Music History: Books on Ancient to Baroque

An guide to understanding medieval music to be used as a text for the university undergraduate, graduate students in music and interdisciplinary medieval studies, and for the professional musicologist and medievalist.

It explores the impact of the art of memory on the composition and transmission of medieval music.

This book seeks to understand the music of the later Middle Ages in a fuller perspective, moving beyond the traditional focus on the creative work of composers in isolation to consider the participation of performers and listeners in music-making.

The author demonstrates how every major genre of the period, from opera to religious music to instrumental pieces based on dances, was part of this striving for heightened passions by performers and listeners. While she analyzes the social and historical reasons for the high value placed on expressive intensity in both secular and sacred music, and she also links desire and pleasure to the many technical innovations of the period.

Artistic and musical creativity thrived in the Venetian Republic between the early 16th century and the close of the 18th century. Art and Music in Venice brings Venice’s golden age to life through stunning images of paintings, drawings, prints, manuscripts, textbooks, illuminated choir books, musical scores and instruments, and period costumes.

From the medieval chansonniers to contemporary rap renditions, this book traces the changing interpretation of troubadour and trouvère music, a repertoire of songs which have successfully maintained public interest for eight centuries.