Cori Spezzati: Volume 1, The Development of Sacred Polychoral Music to the Time of Schutz

Cori Spezzati: Volume 1, The Development of Sacred Polychoral Music to the Time of Schutz
Author: Anthony F. Carver
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1988-10-27
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780521303989

Cori Spezzati deals with polychoral church music from its beginnings in the first few decades of the sixteenth century to its climax in the work of Giovanni Gabrieli and Heinrich Schutz. In polychoral music the singers, sometimes with instrumentalists also, were split into two (or more) groups that often engaged in lively dialogue and joined in majestic tutti climaxes. The book draws on contemporary descriptions of the idiom, especially from the writings of Vicentino and Zarlino, but concentrates in the main on musical analysis, showing how antiphonal chanting (such as that of the psalms), dialogue and canon influenced the phenomenon. Polychoral music has often been considered synonymous not only with Venetian music, but with impressive pomp. Anthony Carver's study shows that it was cultivated by many composers outside Venice - in Rome, all over northern Italy, in Catholic and Protestant areas of Germany, in Spain and the New World - and that it was as capable of quiet devotion or mannerist expressionism as of outgoing pomp. Perhaps most important, music by several major composers about which there is still surprisingly little in the literature is treated in depth: the Gabrielis, Lasso, Palestrina, Victoria, and several German masters. The book is illustrated with many musical examples. A companion volume offers an anthology of seventeen complete pieces, most of which are analysed in the text of Volume I.

Early Music History

Early Music History
Author: Iain Fenlon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2009-03-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521104289

Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It demands the highest standards of scholarship from its contributors, all of whom are leading academics in their fields. It gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing novel methodological ideas. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music and the relationship between music and society. Articles in volume one include: A lost guide to Tinctoris's teachings recovered; two English motets on Simon de Montfort; the Mary Magdalene scene in the Visitatio sepulchri ceremonies; and European politics and the distribution of music in the early fifteenth century.

A History of Baroque Music

A History of Baroque Music
Author: George J. Buelow
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 732
Release: 2004-11-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780253343659

"A History of Baroque Music is a detailed treatment of the music of the Baroque era, with particular focus on the seventeenth century. The author's approach is a history of musical style with an emphasis on musical scores. The book is divided initially by time period into early and later Baroque (1600-1700 and 1700-1750 respectively), and secondarily by country and composer. An introductory chapter discusses stylistic continuity with the late Renaissance and examines the etymology of the term "Baroque." The concluding chapter on the composer Telemann addresses the stylistic shift that led to the end of the Baroque and the transition into the Classical period."--Jacket.

Studies in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music

Studies in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music
Author: Jeffrey Kurtzman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2024-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 104023349X

Although he is often identified as a Monteverdi scholar (Approaches to Monteverdi: Aesthetic, Psychological, Analytical and Historical Studies, published in the Variorum series in 2013), the majority of Jeffrey Kurtzman’s work has focused on other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian sacred music. Organized into three sections, part one begins with a chapter on the Monteverdi Mass and Vespers of 1610 which spotlights the other major work in Monteverdi’s first prominent sacred print, the Missa in illo tempore, followed by examples of Kurtzman’s work on the sacred music of other composers such as Giovanni Francesco Capello and Palestrina. The section concludes with a piece on polyphonic psalm structures in seventeenth-century Italian Office music. Part two includes pieces which explore the relationship between the standard clef set, the high clef set, specific Magnificat tones and sounding pitch in the Magnificats of Roman composers; the issue of polyphonic psalm antiphons and the question of vocal and instrumental substitutes for plainchant antiphons in the Vespers service; and the use of instruments in the performance of sacred music, demonstrating that the concertato style of the seventeenth century had its origins in the practice of substituting instruments for voices and doubling voices with instruments, thereby introducing multifaceted possibilities for varying sonorities through the course of a composition. Part 3 contains two articles: the first surveying various styles in the Office repertoire of the seventeenth-century based on the approximately 1500 prints of Italian Office music in Kurtzman’s and Anne Schnoebelen’s catalogue of Mass, Office and Holy Week Music Printed in Italy, 1516-1770. The second article, published for the first time in this volume, assesses the impact on Italian liturgical music of the Catholic reform of the second half of the sixteenth-century.

Musical Notation in the West

Musical Notation in the West
Author: James Grier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0521898161

A detailed critical and historical investigation of the development of musical notation as a powerful system of symbolic communication.