Customer Reviews

Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music

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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.

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.