Richard Rastall's two books on music in early English religious drama complement each other. Heaven Singing provides an overview of the evidence for music in the plays, and defines the place, nature and cultural contexts of music in the drama; Minstrels Playing is a discussion of the evidence for every play in that repertory, and is therefore concerned with the place and nature of musical performance in each play individually. Where should there be music in an anomymous English religious play of the fifteenth or sixteenth century? What sort of music should it be, and by what forces should it be performed? This volume shows how music was used at the time of the plays' production, both through a close examination of individual texts, and of the place of music in the intellectual and artistic life of the middle ages. Richard Rastall begins by discussing the internal literary evidence of the play texts, the surviving notated music in the plays, and documentary evidence of productions, before turning to the wider cultural context in which the plays were composed and performed. He considers the representational and dynamic functions of music in the plays, the relationship between music, drama and liturgy, and the performers themselves - who they were, and what they might be expected to do. Related factors necessary to the discovery of how music was used in late medieval drama are also considered, from medieval cosmology and the numerical construction of plays to the age and size of boy actors.
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Its scope is impressive. Rastall's task has been to explore the wide musical spectrum of early English drama... a formidable achievement, indispensable for any serious and comprehensive study of early English drama. --Medium Aevum
About the Author
Dr RICHARD RASTALL is Reader in Historical Musicology at the University of Leeds, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
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