Medieval Books - Page 2

Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books, and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries

F. Alberto Gallo

Amazon Price: $55.00 List Price: $55.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University Of Chicago Press Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $37.25

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Ethnic & International -> International
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval

Editorial Review:

Written by one of Italy's most eminent scholars of music, this book explores music's place in the cultural, artistic, and literary life of medieval Italian courts, paying particular attention to the influence of French culture on Italian artistic and musical traditions.

In the first of three elegant essays, Gallo examines the troubadours who traveled to northern Italian courts from Provence during the thirteenth century. He discusses their performance practices, the verbal and musical sophistication of their songs, and their role in the daily life of courtiers at Genoa, Ferrara, and Monferrato. The second essay concerns the now dispersed collection of the Visconti library at Pavia. Here, Gallo examines how this collection expressed the tastes of the fourteenth-century court of Giangaleazzo Visconti, how French arts were imported and imitated at Pavia, and the effects this had on music heard at the court. In the final essay, Gallo looks at the fifteenth-century tradition of improvised music, and especially the virtuoso lute player Pietrobono. Mythologized in literary circles of his day, Pietrobono becomes a point of departure for a discussion of the entire vision of music of Italian humanists, from Guarino Veronese to Aurelio Brandolini.

Prions En Chantant: Devotional Songs of the Trouveres (Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations)

List Price: $50.00 By: University of Toronto Press Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $16.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Instruments & Performers -> Voice
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very nice and cheap book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

For those interested in an neglected aspect of the Trouvères' repertoire. Very nice introduction to the topic. Many melodies with original score and modern transcription. Original text and well done english translation. Thanks to the author for this very fine work.

Editorial Review:

The rich medieval French tradition of vernacular devotional songs has not received much scrutiny. With Prions en chantant, Marcia Epstein aims to remedy that situation by offering an edition of largely anonymous trouv¦re devotional songs, designed for both scholars and performers, from two late-thirteenth-century manuscripts.

The majority of the music is published here for the first time. Sixty-one songs are presented, with forty-nine songs exhibited in Old French with a facing-page modern English translation followed by old musical notation and facing-page with modern musical transcription. An additional twelve songs, which lack music in the original sources, are represented by the Old French text and the modern English translation only. The introduction extensively describes the social, musical, literary and theological aspects of the trouv¦re songs contained in the volume. This is a valuable and welcome addition to the study of medieval music.

Music in Medieval Manuscripts

Nicolas Bell, Arthur Searle

Amazon Price: $21.95 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of Toronto Press Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $17.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An information-dense and esthetically gorgeous book 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Music In Medieval Manuscripts by Nicolas Bell (Curator of Music Manuscripts at the British Library) is a wondrously illustrated, full-color history of music writing from the earliest surviving recorded works through the fifteenth century. Pages printed on glossy paper show amazing photographs of ancient musical scripts, while the scholarly text meticulously explains the evolution of musical notation rounded out with amazing facts and figures. At 64 pages, Music In Medieval Manuscripts is a brief yet information dense and esthetically gorgeous book, that both music history students and connoisseurs will find immensely fascinating, informative and satisfying.

Editorial Review:

Our knowledge of medieval music - from the dramatic and melodic riches of the thirteenth century to such highlights of the fifteenth century as the pieces in the Old Hall Manuscript - rests almost wholly on the existence of the manuscripts that have survived. Many illuminated manuscripts similarly contain detailed depictions of musicians with their instruments providing a valuable source of reference for performers today. A lively introduction to all aspects of medieval music for anyone who enjoys listening to works of the period.

Gregorian Chant: Songs of the Spirit

List Price: $24.95 By: Bay Books Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $0.54

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Instruments & Performers -> Voice
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Ethnic & International -> World Beat East

Editorial Review:

A companion to the PBS-TV special chronicles the rich history of Gregorian chant, combining full-color photographs, selected transcriptions, a CD featuring the Gregorian Chant Choir, and commentary from fans who reflect on why the music is important to them. Original. TV tie-in. 30,000 first printing. IP.

A Dictionary of Early Music: From The Troubadours to Monteverdi

Jerome Roche, Elizabeth Roche

List Price: $45.00 By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $14.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A great overview of early music! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book for anyone interested in early music. The beginner will find handy, concise definitions of most of the common terms, styles, instruments, and forms, as well as biographies of major composers. The more advanced early music enthusiast will find it an invaluable source for program notes and ideas, and teachers and ensemble directors will make much use of it as well.
As an aside, it's GREAT to see that this book's definition of the period known as "Early Music" ends with the time of Monteverdi.

Editorial Review:

Here is an invaluable ready reference to the world of early music. No other single book currently available gives the reader the essential facts about the composers, their music, and the bewildering variety of instruments for which is was written.
There are entries for some 700 composers from the troubadours to Monteverdi, featuring especially those composers whose music is available in modern editions and on recordings. Every medieval or Renaissance instrument likely to be heard in modern performance is described, often with the help of line drawings. The dictionary also provides a succinct and lucid guide to technical terms, musical forms, manuscript and printed sources, Renaissance music publishers, and the more important contemporary theorists. A Dictionary of Early Music has been compiled for everyone who goes to concerts and buys recordings of early music. Students, performers, and listeners alike will find it indispensable.

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Misc. 213 (Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music in Facsimile) (v. 1)

Amazon Price: $225.00 List Price: $225.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University Of Chicago Press Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $138.77

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Classical -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Reference -> General

Editorial Review:

This volume makes available for the first time in a facsimile edition one of the most important musical manuscripts of the late Middle Ages.

Copied probably in Venice around 1430, the Oxford manuscript contains the most comprehensive surviving collection of secular songs of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Of the 326 pieces, 216 are not found in any other source. Including works by Guillaume Dufay, Binchois, and nearly all other leading composers of their generation, it is central to an understanding of fifteenth-century song traditions. Because of the copyist's clear and distinctive hand, it is also significant for studies of late medieval musical notation. David Fallows's introduction includes a history of the manuscript, analysis of its preparation, and survey of its choice of repertory, as well as a full inventory of the music and alphabetical indexes by title and composer. The original-size facsimile includes beta-radiographs of all watermarks, as well as ultraviolet photos that show the copyist's changes and revisions.

This volume is the first edition in a new series called Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music in Facsimile edited by Margaret Bent and John Nádas and published by the University of Chicago Press. This series will include high-quality reproductions of some of the most important and frequently studied European music manuscripts of the late thirteenth through early fifteenth centuries. Each beautifully produced facsimile edition will include a detailed critical introduction and a complete inventory by an acknowledged expert in the field.

Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music

Amazon Price: $36.99 List Price: $36.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $27.33

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> General

Editorial Review:

This volume presents a series of important essays by American and European scholars on some of the problems involved in attempting to perform music of the late Middle ages. The essays are based on papers read at a conference held at the New York University Center for Early Music in 1981 and they concern a varied selection of aspects of the subject; behind many lies an interest in the reopened question of how far instruments had a role in performing secular or sacred music. Among the questions tackled are: the types of harps found in fourteenth-century Italy, and their probable uses; the numbers of singers needed (with their ranges) for fourteenth-century English music; evidence for the use of instruments in the thirteenth century and for wind articulation in the late fourteenth; specific performing ensembles of the fifteenth century, and what they may have sung in a polyphonic Mass.

Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music (Criticism and Analysis of Early Music)

Amazon Price: $115.00 List Price: $115.00 Usually ships in 1 to 2 months By: Routledge Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $109.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Skills -> Communications
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval

Editorial Review:

This collection addresses questions of gender and sexuality as they relate to music from the middle ages to the early seventeenth century. These essays present a body of scholarship that considers music as part of the history of sexuality, stimulating conversation within musicology as well as bringing music studies into dialogue with feminist, gender and queer theory.

"Nova Musica" and "De Proportionibus" (Greek and Latin Music Theory)

Johannes Ciconia

Amazon Price: $60.00 List Price: $60.00 Usually ships in 3 to 5 weeks By: University of Nebraska Press Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $24.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Theory, Composition & Performance -> Instruction & Study

Editorial Review:

Johannes Ciconia (ca. 1370–1412) is well known today as a composer both of sacred and secular music, but his theoretical works, probably written in Padua during the first decade of the fifteenth century, have until now been available only in manuscript form. This is the first complete edition of both of Ciconia’s theoretical works: the Nova musica, with its attendant De tribus generibus melorum, and the shorter De proportionibus, itself a revision of the third book of the Nova musica.

 

The Nova musica is unique as the only only large-scale speculative work of the period known to have been written by an accomplished composer. The purpose of the work, clearly stated by Ciconia in the prologue, is to return to the writings of earlier authors (through the eleventh century) and, with their material as a basis, to redefine the scope of the discipline of music so that is may be classified and may function as one of the literary arts, in addition to its usual standing as a mathematical discipline.

 

The first three books consist largely of quotations from earlier authors, covering the topics of consonance (intervals and the scale), species (modes), and proportions. Much of this material parallels large sections of the famous Lucidarium of Marchetto of Padua.

 

In the fourth and final book, Ciconia demonstrated how, by means of the material already presented, chants can be classified and declined or parsed according to the principles of grammar. This new view of music can be regarded as a clear indication of the new humanistic approach to the arts.

 

Two plates and more than one hundred figures illustrate the edition. The plates provide representative and contrasting examples of the handwriting and format of the illustrations in two of the principal sources.

Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Clarendon Paperbacks)

David Hiley

Amazon Price: $153.00 List Price: $170.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 6 new & used starting at $130.05

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Instruments & Performers -> Voice
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Medieval

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Authoritative, valuable reference 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

As with other Oxford University Editions, this book is a well researched, definitive edition on the subject. A very thorough source for reference on plain chant (history, etc). It is not, however, a source for the chants themselves. Nor is it a book for the beginner as its scope would be almost overwhelming.

The Time of the Christ

Editorial Review:

Copiously illustrated with over 200 musical examples, this book highlights the diversity of practice and richness of the chant repertory in the Middle Ages and is an indispensable introductiona and reference to this increasingly popular music.