Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300-1600

Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300-1600
Author: Timothy James McGee
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9782503541617

Over the past 45 years, Keith Polk has been one of the major scholars in the history of musical instruments and their repertories during the period 1300 - 1600. His publications have been extremely helpful in elucidating the development of the instruments, the repertory they performed, and the role played by instruments and instrumentalists in late medieval and Renaissance society. This collection of twelve essays on medieval and Renaissance music performance topics adds to the areas in which Keith Polk has made significant contributions, namely instruments, ensembles, and repertory. The scope of the individual essays varies in terms of geographical and temporal focus, with some involving an issue that was common to all areas of Europe, while others are specifically aimed at a single instrument, ensemble, composition, country, city, or occasion. Most of the essays are historical in nature, centring on how music was performed in particular circumstances, although some are quite practical and explain performance techniques involving voices and instruments. What unites the twelve essays is that they all shed new light on musical performance in Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The writers chosen for this volume are all highly respected scholars whose writings are always of the highest calibre. Taken as a whole, the essays in this volume make an excellent contribution to the field of music history.

Instrumentalists and Renaissance Culture, 1420-1600

Instrumentalists and Renaissance Culture, 1420-1600
Author: Victor Coelho
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016-05-26
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1107145805

This is the first in-depth study in any language exploring the vast cultural range of instrumental music during the Renaissance.

The Cambridge History of Medieval Music

The Cambridge History of Medieval Music
Author: Mark Everist
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-08-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1108577075

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 trouvères 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.

Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond

Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond
Author: Benjamin Brand
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre: Music
ISBN: 131679895X

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.

The Guitar in Tudor England

The Guitar in Tudor England
Author: Christopher Page
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1316368955

Few now remember that the guitar was popular in England during the age of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare, and yet it was played everywhere from the royal court to the common tavern. This groundbreaking book, the first entirely devoted to the renaissance guitar in England, deploys new literary and archival material, together with depictions in contemporary art, to explore the social and musical world of the four-course guitar among courtiers, government servants and gentlemen. Christopher Page reconstructs the trade in imported guitars coming to the wharves of London, and pieces together the printed tutor for the instrument (probably of 1569) which ranks as the only method book for the guitar to survive from the sixteenth century. Two chapters discuss the remains of music for the instrument in tablature, both the instrumental repertoire and the traditions of accompanied song, which must often be assembled from scattered fragments of information.

Performance and the Middle English Romance

Performance and the Middle English Romance
Author: Linda Marie Zaerr
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843843234

An examination of if and how medieval romance was performed, uniquely uniting the perspective of a scholar and practitioner. Although English medieval minstrels performed gestes, a genre closely related to romance, often playing the harp or the fiddle, the question of if, and how, Middle English romance was performed has been hotly debated. Here, the performance tradition is explored by combining textual, historical and musicological scholarship with practical experience from a noted musician. Using previously unrecognised evidence, the author reconstructs a realistic model of minstrel performance, showing how a simple melody can interact with the text, and vice versa. She argues that elements in Middle English romance which may seem simplistic or repetitive may in fact be incomplete, as missing an integral musical dimension; metrical irregularities, for example, may be relics of sophisticated rhythmic variation that make sense only with music. Overall, the study offers both a more accurate comprehension of minstrel performance, and a deeper appreciation of the romances themselves. Linda Marie Zaerr is Professor of Medieval Studies at Boise State University.

The Musical Sounds of Medieval French Cities

The Musical Sounds of Medieval French Cities
Author: Gretchen Peters
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: Music
ISBN: 113957678X

Drawing upon hundreds of newly uncovered archival records, Gretchen Peters reconstructs the music of everyday life in over twenty cities in late medieval France. Through the comparative study of these cities' political and musical histories, the book establishes that the degree to which a city achieved civic authority and independence determined the nature and use of music within the urban setting. The world of urban minstrels beyond civic patronage is explored through the use of diverse records; their livelihood depended upon seeking out and securing a variety of engagements from confraternities to bathhouses. Minstrels engaged in complex professional relationships on a broad level, as with guilds and minstrel schools, and on an individual level, as with partnerships and apprenticeships. The study investigates how minstrels fared economically and socially, recognizing the diversity within this body of musicians in the Middle Ages from itinerant outcasts to wealthy and respected town musicians.

Shaping Sound and Society

Shaping Sound and Society
Author: Stephen Cottrell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2023-09-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000928969

This volume brings together leading voices from the new wave of research on musical instruments to consider how we can connect the material aspects of instruments with their social function, approaches that have been otherwise too frequently separated in musical scholarship. Shaping Sound and Society: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments locates the instruments at the centre of cultural interactions. With contributions from ten scholars spanning a variety of methodologies and a wide range of both contemporary and historic music cultures, the volume is divided into three sections. Contributors discuss the relationships between makers, performers, and their local communities; the different meanings that instruments accrue as they travel over time and place; and the manner in which instruments throw new light on historic music cultures. Alongside the scholarly chapters, the volume also includes a selection of shorter interludes based on interviews with makers of comparatively new instruments, offering further insights into the process of musical instrument innovation. An essential read for students and academics in the fields of music and ethnomusicology, this volume will also interest anyone looking to understand how the cultural interaction of musical instruments is deeply informed and influenced by social, technological, and cultural change.

Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250–1750

Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250–1750
Author: Anthony M. Cummings
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2023-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226822788

"Florence is justly celebrated as one of the world's most important cities. It enjoys mythic status and occupies an enviable place in the historical imagination. But its music-historical importance is less well understood than it should be. If Florence was the city of Dante, Michelangelo, and Galileo, it was also the birthplace of the madrigal, opera, and the piano. This is the only book of its kind, a comprehensive account of music in Florence from the late Middle Ages until the end of the Medici dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century. It recounts the principal developments in the history of Florence's contributions to music and how music was heard and cultivated in the city, from civic and religious institutions to private patronage and the academies. Scholars from sister disciplines and a general readership interested in the history and culture of Florence will find this book an invaluable complement to studies of the art, literature, and political thought of the late-medieval and early-modern eras and the quasi-legendary figures in the Florentine cultural pantheon"--

Stravinsky in the Americas

Stravinsky in the Americas
Author: H. Colin Slim
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0520299922

Stravinsky in the Americas explores the “pre-Craft” period of Igor Stravinsky’s life, from when he first landed on American shores in 1925 to the end of World War II in 1945. Through a rich archival trove of ephemera, correspondence, photographs, and other documents, eminent musicologist H. Colin Slim examines the twenty-year period that began with Stravinsky as a radical European art-music composer and ended with him as a popular figure in American culture. This collection traces Stravinsky’s rise to fame—catapulted in large part by his collaborations with Hollywood and Disney and marked by his extra-marital affairs, his grappling with feelings of anti-Semitism, and his encounters with contemporary musicians as the music industry was emerging and taking shape in midcentury America. Slim’s lively narrative records the composer’s larger-than-life persona through a close look at his transatlantic tours and domestic excursions, where Stravinsky’s personal and professional life collided in often-dramatic ways.