The End Of Early Music

Part history, part explanation of early music, this book also plays devil's advocate, criticizing current practices and urging experimentation. Haynes, a veteran of the movement, describes a vision of the future that involves improvisation, rhetorical expression, and composition.

Part history, part explanation of early music, this book also plays devil's advocate, criticizing current practices and urging experimentation. Haynes, a veteran of the movement, describes a vision of the future that involves improvisation, rhetorical expression, and composition.

From Gregorian chant to Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, the music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods is both beautiful and intriguing, expanding our horizons as it nourishes our souls. In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Forrest Kelly provides not only a compact overview of the music itself, but also a lively look at the many attempts over the last two centuries to revive it. Kelly shows that the early-music revival has long been grounded in the idea of spontaneity, of excitement, and of recapturing experiences otherwise lost to us--either the rediscovery of little-known repertories or the recovery of lost performing styles, with the conviction that, with the right performance, the music will come to life anew. Blending musical and social history, he shows how the Early Music movement in the 1960s took on political overtones, fueled by a rebellion against received wisdom and enforced conformity. Kelly also discusses ongoing debates about authenticity, the desirability of period instruments, and the relationship of mainstream opera companies and symphony orchestras to music that they often ignore, or play in modern fashion.

City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music explores how space, urban life, landscape, and time transformed plainchant and other musical forms. Thirteen essays address a wide range of topics and regions--from Beneventan chant in Italy and Dalmatia, to music theory in medieval France, to later transformations of chant in Iceland and Spain.

Haynes (U. of Montreal) traces the history of musical pitch standards over the last four centuries, linking frequency values to pitch names and telling where, when, and why various pitch levels have been used. With a focus on Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Hapsburg lands, he covers the pitches of about 1,400 historical instruments and how the design and function influenced and were influenced by changes in pitch. In addition, he studies the effect of pitch differences on musical notation and choice of key. The author has also written a book on the oboe, the instrument that plays the "A" to which a symphony orchestra tunes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Since its publication in 1985, Editing Early Music has been the guide to editorial procedures suitable for music written from the Middle Ages to about 1830. For this revised edition, Caldwell has made a number of corrections, brought the bibliography up to date, and added a Postscript onstemmatics and textual criticism.

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 three include: The Venetian privilege and music-printing in the sixteenth century; Francesco Landini and the Florentine cultural elite; and the Beneventan apostrophus in south Italian notation, AD 1000-1100.

Written by a leading authority and artist of the historical transverse flute, The Notation Is Not the Music offers invaluable insight into the issues of historically informed performance and the parameters—and limitations—of notation-dependent performance. As Barthold Kuijken illustrates, performers of historical music should consider what is written on the page as a mere steppingstone for performance. Only by continual examination and reexamination of the sources to discover original intent can an early music practitioner come close to authentic performance.