The History Of Keyboard Music To 1700

This classic work is a meticulous chronological survey of music for the keyboard from the earliest extant manuscripts of the 14th century to the end of the 17th. Apel traces the evolution of keyboard instruments, genres, national schools and styles (from Poland to Portugal), and the oeuvre of many composers. A monument of scholarship, this indispensable reference work is also remarkably user-friendly and engagingly written throughout.

Table of contents

[This book] attempts to deal with the whole repertory of solo keyboard music from the historical point of view, with musical examples. The larger proportion of works covered are those after 1750. -- cf. Preface.

This series presents introductory guides to key musical genres in the Western classical canon. Designed for the avid listener or the student of music history, each volume offers chapters exploring principal composers and their works, as well as contextual essays. Written by eminent music scholars, generously illustrated with musical examples, and furnished with suggested bibliographies, Routledge Studies in Musical Genres provide readable yet informative surveys for music lovers and dedicated musicians alike. Book jacket.

Intended for the Music Literature course for music majors.

The 17th century was the century of the organ in much the same way the 19th century was the century of the piano. Almost without exception, the major composers of the century wrote for the instrument, and most of them were practicing organists themselves. This historical book surveys, analyzes, and discusses the major national styles of 17th century European organ music. Due to the extraordinarily extensive body of literature produced during this 100-year period, this text includes 350 musical examples to illustrate the various styles. The book also includes brief discussions of the various national styles of organ building, an appendix about the various notational methods used in the 17th century, and a chapter on Spain and Portugal written by Andre Lash, an expert on the subject.

Gillespie discusses 350 composers and their works for harpsichord and piano, including Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Debussy. Includes 116 musical examples, illustrations, and a glossary of musical terms.

English keyboard music reached an unsurpassed level of sophistication in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as organists such as William Byrd and his students took a genre associated with domestic, amateur performance and treated it as seriously as vocal music. This book draws together important research on the music, its sources and the instruments on which it was played. There are two chapters on instruments: John Koster on the use of harpsichord during the period, and Dominic Gwynn on the construction of Tudor-style organs based on the surviving evidence we have for them. This leads to a section devoted to organ performance practice in a liturgical context, in which John Harper discusses what the use of organs pitched in F may imply about their use in alternation with vocal polyphony, and Magnus Williamson explores improvisational practice in the Tudor period. The next section is on sources and repertoire, beginning with Frauke Jürgensen and Rachelle Taylor’s chapter on Clarifica me Pater settings, which grows naturally out of the consideration of improvisation in the previous chapter. The next two contributions focus on two of the most important individual manuscript sources: Tihomir Popović challenges assumptions about My Ladye Nevells Booke by reflecting on what the manuscript can tell us about aristocratic culture, and David J. Smith provides a detailed study of the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The discussion then broadens out into Pieter Dirksen’s consideration of a wider selection of sources relating to John Bull, which in turn connects closely to David Leadbetter’s work on Gibbons, lute sources and questions of style.