| Contents |
Germany and instrumental music in the late middle ages. Germany, c. 1350-1520: the background and setting of patronage ; Instruments and ensembles, loud and soft, c. 1350-1520 ; The sources: an overview -- German soft music: the instruments and ensembles. The organs ; Stringed keyboard instruments: clavichord, virginal and harpsichord ; The lute and quintern ; Bowed stringed instruments ; Other soft instruments: harp, recorder, psaltery, hurdy-gurdy ; Soft instruments in ensembles -- German loud music: the instruments and ensembles. The trumpets ; Peifen: the shawms, the central instruments of the medieval wind ensemble ; Bagpipes ; The trombone and the slide trumpet ; The slide trumpet and shawm ensembles ; Wind players and stringed instruments ; Medieval wind performers -- The patrons: music in German courts. The Imperial household, c. 1400 and c. 1450 ; Maximilian I as King of the Romans: music c. 1480/90 ; The Emperor's music, c. 1515 ; The princes of the Empire, c. 1400 ; The princes of the Empire, c. 1450 ; The princes of the Empire, c. 1500 ; The lesser nobility ; The 'courts' of the German bishops -- The patrons: music in German cities. The initiation of civic musical ensembles, 1350-1400 ; The maturation of urban musical establishments, 1400-50 ; German urban ensembles at their zenith, 1450-1520 ; The organ and civic patronage ; Court and civic patronage: cause and effect -- The sources and the written repertory of instrumental polyphony. German melodies: the sources and written instrumental monophony ; The sources, keyboard and ensemble ; 'Instrumental' music in the written repertory ; The written repertory and instrumental practices of keyboard players and soft minstrels ; The written repertory and instrumental practices of ensemble minstrels -- Approaches to instrumental performance practice: models of extemporaneous techniques. Theory, improvisation and instrumental performance ; The theory of improvised counterpoint: the first steps, simple counterpoint in two parts ; Simple counterpoint in three parts (two free parts on a cantus firmus) ; Simple counterpoint: parallel techniques ; Divisions in ensemble and solo performance ; Florid counterpoint. |
| Abstract |
This study, which surveys German instrumental traditions from about 1350 to 1520, falls into three parts. The opening chapters treat the medieval classification of instrumental music into two groups of loud and soft, and discuss the individual instruments and the ensembles in both categories. Subsequent chapters provide an overview of the major patronage institutions of medieval Germany, which for instrumental music were the numerous cities and courts of the region. The concluding part of the book focuses on the sources and the performance practices of medieval instrumentalists. What emerges is a reconstructed view of a musical life which was extraordinary in its own time and which laid the foundations of an artistic culture that later produced such giants as Schütz, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Indeed, modern resonances of this culture may still be heard in the splendid performances of the orchestras of Berlin, Cologne and Munich. |
