| Contents |
Beginnings. Music and the cultures of the Renaissance. The craft of composition: two views ; Changing styles and contexts ; Music and the Renaissance: some problems ; Humanism in thought, word, and belief ; Music and the spirit of religious reform ; Music and the cultures of print ; Music and the Renaissance gentleman ; A dialogue with the past -- Learning to be a musician. A plain and easy introduction ; The duet as testing ground ; Learning about modes ; The lost art of unwritten counterpoint ; Teaching menthods ; Sixteenth-century trends -- Before 1500. Music at court and a songbook for Beatrice ; The Chapelle, Chambre, and Ecurie ; A wedding at Savoy ; Musical patronage as Aristotle's "Magnificence" ; Tinctoris's "new art" ; Music in motion ; A songbook for a princess ; Performing chansons at court -- Piety, devotion, and ceremony. Music in church ; Du Fay and the new Marian service for Cambrai ; Polyphony at the margins of liturgy ; A memorial mass by Obrecht ; Dunstable, the song of songs, and musical devotion ; The sound of sacred processions ; Music for corpus Christi processions ; A ceremonial carol ; Music for ceremonies of state ; Du Fay's motet for Pope and Emperor -- Structures and symbols in cantus firmus and canon. Cantus firmus and the ceremonial motet ; the Caput Masses ; The L'home arme tradition ; Ockeghem's musical puzzles ; Old structures, new listeners -- Around 1500. Number, medicine, and magic. Music, number, proportion ; Theory versus practice ; Music and medicine ; Dowland, Du Fay, and the sounds of melancholia ; Music and neoplatonic magic ; Ficino and the cosmic dimension -- Music and the ideal courtier. Castiglione's Book of the courtier ; Federico de Montefeltro: The ideal prince ; The courtier and the theater of appearances ; Songs fit for a courtier ; Serafino Aquilano, singer and poet ; Marchetto Cara and the Frottola ; A Frottola in detail: trombocino's Ostinato vo' seguire ; Music, the court lady, and the courtesan ; Fortunes of the courtier aesthetic -- Josquin de Prez and the "perfect art". Perfection in practice: Josquin's Ave Maria...virgo serena ; Renaissance images of Josquin des Prez ; Isaac's competing claim ; The Josquin "brand" ; Josquin, Petrucci, and music printing ; By Josquin or not? ; Mille regrets and the problem of authorship ; Josquin des Prez or not? ; Josquin's pupils, real or imagined? ; Reconsidering Josquin's genius -- Scribes, printers, and owners. Handmade books ; Music in print ; Owners and collectors: princes, priests and bankers ; Composers, printers, and publics: who owned music? -- After 1500. Music and the literary imagination. Pierre Attaingnant's songbooks ; Madrigals and the art of pleasing variety ; In a lighter vein ; Madrigal parodies ; Luca Marenzio and the madrigal of the late sixteenth century ; Marenzio and the avant garde poets -- Music and the crisis of belief. Sacred sounds for a nation of divided faiths ; From the cantiones to Byrd's gradualia ; The reevaluation of catholic music ; Palestrina's missa nigra sum ; Lasso and counter-reformation munich ; Crossing confessional boundaries ; Protestant versus catholic in music ; Congregational hymns among protestants ; Luther and the "wondrous work of music" ; Vautrollier and the spiritual correction of secular songs -- The arts of improvisation, embellishment, and variation. The singing ladies of Ferrara ; Courtly improvisers, courtly audiences ; Marenzio's overdi selve: a madrigal for the concerto delle donne ; Learning the arts of embellishment from a papal singer ; Embellishment for everyone ; Borrowed melodies, "Italian tenors," and the art of instrumental variation ; Fantasia: playing from imagination ; Fabrizio Dentice's solo lute fantasias -- Empire, exploration, and encounter. Venice and the world ; Greeks and moors ; Jews and music, from italy to england ; The bassano family ; French and english protestants abroad ; The catholic mission in new spain ; Sacred music in the americas ; Matteo ricci's musical encounters in china ; A musical parliament of nations? -- Tradition and innovation around 1600. A madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi ; A motet by Carlo Gesualdo ; Claude le Jeune's dodecacorde: the modes of social harmony ; Last words -- Glossary. |
| Abstract |
Richard Freedman's "Music in the Renaissance" shows how music and other forms of expression were adapted to changing tastes and ideals in Renaissance courts and churches. Giving due weight to sacred, secular, and instrumental genres, Freedman invites readers to consider who made music, who sponsored and listened to it, who preserved and owned it, and what social and aesthetic purposes it served. While focusing on broad themes such as music and the literary imagination and the art of improvisation, he also describes Europeans' musical encounters with other cultures and places. The Western Music in Context series comprises six volumes of moderate length, each written in an engaging style by a recognized expert. Authoritative and current, the series examines music in the broadest senseas sounds notated, performed, and heardfocusing not only on composers and works, but also on broader social and intellectual currents. |
