This collection of essays offers a wide range of new interdisciplinary perspectives on Heinrich Glarean's contribution to intellectual life.

This volume of essays draws together recent work on historical music theory of the Renaissance. The collection spans the major themes addressed by Renaissance writers on music and highlights the differing approaches to this body of work by modern scholars, including: historical and theoretical perspectives; consideration of the broader cultural context for writing about music in the Renaissance; and the dissemination of such work. Selected from a variety of sources ranging from journals, monographs and specialist edited volumes, to critical editions, translations and facsimiles, these previously published articles reflect a broad chronological and geographical span, and consider Renaissance sources that range from the overtly pedagogical to the highly speculative. Taken together, this collection enables consideration of key essays side by side aided by the editor‘s introductory essay which highlights ongoing debates and offers a general framework for interpreting past and future directions in the study of historical music theory from the Renaissance.

This 1994 collection of fourteen essays, written by an eminent group of scholars, explores the musical culture of the German-speaking realm between c.1450 and 1600. The essays demonstrate the important role played by German speakers in the development of instrumental music in the Renaissance, the shaping of the curricula of musical education in the modern age, in setting patterns of musical patronage, in establishing congregational singing in churches, and in developing commercial music printing. The essays shed light on the music that flourished at Imperial and ducal courts, universities, parish churches, collegiate schools, as well as the homes of prosperous merchants. The volume thus provides an overview of German polyphonic music in the age of Gutenberg, Dürer and Luther and documents the changing social status of music in Germany during a crucial epoch of its history.

The Companion to Central and Eastern European Humanism: The Czech Lands is the first reference work on humanists and their literary activities in this region to appear in English. It provides biographical and bibliographical data about humanist literary life between c. 1480 and 1630, in two volumes, organised alphabetically by authors’ names. This first volume includes three introductory chapters together with more than 130 biographical entries covering the letters A-L and a complete overview of the most recent research on humanism in Central Europe. The interdisciplinary research team behind this Companion paid particular attention to local approaches to the classical tradition, to humanistic multilingualism and to Bohemian authors’ participation in European scholarly networks. The Companion is a highly relevant resource for all academics who are interested in humanism and the history of early modern literature in Central Europe.

In early modern Europe, music – particularly singing – was the arena where body and soul came together, embodied in the notion of musica humana. Kim uses this concept to examine the framework within which music and song were used to promote moral education and addresses Renaissance ideas of religion, education and music.

John Merbecke (c.1505-c.1585) is most famous as the composer of the first musical setting of the English liturgy, The Booke of Common Praier Noted (BCPN), published in 1550. Not only was Merbecke a pioneer in setting English prose to music but also the compiler of the first Concordance of the whole English Bible (1550) and of the first English encyclopaedia of biblical and theological studies, A Booke of Notes and Common Places (1581). By situating Merbecke and his work within a broader intellectual and religio-cultural context of Tudor England, this book challenges the existing studies of Merbecke based on the narrow theological approach to the Reformation. Furthermore, it suggests a re-thinking of the prevailing interpretative framework of Reformation musical history. On the basis of the new contextual study of Merbecke, this book seeks to re-interpret his work, particularly BCPN, in the light of humanist rhetoric. It sees Merbecke as embodying the ideal of the 'Christian-musical orator', demonstrating that BCPN is an Anglican epitome of the Erasmian synthesis of eloquence, theology and music. The book thus depicts Merbecke as a humanist reformer, through re-evaluation of his contributions to the developments of vernacular music and literature in early modern England. As such it will be of interest, not only to church musicians, but also to historians of the Reformation and students of wider Tudor culture.

Petrarch’s revival of the ancient practice of laureation in 1341 led to the laurel being conferred on poets throughout Europe in the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Within the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian I conferred the title of Imperial Poet Laureate especially frequently, and later it was bestowed with unbridled liberality by Counts Palatine and university rectors too. This handbook identifies more than 1300 poets laureated within the Empire and adjacent territories between 1355 and 1804, giving (wherever possible) a sketch of their lives, a list of their published works, and a note of relevant scholarly literature. The introduction and various indexes provide a detailed account of a now largely forgotten but once significant literary-sociological phenomenon and illuminate literary networks in the Early Modern period. A supplementary Volume 5 of Poets Laureate in the Holy Roman Empire. A Bio-bibliographical Handbook will be published in June 2019.

Volume XXVII/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles and book reviews which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.

Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century 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 20 include: The Footnote Quarrels of the Modal Theory: A Remarkable Episode in the Reception of Medieval Music; The Vatican Organum Treatise Re-examined; Ludwig Senfl and the Judas Trope: Composition and Religious Toleration at the Bavarian Court; Who 'Made' the Magnus liber?