The years since the early music revival gathered momentum in the 1960s and 70s have witnessed many new developments in the field of pre-Baroque music: some revelatory recordings and concert performances have opened our ears to a new range of possible sound worlds for music of this period, and scholars have made discoveries that in many ways challenge the accepted views about this until recently neglected end of the repertory. Much pre-1600 music, the more so the further we go back in time, sound not only unfamiliar but also strange to modern ears accustomed to the harmonies and rhythms that later came to dominate the Western musical tradition. How to account for this strangeness and how to weave it into our own musical experience are questions that confront us whenever we attempt to draw nearer to the music: its beauty is readily appreciated, but its meaning is often elusive. David Fallows and Tess Knighton, scholars and critics in the field of medieval and Renaissance music, invited a number of international researchers and performers to contribute short essays on some of the most intriguing aspects of the subject. The aim was not so much a comprehensive reference book, although the Glossary gives brief definitions of terms and composer biographies, nor a strictly chronological survey, though the Chronology provides an overview of the main developments of the period, for these basic tools are already available. Rather, the Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, spanning over eight centuries of music-making, hopes to broaden and stimulate the reader's interest by discussing issues of live debate such as the original context for the music, how it was composed, and the ways in which it was performed. What was it like to be a composer in the Middle Ages? Can we appreciate the difference between a good and a bad piece of medieval polyphony? Why did certain musical genres flourish and others fall into disuse? What can surviving documents or pictures or the musical manuscripts themselves tell us about how the music was performed, listened to, and appreciated during the period? The essays consider a wide range of the kind of evidence from which scholars and performers have to draw their conclusions and make the decisions that affect the ways in which the music can be brought back to life today.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
This fascinating volume is aptly titled: it isn't an introduction to the medieval and Renaissance repertoire, but rather a companion--a collection of essays, each covering some aspect of early music and its modern-day performance, to which a listener (or performer) can refer as topics of interest arise.
Editors Tess Knighton and David Fallows have foregone the chronological approach that might seem obvious for a book of this sort (although they do include an excellent glossary and chronology as appendices) in favor of essays grouped around particular issues such as genre (keyboard works, Mass cycles, or wind ensemble music, for example), using historical evidence (not only written music and treatises but pictorial evidence, folk-music traditions, and surviving instruments), pre-performance decisions (preparing performing editions, pitch standard, even choosing performance venues), and performance techniques (tempo, vocal production, embellishment).
There is quite a range of contributors--academic musicologists, performers, critics, and combinations thereof--and the level on which the essays are written varies widely. Almost all of them are instructive; some will be immediately accessible to casual listeners, while others go into detail about compositional techniques and theory. (The book's glossary is particularly helpful in these cases.) Some of the academicians' articles are very clear and helpful to the nonspecialist reader (David Fallows on the three-voice fixed-form songs of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance), some less so (Margaret Bent, who can't resist phrases like "simultaneously projected rhythmic hierarchies" in her essay on late-medieval motets). The worst example in this regard is the essay by Thomas Binkley, one of the great pioneers of the 20th-century revival of medieval music. Binkley takes nearly eight pages of dense academic-style prose just to remind us that a piece of musical notation is distinct from the actual performance of that music. On the other hand, Irena Cholij's detailed but comprehensible examination of the ways Renaissance composers incorporated preexisting material into their works is exemplary.
Much better, on the whole, at communicating with the lay reader and listener are performers such as lutenist Hopkinson Smith and medieval fiddle player Randall Cook. The section on performance techniques includes three essays by founding members of the Hilliard Ensemble. Philip Pickett, director of the New London Consort and musical director of the New Globe Theatre in London, contributes a discussion of the modern evolution of early-music concert programming entitled "Hard-sell, Scholarship and Silly Titles."
Possibly the most salutary piece--for readers at all levels, not just recent initiates--is by editor Tess Knighton, who has been writing about early music for general audiences for some years as contributor to Gramophone magazine and editor of Gramophone Early Music Quarterly. Her essay "Going Down on Record" is probably the best place to start in the book--a brief reminder of the history of early-music recordings and the implications and possible ill effects that recordings might have on our ideas about performance styles and even the music itself. --Matthew Westphal --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
"A pleasure to read. . . . What I find particularly valuable is the emphasis on the skills and mental tools needed for the study and performance of early music." -- Julie Cumming, Historical Performance
"Fallows and Knighton have gone a significant distance towards breaking down the barriers that separate the several different early music constituencies. Collecting such a diverse set of essays was a brave, interesting, and largely successful project." -- Timothy J. McGee, Notes
"With provocative writing and an exceptionally broad range of perspectives [Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music] invites dialogue not just on what we think but also, and more importantly, on how we think about medieval and Renaissance music." -- Cynthia J. Cyrus, Fontes Artis Musicae --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
"Fallows and Knighton have gone a significant distance towards breaking down the barriers that separate the several different early music constituencies. Collecting such a diverse set of essays was a brave, interesting, and largely successful project." -- Timothy J. McGee, Notes
"With provocative writing and an exceptionally broad range of perspectives [Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music] invites dialogue not just on what we think but also, and more importantly, on how we think about medieval and Renaissance music." -- Cynthia J. Cyrus, Fontes Artis Musicae --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great help,
By Checco (Iowa City, IA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music (Paperback)
This book is a series of very short (sometimes just a couple of pages) articles on major issues about Medieval & Renaissance music. Great scholars explain the matter in a very succinct and accessible way. All the aspects of the musical phenomena are investigated. From notation, to performance, criticism, iconography, historical context, etc.
I strongly recommend this book to integrate a music history textbook because it allows the reader to consider exclusively some genres and some particular issues.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rich Collection of Essays by Great Music Historians,
By Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music (Hardcover)
Readers of my many reviews of European music from the 11th to the 16th centuries have asked me more questions than I can find time to answer. This book does the job more eloquently than I ever could, including 49 essays by noted musicologists like Reinhard Strohm along with performing musicians of the caliber of Anthony Rooley and Paul Hillier. Here's a list of the subject sections:
1. The Music of the Past and the Modern Ear 2. Aspects of Music and Society 3. Questions of Form and Style 4. Using the Evidence 5. Pre-performance Decisions 6. Performance Techniques Topic 3 is especially deep, covering the genres of vocal and instrumental music, the origins of medieval instruments, and the techniques of composition in the era before keyboards. Some of the essays are clearly by scholars for scholars, but the majority will be comprehensible to anyone with a basic musical vocabulary.
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