The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music

The experience of music performance is always far more than the sum of its sounds, and evidence for playing and singing techniques is not only inscribed in music notation but can also be found in many other types of primary source materials. This volume of essays presents a cross-section of new research on performance issues in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The subject is approached from a broad perspective, drawing on areas such as dance history, art history, music iconography and performance traditions from beyond Western Europe. In doing so, the volume continues some of the many lines of inquiry pursued by its dedicatee, Timothy J. McGee, over a lifetime of scholarship devoted to practical questions of playing and singing early music. Expanding the bases of inquiry to include various social, political, historical or aesthetic backgrounds both broadens our knowledge of the issues pertinent to early music performance and informs our understanding of other cultural activities within which music played an important role. The book is divided into two parts: 'Viewing the Evidence' in which visually based information is used to address particular questions of music performance; and 'Reconsidering Contexts' in which diplomatic, commercial and cultural connections to specific repertories or compositions are considered in detail. This book will be of value not only to specialists in early music but to all scholars of the Middle Ages and Renaissance whose interests intersect with the visual, aural and social aspects of music performance.

Maureen Epp, Ph.D., has taught at the University of Toronto and at Conrad Grebel College, University of Waterloo. Her published research includes articles on French popular song and German vernacular religious song from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Brian E. Power is Associate Professor of Music at Brock University, Canada. He has published on manuscript transmission and performance-practice issues associated with polyphonic liturgical music of the fifteenth century, with a specific focus on the introit repertory in the Trent Codices.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Viewing the Evidence: A sight-reading vielle player from the 13th century, John Haines; The story of O: a variant in the Beckett Office, Andrew Hughes; Rubrics in Trent 93 and Trent 90: a performers guide?, Brian E. Power; The ghost of perfection: some thoughts on the Munich partbooks, Honey Meconi; Reading the signs: notation and performance in the French popular song repertory, Maureen Epp; Vincenzo Galilei's re-vision of Renaissance tuning: trading on nature and art, Leslie Korrick. Part II Reconsidering Contexts: Possible origins of the Lo dances and their performance implications, Randall Rosenfeld; Chamber musicians, singers and performance practices in the early 15th century, Keith Polk; A measure of moral virtue: women, dancing and public performance in 15th-century Italy, Jennifer Nevile; Irregular and asymmetric galliards: the case of Salamone Rossi, Barbara Sparti; Limitations of meaning: text and context in Monteverdi's Baci soavi e cari (1587), Robert Toft; Hooked on ecstasy: performance 'practice' and the reception of the music of Hildegard of Bingen, Jennifer Bain; Publications of Timothy J. McGee; Index.