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  1. Home
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  3. Summa Musice
  • Cited by 9
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
1991
Online ISBN:
9780511597268
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597268
Subjects:
Ethnomusicology, Music, Music Performance
Series:
Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs
Information

Book description

How did medieval musicians learn to perform? How did they compose? What was their sense of the history and purpose of music? The Summa musice, a treatise on practical music from c.1200, sheds light on all these questions. It is a manual for young singers who are learning Gregorian chant for the first time, and provides a compact but comprehensive introduction to notation, performance and composition, written in a mixture of Latin prose and verse. More than that, however, it is also an introduction to medieval culture: what educated people believed to be worth knowing about music, how they reasoned when they discussed musical questions, the nature of musical thought and how it was expressed. Christopher Page's 1991 book provides an edition of the Latin text taken from the only surviving original copy, together with an English translation. Both texts are copiously annotated and introduced by an authoritative and illuminating editorial commentary.

Reviews

"This admirably executed volume provides the student of medieval music with the text and translation of a previously neglected theoretical treatise, one that proves to be of considerable interest, if not overwhelming importance...an elegantly wrought exemplar of insight, learning, and technique; it should stand as a model for subsequent editions and translations of medieval musical writings." Notes

"...the Summa Musicae will interest all students of medieval music." Brad Walton, Continuo

"...provides a refreshing view of medieval sacred music." Choral Journal

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