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This series aims to provide a forum for the best new work in this area; it takes a deliberately inclusive approach, and contributions on all aspects of medieval and Renaissance music are welcomed, particularly those placing music in its social and historical context.

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15 results in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music

European Music, 1520-1640

Juan Esquivel
  • A Master of Sacred Music during the Spanish Golden Age
  • Clive Walkley
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 February 2023
    Print publication:
    17 November 2010
  • First study of Juan Esquivel, a highly significant figure in Spanish musical life in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

A Medieval Songbook

Music in Elizabethan Court Politics
  • Katherine Butler
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    02 June 2021
    Print publication:
    19 March 2015
  • Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) had a strong reputation for musicality; her court musicians, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, even suggested that music was indispensable to the state. But what roles did music play in Elizabethan court politics? How did a musical image assist the Queen in projecting her royal authority? What influence did her private performances have on her courtships, diplomatic affairs, and relationships with courtiers? To what extent did Elizabeth control court music, or could others appropriate performances to enhance their own status and achieve their ambitions? Could noblemen, civic leaders, or even musicians take advantage of Elizabeth's love of music to present their complaints and petitions in song? This book unravels the connotations surrounding Elizabeth's musical image and traces the political roles of music at the Elizabethan court. It scrutinizes the most intimate performances within the Privy Chamber, analyses the masques and plays performed in the palaces, and explores the grandest musical pageantry of tournaments, civic entries, and royal progresses. This reveals how music served as a valuable means for both the tactful influencing of policies and patronage, and the construction of political identities and relationships. In the late Tudor period music was simultaneously a tool of authority for the monarch and an instrumentof persuasion for the nobility. Katherine Butler is a researcher and tutor at the University of Oxford.

Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages

A Critical Companion to Medieval Motets

Revisiting the Codex Buranus
  • Contents, Contexts, Compositions
  • Edited by Tristan E. Franklinos, Henry Hope
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    16 September 2020
    Print publication:
    19 June 2020
  • The Codex Buranus, compiled, in all likelihood, in South Tyrol in the first half of the thirteenth century, has fascinated modern scholars and performers ever since its rediscovery in 1803. Its diverse range of texts (some famously featuring in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and music gives testimony to the intensely vibrant, plurilingual, and multicultural milieu in which the Codex Buranus was compiled, but poses a challenge to modern users. Perhaps more so than many other medieval manuscripts, it is an artefact which demands, and benefits from, an interdisciplinary approach. The chapters here, from scholars in a variety of fields, enable the less well-known aspects of the Codex Buranus - textual, musical, and artistic - to receive greater scrutiny, and bring new perspectives to bear on the more thoroughly explored parts of the manuscript. Making accessible existing discourse and encouraging fresh debates on the codex, the essays advocate fresh modes of engagement with its contents, contexts, and composition. They also examine questions of its reception history and audience. TRISTAN E. FRANKLINOS is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. HENRY HOPE has taught at the universities of Oxford and Bern; his research centres on the musical aspects of Minnesang. Contributors: Gundela Bobeth, Charles E. Brewer, Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Albrecht Classen, Johann Drumbl, Tristan E. Franklinos, Peter Godman, Henry Hope, Racha Kirakosian, Heike Sigrid Lammers-Harlander, Jonathan Seelye Martin, Micha

The Segovia Manuscript
  • A European Musical Repertory in Spain, c.1500
  • Volume 20
  • Edited by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Cristina Urchueguía
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    29 March 2020
    Print publication:
    15 November 2019
  • The Segovia Manuscript (Cathedral of Segovia, Archivo Capitular) has puzzled musicologists ever since its rediscovery at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is unique: no other manuscript of the period transmits a comparable blend of late fifteenth-century music, consisting of 204 sacred works and vernacular pieces in Flemish, French, Italian, and Spanish. An important group of pedagogical pieces by French and Flemish composers may preserve transcriptions of instrumental improvisation. This summary might suggest a messy collection, but on the contrary the manuscript is arranged with care, copied by one proficient scribe (except perhaps for the Spanish texts), who obviously followed a predetermined master plan. But which plan, who designed it, and why was the person responsible so interested in this combination?The essays here aim to treat every dimension of this fascinating source. New discoveries help date the manuscript and explain how it came to Segovia; particular attention is paid to the main scribe, now determined to be Flemish, and his relation with northern composers and repertory, above all that of Jacob Obrecht, Alexander Agricola, and Henricus Isaac; and the vexed question of the conflicting attributions is considered afresh and found to affect only a few of the fascicles. The contributors also look at questions of ownership and function.

Music, Myth and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
  • Volume 19
  • Edited by Katherine Butler, Samantha Bassler
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2019
    Print publication:
    15 March 2019
  • Myths and stories offer a window onto medieval and early modern musical culture. Far from merely offering material for musical settings, authoritative tales from classical mythology, ancient history and the Bible were treated as foundations for musical knowledge. Such myths were cited in support of arguments about the uses, effects, morality, and preferred styles of music in sources as diverse as theoretical treatises, defences or critiques of music, art, sermons, educational literature, and books of moral conduct. Newly written literary stories too were believed capable of moral instruction and influence, and were a medium through which ideas about music could be both explored and transmitted. How authors interpreted and weaved together these traditional stories, or created their own, reveals much about changing attitudes across the period. Looking beyond the well-known figure of Orpheus, this collection explores the myriad stories that shaped not only musical thought, but also its styles, techniques, and practices. It shows that music itself performed and created knowledge in ways parallels to myth, and worked in tandem with old and new tales to construct social, political, and philosophical views. This relationship was not static, however; as the Enlightenment dawned, the once authoritative gods became comic characters and myth became a medium for ridicule. Overall, it provides a foundation for exploring myth and story throughout medieval and early modern culture, and facilitating further study into the Enlightenment and beyond. Contributors: Jamie Apgar, Katie Bank, Samantha Bassler, Katherine Butler, Elina G. Hamilton, Sigrid Harris, Ljubica Ilic, Erica Levenson, John MacInnis, Patrick McMahon, Aurora Faye Martinez, Jacomien Prins, Tim Shephard, Jason Stoessel, Férdia J. Stone-Davis, Amanda Eubanks Winkler.

Piety and Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Holland
  • The Choirbooks of St Peter's Church, Leiden
  • Volume 18
  • Eric Jas
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    17 October 2019
    Print publication:
    16 November 2018
  • Study of musical manuscripts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, opening a window on piety, liturgy and musical life in late medieval society.

The Montpellier Codex
  • The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies
  • Volume 16
  • Edited by Catherine A. Bradley, Karen Desmond
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    04 July 2019
    Print publication:
    16 February 2018
  • The final section of the Montpellier Codex analysed in full for the first time, with major implications for late-medieval music.

Medieval Liturgical Chant and Patristic Exegesis
  • Words and Music in the Second-Mode Tracts
  • Emma Hornby
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    11 May 2017
    Print publication:
    16 July 2009
  • How do text and melody relate in western liturgical chant? Is the music simply an abstract vehicle for the text, or does it articulate textual structure and meaning? These questions are addressed here through a case study of the second-mode tracts, lengthy and complex solo chants for Lent, which were created in the papal choir of Rome before the mid-eighth century. These partially formulaic chants function as exegesis, with non-syntactical text divisions and emphatic musical phrases promoting certain directions of inner meditation in both performers and listeners. Dr Hornby compares the four second-mode tracts representing the core repertory to related ninth-century Frankish chants, showing that their structural and aesthetic principles are neither Frankish nor a function of their notation in the earliest extant manuscripts, but are instead a well-remembered written reflection of a long oral tradition, stemming from Rome.

    Dr EMMA HORNBY teaches in the Department of Music at the University of Bristol.

Verse and Voice in Byrd's Song Collections of 1588 and 1589
  • Jeremy L. Smith
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 July 2016
    Print publication:
    21 January 2016
  • As he grappled with the challenges of composing for various instrumental and vocal ensembles, William Byrd (c. 1540-1623), England's premier Renaissance composer, devoted considerable attention to thepoetry and prose of his native language, producing such treasured masterpieces as the hauntingly beautiful "Lulla lullaby"; the infectiously comedic "Though Amarillis dance in green"; and two extraordinarily dramatic Easter anthems. This book, the first full-length study specifically devoted to Byrd's English-texted music, provides a close reading of all of the works he published in the late 1580s, constituting nearly half of his total song output. It delves into the musical, political, literary, and, specifically, the sequential qualities of Byrd's 1588 and 1589 published collectionsas a whole, revealing, explaining, and interpreting an overall grand narrative, while remaining fully attentive to the particularities of each individual piece. Often deemed "unliterary" and generallyconsidered political only in his approach to Latin texts, which were often of special interest to his fellow Catholics, Byrd was not only an inspired composer who had mastered the challenges of his nation's burgeoning verse, but also one who used his voice in song to foster a more inclusive polity in a time of religious strife.

    Jeremy L. Smith is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Music and Meaning in Old Hispanic Lenten Chants
  • Psalmi, Threni and the Easter Vigil Canticles
  • Emma Hornby, Rebecca Maloy
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    15 August 2013
  • Medieval Iberian liturgical practice was independent of the Roman liturgy. As such, its sources preserve an unfamiliar and fascinating devotional journey through the liturgical year. However, although Old Hispanic liturgical chant has long been considered one of the most important medieval chant traditions, what musical notation to survive shows only where the melodies rise and fall, not precise intervals or pitches. This lack of pitch-readable notation has prevented scholars from fully engaging with the surviving sources - a gap which this book aims to fill, via a new methodology for analysing the melodies and the relationship between melody and text. Focussing on three genres of chant sung during the Old Hispanic Lent (the threni, psalmi, and Easter Vigil canticles), the book takes a holistic view of the texts and melodies, setting them in the context of their liturgical and intellectual surroundings, and, for the Easter Vigil, exploring the relationship between different Old Hispanic traditions and other western liturgies. It concludes that the theologically purposeful text selections combine with carefully shaped melodies to guide the devotional practice of their hearers. Emma Hornby is Senior Lecturer in Music, University of Bristol; Rebecca Maloy is Associate Professor of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Music and Ceremony at the Court of Charles V
  • The Capilla Flamenca and the Art of Political Promotion
  • Mary Tiffany Ferer
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 October 2013
    Print publication:
    15 March 2012
  • The presentation of Charles V as universal monarch, defender of the faith, magnanimous peacemaker, and reborn Roman Emperor became the mission of artists, poets, and chroniclers, who shaped contemporary perceptions of him and engaged in his political promotion. Music was equally essential to the making of his image, as this book shows. It reconstructs musical life at his court, by examining the compositions which emanated from it, the ordinances prescribing its rituals and ceremonies, and his prestigious chapel, which reflected his power and influence. A major contribution, offering new documentary material and bringing together the widely dispersed information on the music composed to mark the major events of Charles's life. It offers.a very useful insight into music as one of many elements that served to convey the notion of the emperor-monarch in the Renaissance. TESS KNIGHTON. Mary Ferer is Associate Professor at the College of Creative Arts, West Virginia University.