Music in the Renaissance
This book is a comprehensive account of the music produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The music of the period covered in this volume exhibited a brilliance and richness fully equal to the parallel achievements of Renaissance literature and art. The author deals with the varied and complex strands of musical development through these years in a masterly way. He describes how a dominant new music style arose in northern France with Dufay, how it was developed in that region and in the Low Countries by such masters as Ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, Gombert, and Lassus, and how it was adopted and adapted by the Italians to yield the brilliant productions of the madrigalists and the sacred masterpieces of Palestrina. He then shows how this style was diffused throughout Europe - in Spain, Germany, Eastern Europe and Britain. He discusses separately the character of the music produced in country after country, and its expression in different forms: sacred and secular vocal polyphony, music for the organ, lute and viol, the Spanish keyboard music, the German meistersinger, the Elizabethan madrigal, the works for the clavecin and the virginal. Throughout this book the emphasis is on the analysis of musical styles, but reference is frequently made to historical events, the influence of the great Renaissance courts, and the individualities of the prominent figures. This book, the most complete one-volume study of Renaissance music in the English language, is here brought up to date. The author has incorporated the essential new material that has appeared during recent years, revising both the text and bibliographical references throughout
Print Book, English, ©1959
Norton, New York, ©1959