The ars antiqua began to be mentioned in writings about music in the early decades of the fourteenth century, where it was cited along with references to a more modern "art", an ars nova. It was understood by those who coined the notion to be rooted in the musical practices outlined in the Ars musica of Lambertus and, especially, the Ars cantus mensurabilis of Franco of Cologne. Directly or indirectly the essays collected in this volume all address one or more of the issues regarding ars antiqua polyphony-questions relating to the nature and definition of genre; the evolution of the polyphonic idiom; the workings of the creative process including the role of oral process and notation and the continuum between these extremes; questions about how this music was used and understood; and of how it fits into the intellectual life of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some of the essays ask new questions or approach long-standing ones from fresh perspectives. All, however, are rooted in a line of scholarship that produced a body of writing of continuing relevance.

The Latin liturgical music of the medieval church is the earliest body of Western music to survive in a more or less complete form. It is a body of thousands of individual pieces, of striking beauty and aesthetic appeal, which has the special quality of embodying, of giving voice to, the words of the liturgy itself. Plainchant is the music that underpins essentially all other music of the middle ages (and far beyond), and is the music that is most abundantly preserved. It is a subject that has engaged a great deal of research and debate in the last fifty years and the nature of the complex issues that have recently arisen in research on chant are explored here in an overview of current issues and problems.

The writing down of music is one of the triumphant technologies of the West. Without writing, the performance of music involves some combination of memory and improvisation. Isidore of Seville famously wrote that "unless sounds are remembered by man, they perish, for they cannot be written down". This volume deals with the materials of chant from the point of view of transmission. The early history of chant is a history of orality, of transmission by mouth to ear, and yet we can study it only through the use of written documents. Scholars of medieval music have taken up the ideas and techniques of scholars of folklore, of oral transmission, of ethnomusicology; for the chant is, in fact, an ancient music transmitted for a time in oral culture; and we study a culture not our own, whose informants are not people but manuscripts. All depends, ironically, on deducing oral issues from written documents.

After the imposition of Gregorian chant upon most of Europe by the authority of the Carolingian kings and emperors in the eighth and ninth centuries, a large number of repertories arose in connection with the new chant and its liturgy. Of these repertories, the tropes, together with the sequences, represent the main creative activity of European musicians in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Because they were not an absolutely official part of the liturgy, as was Gregorian chant, they reflect local traditions, particularly in terms of melody, and more so than the new pieces that were composed at the time. In addition, the earlier layers of tropes represent, in many cases, a survival of the pre local pre Gregorian melodic traditions. This volume provides an introduction to the study of tropes in the form of an extensive anthology of major studies and a comprehensive bibliography and constitutes a classic reference resource for the study of one of the most important musico-liturgical genres of the central middle ages.

The printed debut of the canzone villanesca alla napolitana occurred on 24 October 1537, in Naples. Fifteen anonymous 'rustic songs' were published by Johannes de Colonia in a pocket-sized anthology with a cover featuring three women with hoes tilling the soil. The adjective villanesca (from villano or peasant) in the strict sense of the word means rustic or crude, but in this new context it also intimates that Neapolitan poet-musicians had been affected by the instinctive lyrical traditions of everyday people. The articles in this volume trace the Neapolitan origins of this song form, and its subsequent development as it spread quickly throughout Italy in a succession of editions published in Venice and Rome, providing a diverse repertory of lively songs to amuse the privileged that held and attended academies. Several studies focus on key figures in this process, notably Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and Orlando di Lasso. At the same time the author relates these developments to the contemporary political context, notably the rivalry of Spain and France for control of the Kingdom of Naples.

This second selection of studies by Frank D'Accone, again based principally on the documentary evidence, follows the development through the mid 16th century of musical chapels at the Cathedral and the Baptistery of Florence and of musical establishments at the Santissima Annunziata and San Lorenzo. The lives, careers and works of composers associated with these churches are illustrated and their works analyzed, particularly the theoretical treatise by Fra Mauro, the madrigals of Mauro Matti and the ambitiously conceived canzone cycle of Mattia Rampollini. The final studies, moving into the 17th century, look at the music for Holy Week, and the unprecedented programme of performances at Santa Maria Novella.

The attempt to play music with the styles and instruments of its era--commonly referred to as the early music movement--has become immensely popular in recent years. For instance, Billboard's "Top Classical Albums" of 1993 and 1994 featured Anonymous 4, who sing medieval music, and the best-selling Beethoven recording of 1995 was a period-instruments symphony cycle led by John Eliot Gardiner, who is Deutsche Grammophon's top-selling living conductor. But the movement has generated as much controversy as it has best-selling records, not only about the merits of its results, but also about the validity of its approach. To what degree can we recreate long-lost performing styles? How important are historical period instruments for the performance of a piece? Why should musicians bother with historical information? Are they sacrificing art to scholarship?
Now, in Inside Early Music, Bernard D. Sherman has invited many of the leading practitioners to speak out about their passion for early music--why they are attracted to this movement and how it shapes their work. Readers listen in on conversations with conductors Gardiner, William Christie, and Roger Norrington, Peter Phillips of the Tallis Scholars, vocalists Susan Hellauer of Anonymous 4, forte pianist Robert Levin, cellist Anner Bylsma, and many other leading artists. The book is divided into musical eras--Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classic and Romantic--with each interview focusing on particular composers or styles, touching on heated topics such as the debate over what is "authentic," the value of playing on period instruments, and how to interpret the composer's intentions. Whether debating how to perform Monteverdi'smadrigals or comparing Andrew Lawrence-King's Renaissance harp playing to jazz, the performers convey not only a devotion to the spirit of period performance, but the joy of discovery as they struggle to bring the music most truthfully to life. Spurred on by Sherman's probing questions and immense knowledge of the subject, these conversations movingly document the aspirations, growing pains, and emerging maturity of the most exciting movement in contemporary classical performance, allowing each artist's personality and love for his or her craft to shine through.
From medieval plainchant to Brahms' orchestral works, Inside Early Music takes readers-whether enthusiasts or detractors-behind the scenes to provide a masterful portrait of early music's controversies, challenges, and rewards.

These nineteen essays by a leading scholar of Italian Renaissance music provide a corpus of significant research into Italian music and music theory of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The essays further illuminate the interaction between music theory and practice and between the humanist revival of antiquity and modern ideals of expression in the decades around 1600.

The songs, carols, and poems of medieval England evoke a people whose principal literary preoccupations were their passions, religious and otherwise. This comprehensive collection presents 187 poems, earthy and ethereal, from this tradition.
All too often, this great body of poetry is represented in anthologies by a scattering of all-too-well-known poems, or by one or two unfamiliar ones for which there are often inadequate linguistic and critical notes. R.T. Davis, Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, has incorporated extensive linguistic and critical notes on the lyrics in this collection, and even the student without experience with Middle English will be able to read and appreciate the works. In addition to being the first critical anthology of medieval English lyrics ever published, it is a revealing portrait of a people far removed from us in time, but very much like ourselves.

No change has had a more profound influence on the development of music-making over the last two decades than the growth of the historical performance movement. The notion that we can - and indeed should - perform music in the manner its composers intended has led to a search for original methods and styles of performance. At first this was the pursuit of a small coterie, but in recent years the explosion of popular interest in what has been called the 'authenticity' movement has led to a sea-change in our listening habits. Performances on period instruments are now supplanting those on modern instruments in some central areas of the classical repertory, and by many this is perceived as a threat. For the first time, this book explores the thinking behind the search for so-called authenticity in musical performance, and questions some of the received opinions about its worth and purpose. The contributors include critics Nicholas Kenyon of Early Music and Will Crutchfield of the New York Times, alongside Howard Mayer Brown, Philip Brett, Robert P. Morgan, Richard Taruskin, and Gary Tomlinson, all of them experts in their field. The variety of views expressed is sure to provoke wide discussion and to stimulate new thought among both scholars and performers about the future of the historical performance movement.

Beating Time & Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era chronicles the shifting relationships between ideas about time in music and science from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Centered on theories of musical meter, the book investigates the interdependence between theories of meter and conceptualizations of time from the age of Zarlino to the invention of the metronome. These formulations have evolved throughout the history of Western music, reflecting fundamental reevaluations not only of music but also of time itself. Drawing on paradigms from the history of science and technology and the history of philosophy, author Roger Mathew Grant illustrates ways in which theories of meter and time, informed by one another, have manifested themselves in the field of music. During the long eighteenth century, treatises on subjects such as aesthetics, music theory, mathematics, and natural philosophy began to reflect an understanding of time as an absolute quantity, independent of events. This gradual but conclusive change had a profound impact on the network of ideas connecting time, meter, character, and tempo. Investigating the impacts of this change, Grant explores the timekeeping techniques - musical and otherwise - that implemented this conceptual shift, both technologically and materially. Bringing together diverse strands of thought in a broader intellectual history of temporality, Grant's study fills an unexpected yet conspicuous gap in the history of music theory, and is essential reading for music theorists and composers as well as historical musicologists and practitioners of historically informed performance.

In the Middle Ages, relic cults provoked rich expressions of devotion not only in hagiographic literature and visual art but also in liturgical music and ritual. Despite the long-recognized inter-play between these diverse media, historians of the period rarely integrate analysis of sacred music into their research on other modes of worship espoused by relic cults. Holy Treasure and Sacred Song situates this oft-neglected yet critical domain of religious life at the center of an examination of relic cults in medieval Tuscany. Long recognized as a center of artistic innovation during the Renaissance, this region also boasted the rich and well documented veneration of holy bishops and martyrs buried in the cathedrals and suburban shrines of its principal cities. Author Benjamin Brand reveals that the music composed to honor these local saints - no fewer than ninety chants for the Mass and Divine Office - were essential components of larger devotional campaigns that included the recording of their life stories and the building and decoration of their shrines. Furthermore, the local Tuscan clerics who assumed control of these campaigns with the intent of gaining both temporal and spiritual power drew on influential global models - literary, architectural, musical, and ritual - from preeminent European powers, Rome and the Carolingian Empire. By integrating detailed analyses of plainsong and sacred ritual into this rich panorama, Brand traces the dialectic between local, regional, and pan-European trends, revealing the centrality of the liturgy in the development of medieval relic cults and, in a broader sense, medieval European culture and politics. Offering a rich topography of music, liturgy, and devotion through an interdisciplinary approach ideal for the multifaceted nature of medieval relic cults, Holy Treasure and Sacred Song will find a broad audience amongst musicologists and medievalists alike.

Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer Galileo, was a guiding light of the Florentine Camerata. His Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, published in 1581 or 1582 and now translated into English for the first time, was among the most influential music treatises of his era. Galilei is best known for his rejection of modern polyphonic music in favor of Greek monophonic song. The treatise sheds new light on his importance, both as a musician who advocated a new philosophy of music history and theory based on an objective search for the truth, and as an experimental scientist who was one of the founders of modern acoustics.

The French Song Companion is an indispensable guide to French song. 150 composers and 700 song translations make this the ideal handbook both for the seasoned enthusiast, and the newcomer to this endlessly fascinating repertory. Graham Johnson, one of the world's busiest accompanists, brings his wide experience to the biographical commentaries, and Richard Stokes, renowned for his translations of German Lieder, provides line-by-line translations of some of the greatest poems ever set to music.

"Excellent. . . . Offers both a valuable introduction to the romance for general readers while at the same time serving substantial fare to a specialized public."--Matilda T. Bruckner, Boston College "Groundbreaking discussions of a recently 'discovered, ' extraordinary 13th-century literary figure. . . . Splendid essays from highly respected scholars. "--Harriet Spiegel, California State University, Chico "The authors of The Finding of the Grail have adopted the medieval practice of retelling an old story selectively to renew it for contemporaries. Joseph Bedier did no differently with the Tristan legend. The modern reader will find this elegant little volume equally appealing."--Jeanette Beer, Purdue University In this first volume of critical essays ever devoted to Jean Renart's work, contributors draw on political and social history, women's studies, translation theory, musicology, and literary theory to illuminate Jean's remarkable contribution to the highly complex genre of courtly romance. An extraordinary blend of realism and high artifice, unique in its combined use of songs and narrative, Jean Renart and the Art of Romance offers zestful dalliances in high places, handsome but self-serving knights, and a beautiful woman whose decisive intelligence allows her to triumph over daunting odds. An important contribution to our understanding of 13th-century romance, this volume of essays will prove of interest to scholars of medieval French literature, history, musicology, and codicology. CONTENTS Introduction, by Nancy Vine Durling Text and Context 1. The Uses of Embroidery in the Romances of Jean Renart: Gender, History, Textuality, by Nancy A. Jones 2. "Once there was an emperor . . .": A Political Reading of the Romances of Jean Renart, by John W. Baldwin The Language of Lyric and the Language of Romance 3. Lyric Insertions and the Reversal of Romance Conventions in Jean Renart's Roman de la rose or Guillaume de Dole, by Maureen Barry McCann Boulton 4. Suspension and Fall: The Fragmentation and Linkage of Lyric Insertions in Le roman de la rose (Guillaume de Dole) and Le roman de la violette by Michel Zink 5. Jean Renart's Expanded Text: Lienor and the Lyrics of Guillaume de Dole by Regina Psaki 6. On the Untranslatable Surface of Guillaume de Dole by Patricia Terry Music and Performance 7. Jean Renart and Medieval Song, by Hendrik van der Werf Appendix 1: "Bele Aeliz": A Comparison of Lecoy and Gennrich Editions Appendix 2: Survey of Musical References Appendix 3: Melodies Nancy Vine Durling is co-translator, with Patricia Terry, of The Romance of the Rose, or Guillaume de Dole by Jean Renart (English translation with critical notes and introduction, 1993).

2018 will mark the 800th anniversary of the consecration of the Abbey of St Benoît-sur-Loire - or Fleury Abbey - the previous home and namesake of the Fleury Playbook, a collection of 10 medieval music-dramas that has long held been a source of fascination, and not a little perplexity, for scholars in a variety of disciplines: history, music history, literary studies, art history in particular. The Fleury Playbook has been justly celebrated as the most comprehensive extant collection of medieval music-dramas, containing in a single manuscript examples of non-biblical miracle plays, and settings of the Nativity and Resurrection stories, together with accounts of the conversion of Paul and Mary Magdalene. In this the first full-length monograph on the Playbook, Wyndham Thomas places the collection in its historical, cultural and musical context. The first three chapters introduce and then explore the issues raised by the collection: following an introduction, chapter 2 is devoted to the history and traditions of the Abbey, making a persuasive argument for that institution as the original home of the collection, and perhaps the venue in which the plays were first performed. Chapter 3 discusses medieval saints’ cults, placing the dramas, and particularly the four devoted to St Nicholas, in this context. The remaining chapters are devoted to a close musical and dramatic analysis of the 10 plays themselves.

The evidence of the ancient Greeks' interest in music therapy is scattered through Greek literature from its earliest beginnings. Music was considered to be a magic remedy yet the idea of a connection between musical structures (harmonia, rhythms) and the human constitution had already begun to emerge in the Archaic age and was well established by the second half of the fifth century BCE. Plato is the first source of the notion of musical ethos, according to which music can affect human beings because of its affinities with the soul. It is the Pythagoreans who are usually credited with the 'invention' of the notions of musical ethos and catharsis yet these ideas depend on Neoplatonists such as Porphyry and Iamblichus. Drawing on sources from poetry and philosophy (the early Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists); musicology (Aristoxenus and Aristides Quintilianus); and medicine (the Hippocratic Corpus, Herophilus and Galen) this volume considers how the ancient Greeks thought about music and its healing properties for both body and soul.

This study of Italian music in the 16th and early 17th centuries proposes new ways of thinking about styles and genres, performance practices and the social and political context of the period. The book includes evidence drawn from contemporary documents and copious musical examples. In studying the vocal and instrumental music of Italy during this period, the author takes the perspective that music was an essentially political phenomenon, conditioned by social and cultural constraints.

Siena, blessed with neither the aristocratic nor the ecclesiastical patronage enjoyed by music in other northern Italian centers like Florence, nevertheless attracted first-rate composers and performers from all over Europe. As Frank A. D'Accone shows in this scrupulously documented study, policies developed by the town to favor the common good formed the basis of Siena's ambitious musical programs.
Based on decades of research in the town's archives, D'Accone's "The Civic Muse" brilliantly illuminates both the sacred and the secular aspects of more than three centuries of music and music-making in Siena. After detailing the history of music and liturgy at Siena's famous cathedral and of civic music at the Palazzo Pubblico, D'Accone describes the crucial role that music played in the daily life of the town, from public festivities for foreign dignitaries to private musical instruction. Putting Siena squarely on the Renaissance musical map, D'Accone's monumental study will interest both musicologists and historians of the Italian Renaissance.

This volume is the latest in a distinguished series of Renaissance editions, Monuments of Renaissance Music, which was founded by Edward E. Lowinsky and is now edited by Howard Mayer Brown. Four of the seven volumes published in the series to date have received the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society.
Andrea Antico was one of the earliest and most important music publishers. Starting in Rome in 1510 and continuing in Venice, Antico produced elegant books of polyphonic music, cut with incredible skill on wood blocks. The repertory he published is central to understanding sixteenth-century music. It includes, for example, many pieces sung regularly in the Sistine Chapel. Since the best-represented composer in Antico's volumes if Jean Mouton, chapel master to the French king, these motet books provide insights into the character of music both at the Vatican and at the French court at the height of the Renaissance.
Martin Picker provides an exemplary edition of the four volumes of motets published by Antico in the early 1520s. His edition includes, in modern notation, all of the contents of these volumes not previously published in the Medici Codex (Monuments of Renaissance Music, Volumes III-V). Picker prefaces his edition with a history of Antico's publishing career and a discussion of each piece and its sources. The list of concordant sources and the discussions of important variants will be of enormous value to Renaissance scholars.

For this study, the most fitting method has seemed to be one that might, with Browning in mind, be called the Ring and the Book technique. Part I deals at some length with the central musical language of the 15th and 16th centuries, which was developed in France, Italy, and the Low Countries, while Part II deals primarily with the music of other lands. This distinction has nothing to do with the comparative intrinsic merit of the various bodies of music, but only with the separation of local dialects from the central language. Indeed, such local productions as the 16th-century music of Spain and England provide artistic expressions quite in a class with the best music of France, Italy, and the Low Countries. The method of first taking into account only the central language has the advantage of permitting the main technical developments of the centuries under consideration to be described, as it were, in a straight line. Thereafter, the entire period is traversed again for each country dealt with in Part II. As a result, the same musical forms and processes of composition are treated several times, but each discussion is entered from a different approach and with the admixture of something individual that is, national. The method offers advantages not only to the one whose task it is to sort out a huge amount of varied material, but also to the one who studies it: the student has the main historical outline presented to him more than once, but each time with important changes in the details by which it is filled in."

Venetian publisher Ottaviano Petrucci was the first to print music for many voices with movable type. This Petrucci collection of motets from 1503, known as "Motetti B," includes music from an impressive array of composers, many among the best known of their day. "Motetti B" is also the only source for many of its compositions, including several by Josquin des Prez.
As its lengthy title suggests, "Motetti B" consists of a wide range of devotional motets on the Passion, the Veneration of the Cross, the Eucharist, and the Virgin Mary. Many display a new style with a more harmonic orientation and also have close connections to "lauda," devotional songs in Latin and Italian. Indeed, as Warren Drake points out, the subject matter of these motets displays close ties with the widespread devotional trends of the late fifteenth century, and "Motetti B" might even be considered a musical book of hours. In addition to a general introduction and the motets themselves, this edition includes detailed concordances and critical commentary on the sources and problematic aspects of the works.

Although, according to the author, much sound research, has been done in the Dufay era in recent years," Charles Hamm's book marks the first time an attempt has been made at a comprehensive chronology of the works of this composer. Professor Hamm approaches all Dufay's compositions from the point of view of mensural practice, and has been able to date each piece more precisely than would have been possible in a chronology based on manuscript studies or stylistic analyses. He has divided the works into nine groups, according to details of mensural usage, and on the basis of datable works and other evidence has suggested dates within which the pieces of each group were written. Based on his study of Dufay's mensural practice, the author suggests that the Missa Sancti Antoni and several other works attributed to Dufay may not have been written by him. Originally published in 1964. 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.