrait of the music and surrounding culture in one of history's most creative eras.

Music in the Age of the Renaissance, written by one of the country's leading scholars, brings to life the musical styles and genres that mark this humanistic period of artistic and scientific revolution. In his compelling treatment of how the music was developed and transmitted, Professor Leeman Perkins grounds his narrative firmly in political, religious, social, and cultural history, opening a window onto the lavish courts, magnificent churches, and thriving urban centers in which music played such a vital role. The latest, best, and most comprehensive survey of Renaissance music to appear in over forty years.

During the years between the restoration of the Medici to Florence and the election of Cosimo I, the Medici family sponsored a series of splendid public festivals, reconstructed here by Anthony M. Cummings. Cummings has utilized unexpectedly rich sources of information about the musical life of the time in contemporary narrative accounts of these occasions--histories, diaries, and family memoirs. In this interdisciplinary work, he explains how the festivals combined music with art and literature to convey political meanings to Florentine observers. As analyzed by Cummings, the festivals document the political transformation of the city in the crucial era that witnessed the end of the Florentine republic and the beginnings of the Medici principate. This book will interest all students of the life and institutions of sixteenth-century Florence and of the Medici family. In addition, the author furnishes new evidence about the contexts for musical performances in early modern Europe. By describing such contexts, he ascertains much about how music was performed and how it sounded in this period of music history and shows that the modes of musical expression were more varied than is suggested by the relatively few surviving examples of actual pieces of music. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Volume 3 of 3. This monumental three-volume work on the Italian madrigal from its beginnings about 1500 to its decline in the 17th century is based on the research of 40 years, and is a cultural history of the development of Italian music. Mr. Einstein, renowned musicologist, supplies a background and a sense of proportion to the field: he gives the right order to the single composers in the evolution fo the madrigal, attaches new values to old names, and places in the foreground the outstanding, but until now rather neglected, personality of Cipriano de Rore. His work is not, however, purely musicological; his object is to inquire into the functions of secular music in Italian life during the Cinquecento, and to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of that great century in general. Translated from the German by Oliver Strunk, Roger Sessions and Alexander H. Krappe. Originally published in 1948. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The complex relationship between myths and music is here investigated. Myths and stories offer a window onto medieval and early modern musical culture. Far from merely offering material for musical settings, authoritative tales from classical mythology, ancient history and the Bible were treated as foundations for musical knowledge. Such myths were cited in support of arguments about the uses, effects, morality and preferred styles of music in sources as diverse as theoretical treatises, defences or critiques of music, art, sermons, educational literature and books of moral conduct. Newly written literary stories too were believed capable of moral instruction and influence, and were a medium through which ideas about music could be both explored and transmitted. How authors interpreted and weaved together these traditional stories, or created their own, reveals much about changing attitudes across the period. Looking beyond the well-known figure of Orpheus, this collection explores the myriad stories that shaped not only musical thought, but also its styles, techniques and practices. The essays show that music itself performed and created knowledge in ways parallel to myth, and worked in tandem with old and new tales to construct social, political and philosophical views. This relationship was not static, however; as the Enlightenment dawned, the once authoritative gods became comic characters and myth became a medium forridicule. Overall, the book provides a foundation for exploring myth and story throughout medieval and early modern culture, and facilitating further study into the Enlightenment and beyond. KATHERINE BUTLER is a seniorlecturer in music at Northumbria University; SAMANTHA BASSLER is a musicologist of cultural studies, a teaching artist, and an adjunct professor in the New York metropolitan area. Contributors: Jamie Apgar, Katie Bank, Samantha Bassler, Katherine Butler, Elina G. Hamilton, Sigrid Harris, Ljubica Ilic, Erica Levenson, John MacInnis, Patrick McMahon, Aurora Faye Martinez, Jacomien Prins, Tim Shephard, Jason Stoessel, Ferdia J. Stone-Davis, Amanda Eubanks Winkler.

Pathbreaking study of a vast and intriguing repertoire: arrangements for keyboard instruments of songs, arias, and other vocal pieces, from the age William Byrd to that of Handel. Keyboard arrangements of vocal music flourished in England between1560 and 1760. Songs without Words, by noted harpsichordist and early-music authority Sandra Mangsen, is the first in-depth study of this topic, uncovering abody of material that is remarkably varied, musically interesting, and indicative of major trends in musical and social life at the time. Mangsen's Songs without Words argues that the pieces upon which these keyboardarrangements were based constituted a shared repertoire, akin to the jazz standards of the twentieth century. In Restoration England, the ballad tradition saw tunes and texts move between oral, manuscript, and printed transmissionand from street to playhouse and back again. During the eighteenth century, printed keyboard arrangements were aimed particularly at female amateur keyboardists and helped opera to become a widely popular genre. Songs without Words considers a wide range of model pieces, including songs of many kinds and arias and other numbers from operas and oratorios. The resulting keyboard versions range from simple and pedagogically oriented to highly virtuosic. Two central issues -- the relationship between an arrangement and its model and the reception and aesthetics of arrangements -- are explored in the framing chapters. The result is a study that will be of great interest toscholars, performers, and anyone who loves the music of the late Renaissance, Baroque, and early Classic eras. Sandra Mangsen is professor emerita of music at the University of Western Ontario.

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of masterworks- the themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to a significant period in the history of Western music.
This first volume in Richard Taruskin's majestic history, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, sweeps across centuries of musical innovation to shed light on the early forces that shaped the development of the Western classical tradition. Beginning with the invention of musical notation more than a thousand years ago, Taruskin addresses topics such as the legend of Saint Gregory and Gregorian chant, Augustine's and Boethius's thoughts on music, the liturgical dramas of Hildegard of Bingen, the growth of the music printing business, the literary revolution and the English madrigal, the influence of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and the operas of Monteverdi. Laced with brilliant observations, memorable musical analysis, and a panoramic sense of the interactions between history, culture, politics, art, literature, religion, and music, this book will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand this rich and diverse period.

This volume explores the work of one of medieval music's most important figures, and in so doing presents an extended panorama of musical life in Europe at the end of the middle ages. Guillaume Du Fay rose from obscure beginnings to become the most significant composer of the fifteenth century, a man courted by kings and popes, and this study of his life and career provides a detailed examination of his entire output, including a number of newly discovered works. As well as offering musical analysis, this volume investigates his close association with the Cathedral of Cambrai, and explores how, at a time when music was becoming increasingly professionalised, Du Fay forged his own identity as 'a composer'. This detailed biography will be highly valuable for those interested in the history of medieval and church music, as well as for scholars of Du Fay's musical legacy.

Improvisation and Inventio in the Performance of Medieval Music: A Practical Approach is an innovative and groundbreaking approach to medieval music as living repertoire. The book provides philosophical frameworks, primary-source analysis, and clear, actionable practices and exercises aimed at recovering the improvisatory and inventive aspects of medieval music for contemporary musicians. Aimed at both instrumentalists and vocalists, the book explores the utilization of musical models, the inventive implications of medieval notation, and the ways in which memory, mode, rhetoric, and primary source paradigms inform the improvisatory process in both monophonic and polyphonic music of the Middle Ages. Angela Mariani, an experienced performer of both medieval music and folk and traditional musics, rediscovers and explicates the processes of imagination, invention, and improvisation which historically energized both medieval music in its own period and in its revival in our own time. Based on decades of research, university teaching, ensemble direction, collaboration, and performance, Mariani's impassioned stance that "the elusive element of inventio, as the medieval rhetoricians would have called it, must always be provided by the performer in the present," emphasizes medieval music performance practice as a dynamic and still-vital tradition. Students, teachers, directors, and those interested in the wealth of expressive beauty found in the music of the middle ages will likewise find value and meaning in her clear and accessible prose, and in the practical processes and exercises that make this book unique within the literature of medieval performance practice.

Spanning a millennium of musical history, this monumental volume brings together nearly forty leading authorities to survey the music of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. All of the major aspects of medieval music are considered, making use of the latest research and thinking to discuss everything from the earliest genres of chant, through the music of the liturgy, to the riches of the vernacular song of the trouveres and troubadours. Alongside this account of the core repertory of monophony, The Cambridge History of Medieval Music tells the story of the birth of polyphonic music, and studies the genres of organum, conductus, motet and polyphonic song. Key composers of the period are introduced, such as Leoninus, Perotinus, Adam de la Halle, Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut, and other chapters examine topics ranging from musical theory and performance to institutions, culture and collections.

Musical notation is a powerful system of communication between musicians, using sophisticated symbolic, primarily non-verbal means to express musical events in visual symbols. Many musicians take the system for granted, having internalized it and their strategies for reading it and translating it into sound over long years of study and practice. This book traces the development of that system by combining chronological and thematic approaches to show the historical and musical context in which these developments took place. Simultaneously, the book considers the way in which this symbolic language communicates to those literate in it, discussing how its features facilitate or hinder fluent comprehension in the real-time environment of performance. Moreover, the topic of musical as opposed to notational innovation forms another thread of the treatment, as the author investigates instances where musical developments stimulated notational attributes, or notational innovations made practicable advances in musical style.

The Critical Nexus confronts an important and vexing enigma of early writings on music: why chant, which was understood to be divinely inspired, needed to be altered in order to work within the then-operative modal system. To unravel this mystery, Charles Atkinson creates a broad framework that moves from Greek harmonic theory to the various stages in the transmission of Roman chant, citing numerous music treatises from the sixth to the twelfth century. Out of this examination emerges the central point behind the problem: the tone-system advocated by writers coming from the Greek harmonic tradition was not suited to the notation of chant and that this basic incompatibility led to the creation of new theoretical constructs. By tracing the path of subsequent adaptation at the nexus of tone-system, mode, and notation, Atkinson promises new and far-reaching insights into what mode meant to the medieval musician and how the system responded to its inherent limitations. Through a detailed examination of the major musical treatises from the sixth through the twelfth centuries, this text establishes a central dichotomy between classical harmonic theory and the practices of the Christian church. Atkinson builds the foundation for a broad and original reinterpretation of the modal system and how it relates to melody, grammar, and notation. This book will be of interest to all musicologists, music theorists working on mode, early music specialists, chant scholars, and medievalists interested in music.

This definitive study takes as its subject a group of melodies copied many times, even within single manuscripts. Professor Randel is therefore able to base his conclusions about the relationship of the manuscript sources to one another on twenty-six separate Spanish manuscripts. He shows that there were actually four distinct traditions associated with these manuscripts instead of two as formerly assumed. By comparing the four traditions, he draws new conclusions about the relative antiquity of the written tradition for these psalm tones, the presence or absence of a modal system in the Mozarabic chant, and the development of the two general types of notation. Originally published in 1969. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The renowned treatise on music, by an eleventh-century monk, in a critical edition with annotated English translation, introduction, and detailed indexes. Long recognized as one of the most important medieval treatises on music, the Musica of Hermannus Contractus is here presented in a newly revised translation, with commentary reflecting the best current scholarship. A polymath and monk, Hermannus Contractus (1013-54) contributed to the important advancements made in European arts and sciences in the first half of the eleventh century, writing on history, astronomy, and time-keeping devices,among other topics, and composing several chants. His music theory, founded on a systematic treatment of traditional concepts and terminology dating back to the ancient Greeks, is concerned largely with the organization of pitchin Gregorian chant. Hermann's approach stems from Germanic species-based thought, and is marked by a distinction between aspects of form and aspects of position, privileging the latter. He expresses this in terms imported from then-new developments in Italian music theory, thus acting as a nexus for the two traditions. Numerology and number symbolism play significant roles in Hermann's theories, and his critiques of other theorists offer insights into medieval intellectual life. Hermann also uses chant citations and exercises to help his readers apply theory to practice. John L. Snyder's revised edition of Ellinwood's long-standard 1952 text and translation offers a new introduction, including codicological descriptions of the sources; a critical edition of the Latin text with an annotated English translation on facing pages; appendices detailing the documents pertaining to Hermann's life, his citations of plainsong, and his original diastematic notation system; and greatly expanded indexes. Snyder's Musica will serve as the standard version of this major historical document for years to come. Leonard Ellinwood (1905-94) served in the Library of Congress cataloging divisions in music and in the humanities for thirty-five years. He published scholarly works and editions of both medieval music and church music. John L. Snyder is Professor of Music Theory and Musicology at the University of Houston's Moores School of Music.

It has become widely accepted among musicologists that medieval music is most profitably studied from interdisciplinary perspectives that situate it within broad cultural contexts. The origins of this consensus lie in a decisive reorientation of the field that began approximately four decades ago. For much of the twentieth century, research on medieval music had focused on the discovery and evaluation of musical and theoretical sources. The 1970s and 1980s, by contrast, witnessed calls for broader methodologies and more fully contextual approaches that in turn anticipated the emergence of the so-called 'New Musicology'. The fifteen essays in the present collection explore three interrelated areas of inquiry that proved particularly significant: the liturgy, sources (musical and archival), and musical symbolism. In so doing, these essays not only acknowledge past achievements but also illustrate how this broad, interdisciplinary approach remains a source for scholarly innovation.

Based on extensive documentary and archival research, Music in Renaissance Ferrara is a study of the rise of music at a vital center of Italian Renaissance culture, focusing on the patrons and musicians whose efforts gave Ferrara a primary role in European music during the fifteenth century. The successive rulers of the Italian city-state, members of the Este dynasty, brought to Ferrara some of the most important composers of the period, including Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Martini, Jacob Obrecht, and Josquin Desprez. Moreover, Ferrara has long been famous as the seat of activity of three of the most important poets of the period - Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso - as well as for its school of painting and manuscript production and illumination. With Lewis Lockwood's Music in Renaissance Ferrara, the city-state steps forward as a major musical center as well.
Winner of the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for its original 1985 edition, this current paperback edition of Music in Renaissance Ferrara features a new preface that re-introduces the book and reflects on its contribution to our modern knowledge of music in the culture of the Italian Renaissance.

The Conductus repertory is the body of monophonic and polyphonic non-liturgical Latin song that dominated European culture from the middle of the twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth. In this book, Mark Everist demonstrates how the poetry and music interact, explores how musical structures are created, and discusses the geographical and temporal reach of the genre, including its significance for performance today. The volume studies what medieval society thought of the Conductus, its function in medieval society - whether paraliturgical or in other contexts - and how it fitted into patristic and secular Latin cultures. The Conductus emerges as a genre of great poetic and musical sophistication that brought the skills of poets and musicians into alignment. This book provides an all-encompassing view of an important but unexplored repertory of medieval music, engaging with both poetry and music even-handedly to present new and up-to-date perspectives on the genre.

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1627) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. Working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.