Book contents
- Cambridge Introductions to Music
- Cambridge Introductions to Music Renaissance Polyphony
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Figures
- Tables
- Music examples
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the music examples
- Note on the bibliography
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introducing Renaissance polyphony
- Chapter 2 Making polyphony: sources and practice
- Chapter 3 Makers of polyphony
- Chapter 4 Pitch: an overview
- Chapter 5 Voice-names, ranges, and functions
- Chapter 6 Mensural notation, duration, and metre
- Chapter 7 Genre, texts, forms
- Chapter 8 ‘Cantus magnus’: music for the Mass
- Chapter 9 ‘Cantus mediocris’: the motet
- Chapter 10 ‘Cantus parvus’: secular music
- Chapter 11 Scoring, texture, scale
- Chapter 12 Understanding musical borrowing
- Chapter 13 Canons, puzzles, games
- Chapter 14 Performance practice: a brief introduction
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index of compositions
- General index
- Cambridge Introductions to Music
Chapter 14 - Performance practice: a brief introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2020
- Cambridge Introductions to Music
- Cambridge Introductions to Music Renaissance Polyphony
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Figures
- Tables
- Music examples
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the music examples
- Note on the bibliography
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introducing Renaissance polyphony
- Chapter 2 Making polyphony: sources and practice
- Chapter 3 Makers of polyphony
- Chapter 4 Pitch: an overview
- Chapter 5 Voice-names, ranges, and functions
- Chapter 6 Mensural notation, duration, and metre
- Chapter 7 Genre, texts, forms
- Chapter 8 ‘Cantus magnus’: music for the Mass
- Chapter 9 ‘Cantus mediocris’: the motet
- Chapter 10 ‘Cantus parvus’: secular music
- Chapter 11 Scoring, texture, scale
- Chapter 12 Understanding musical borrowing
- Chapter 13 Canons, puzzles, games
- Chapter 14 Performance practice: a brief introduction
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index of compositions
- General index
- Cambridge Introductions to Music
Summary
This chapter seeks to address the basic question that poses itself to any listener: how can two performances of a given piece of Renaissance polyphony sound radically different and unlike. It reviews the reasons for this impression: what the sources and notation tell us (and what they don’t) regarding performance forces, treatment of pitch, tempi, proportions, and performance conditions and contexts.The chapter also offers an overview of the changes of fashion and practice since the onset of sound recordings of Renaissance music. Crucial to the question is the way in which our assumptions and biases inform our interpretation of this information (and other sources of knowledge on performance practice), just as they did those of previous generations. As in the rest of this book, I seek here to define the relationship between (and readers’ awareness of) the twin claims of knowledge and interpretation, the tension between which plays itself out in concrete terms in the domain of performance practice.
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- Renaissance Polyphony , pp. 223 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020