The score of Western music was writ large during the Renaissance. Secular music rivaled church music for prominence, harmonic lines intertwined and changed music forever with the emergence of polyphony, and, in general, musical composition was taken to new heights. The composers and musicians who provided the soundtrack to this remarkable period are the subject of this comprehensive volume, which also takes an in-depth look at instruments of the day.

Examines musical culture in the towns and cities of Renaissance Europe and the New World.

This annotated chronology of western music is the third in a series of outlines on the history of music in western civilization. It contains a 120-page annotated bibliography, followed by a detailed, documented outline that is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter is written in chronological order with every line being documented by means of abbreviations that refer to the annotated bibliography. There are short biographies of the theorists and detailed discussions of their works. The information on music is organized by classes of music rather than by composer. Also included are lists of manuscripts with descriptions of their contents and notations as to where they may be found. The material for the outline has been taken from primary and secondary sources along with articles from periodicals. Like the other two volumes in this series, Music History from the Late Roman through the Gothic Periods, 313-1425 and Music History During the Renaissance Period, 1425-1520, this volume will be an important research tool for anyone interested in music history.

This controversial study isolates and identifies the intellectual, social, and political assumptions which surrounded English music in the early-20th century. The authors deconstruct the established meanings of music in this period, arguing that music was not just for the elite, but it had come to represent a stronghold of national values, reflecting the reassuring "Englishness" of middle-class life as well.

Based on extensive documentary and archival research, Music in Renaissance Ferrara is a documentary history of music for one of the most important city-states of the Italian Renaissance. Lockwood shows how patrons and musicians created a musical center over the course of the fifteenth-century, tracing the growth of music and musical life in rich detail. It also sheds new light on the careers of such important composers as Dufay, Martini, Obrecht, and Josquin Desprez. This paperback edition features a new preface that re-introduces the book and reflects on its contribution to our modern knowledge of music in the culture of the Italian Renaissance.

This book offers a survey of how female and male characters in English Renaissance theatre participated and interacted in musical activities, both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum. Wong examines the theatrical functions of music in the context of non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama, discussing dramaturgical meanings of music and its association with gender, love, and erotomania in Renaissance plays.

The importance of nineteenth-century writing about culture has long been accepted by scholars, yet so far as music criticism is concerned, Victorian England has been an area of scholarly neglect. This state of affairs is all the more surprising given that the quantity of such criticism in the Victorian and Edwardian press was vast, much of it displaying a richness and diversity of critical perspectives. Through the study of music criticism from several key newspapers and journals (specifically The Times, Daily Telegraph, Athenaeum and The Musical Times), this book examines the reception history of new English music in the period surveyed and assesses its cultural, social and political, importance. Music critics projected and promoted English composers to create a national music of which England could be proud. J A Fuller Maitland, critic on The Times, described music journalists as 'watchmen on the walls of music', and Meirion Hughes extends this metaphor to explore their crucial role in building and safeguarding what came to be known as the English Musical Renaissance. Part One of the book looks at the critics in the context of the publications for which they worked, while Part Two focuses on the relationship between the watchmen-critics and three composers: Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar. Hughes argues that the English Musical Renaissance was ultimately a success thanks largely to the work of the critics. In so doing, he provides a major re-evaluation of the impact of journalism on British music history.

Based on previously unpublished documents, Frank D'Accone sets the background for the musical efflorescence that occurred in Florence in the later 15th century and the emergence in the early 16th century of a new Florentine school of composers. Tracing the origins and development of musical chapels at the Cathedral and Baptistery, and the growth of musical establishments at several other churches such as the Santissima Annunziata, Santa Trinita and San Lorenzo, D'Accone examines the effect of Medici patronage, on the one hand, and the impact of Savonarola, on the other, and at the careers of individual composers such as Heinrich Isaac.

"Like the other volumes in the series, Music in the Renaissance brings a fresh perspective to the study of music by emphasizing social, cultural, intellectual, and political contexts of the music. Richard Freedman looks far beyond the notes on the page or the details of composers’ lives to embrace audiences, performers, institutions, and social settings. For example, the text shows how new technologies of music printing in the Renaissance permitted composers to align notation with sound, causing audiences accustomed to aural transmission to rethink the concept of a musical work."--Résumé du site web de l'éditeur.