Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music

by Tess Knighton, David Fallows

With contributions from a range of internationally known early music scholars and performers, Tess Knighton and David Fallows provide a lively new survey of music and culture in Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to 1600. Fifty essays comment on the social, historical, theoretical, and performance contexts of the music and musicians of the period to offer fresh perspectives on musical styles, research sources, and performance practices of the medieval and Renaissance periods.

Genres: Music

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays about the history, theory, and performance of medieval and renaissance music, written by scholars and performers. Most of the essays were quite good. One of the best essays was Rob Wigman's incredibly illuminating article on musica ficta. The only real low point of the collection was Ephraim Segerman's extremely dull section on tempo between 1500 and 1650. However, given the average length of each section, I often found that the essay was over just when I was really getting into the subject matter. Luckily, each essay included a brief but useful bibliography, making it easier to take a deeper look into the areas I found particularly interesting (early instruments, use of borrowed material, and the intricacies of mode).