| Contents |
A prospect of the sea: the Roman circuit -- The god of the household and his music -- Echoes of Christian music at community meals and elsewhere -- Psaltes and lector: towards a ministry of singing -- Lectors in Rome and elsewhere -- The psalmody of urban house-ascetics -- Deacons as readers and psalmists in the fourth and fifth centuries -- A new political order, and two singers from Gaul -- Schooling to silence the layman's voice -- Ministers of music in the sixth-century kingdoms: deacons and cantors -- Schooling singers in the cathedrals: 450-650 -- Schooling singers in Rome -- Steering in distant waters by the Roman lighthouse -- Pippin and his singers I: thrones, dominations, powers -- Pippin and his singers II: music for a Frankish-Roman imperium -- Singers of the ninth century: Metz and the palatine chapel -- Singers, sounds and symbols -- Composing for singers 900-1100 I: scholars in the service of saints -- Composing for singers 900-1100 II: courtliness and other modes -- 'In our time, of all men, singers are the most foolish': Guido of Arezzo and the invention of the stave -- Bringing singers to book: Rudolf of Sint Truiden and Guido's invention -- Singers in the making of Europe. |
| Abstract |
Beginning in the time of the New Testament, when Christians began to develop an art of ritual singing with an African and Asian background, the author traces the history of music in Europe through the development of Gregorian chant--a music that has profoundly influenced the way Westerners hear--to the invention of the musical staff, regarded as the fundamental technology of Western music. The author places the history of the singers who performed this music against the social, political and economic life of a Western Europe slowly being remade after the collapse of Roman power. |
| Local note | Little-354537--305131033893$ |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 582-646) and indexes. |
| LCCN | 2009035843 |
| ISBN | 9780300112573 (cl : alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 0300112572 |
