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.

Contents:
Introduction, Christle Collins Judd
Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis, Margaret Bent
Exploring Tonal Structure in French Polyphonic Song of the Fourteenth Century, Sarah Fuller
Internal and External Views of the Modes, Frans Wiering
Josquin's Gospel Motets and Chant-Based Tonality, Christle Collins Judd
Tonal Coherence and the Cycle of Thirds in Josquin's Memoresto Verbitui, Timothy H. Steele
Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c. 1560-1640, Jessie Ann Owens^H
Concepts of Key in 17th-Century English Keyboard Music, Candace Bailey
From Psalmody to Tonality, Harold Powers
Tonal Types and Modal Equivalence in Two Keyboard Cycles by Mursschhauser, Michael Dodds

Essays - collected in honour of Margaret Bent - examining how medieval and Renaissance composers responded to the tradition in which they worked through a process of citation of and commentary on earlier authors. Essays in honour of Margaret Bent. The chapters of this book probe the varied functions of citation and allusion in medieval and renaissance musical culture. At its most fundamental level musical culture relied on shared models for musical practice, used by singers and composers as they learned their craft. Several contributors to this volume investigate general models, which often drew on earlier musical works, internalized in the process of composers' own training as singers. In written theoretical musical pedagogy, conversely, citation of authority is deliberate and intentional. The adaptation of accepted wisdom in theoretical treatises was the means by which newer authors stamped their own authority. Further kinds of citation occur in specific musical texts, either within the words set to music or in the music itself. The diverse functions of citation and allusion for the creator, reader, scribe, performer and listener are here given due consideration. In doing so, this volume is a fitting tribute to Margaret Bent, whose pedagogy, publications, and presence are honoured in this Festschrift. Contributors: SUSAN RANKIN, GILLES RICO, CHRISTIAN THOMAS LEITMEIR, BARBARA HAGGH, LEOFRANC HOLFORD-STREVENS, ANDREW WATHEY, KEVIN BROWNLEE, ALICE V. CLARK, LAWRENCE M. EARP, VIRGINIA NEWES, JOHN MILSOM, DAVID HOWLETT, REINHARD STROHM, THEODOR DUMITRESCU, CRISTLE COLLINS JUDD, BONNIE J. BLACKBURN

This book examines a central group of music theory treatises that have formed the background to the study of Renaissance music. Taking theorists' music examples as a point of departure, it explores fundamental questions about how music was read, and by whom, situating the reading in specific cultural contexts. Numerous broader issues are addressed in the process: the relationship of theory and praxis; access to, and use of, printed musical sources; stated and unstated agendas of theorists; orality and literacy as it was represented via music print culture; the evaluation of anonymous repertories; and the analysis of repertories delineated by boundaries other than the usual ones of composer and genre. In particular this study illuminates the ways in which Renaissance theorists' choices have shaped later interpretation of earlier practice, and reflexively the ways in which modern theory has been mapped on to that practice.