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The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell provides a comprehensive and authoritative review of current research into Purcell and the environment of Restoration music, with contributions from leading experts in the field. Seen from the perspective of modern, interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, the companion allows the reader to develop a rounded view of the environment in which Purcell lived, the people with whom he worked, the social conditions that influenced his activities, and the ways in which the modern perception of him has been affected by reception of his music after his death. In this sense the contributions do not privilege the individual over the environment: rather...
Thus, over the course of the seventeenth century, there occurred a complete transformation in almost every aspect of theory: by the 1720s, many of the principles being described bore close relation to those still used today. Nowhere was this metamorphosis clearer than in England where, because of a traditional emphasis on practicality, there was much more willingness to accept and encourage new theoretical ideas than on the continent.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell provides a comprehensive and authoritative review of current research into Purcell and the environment of Restoration music, with contributions from leading experts in the field. Seen from the perspective of modern, interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, the companion allows the reader to develop a rounded view of the environment in which Purcell lived, the people with whom he worked, the social conditions that influenced his activities, and the ways in which the modern perception of him has been affected by reception of his music after his death. In this sense the contributions do not privilege the individual over the environment: rather...
The first genuinely interdisciplinary study of creativity in early modern England In the seventeenth century, the concept of creativity was far removed from most of the fundamental ideas about the creative act - notions of human imagination, inspiration, originality and genius - that developed in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries. Instead, in this period, students learned their crafts by copying and imitating past masters and did not consciously seek to break away from tradition. Most new material was made on the instructions of apatron and had to conform to external expectations; and basic tenets that we tend to take for granted-such as the primacy and individuality of the author-were ...
Few details are known about the life of Henry Purcell. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the most obvious documentary evidence of Purcell's career - the music manuscripts of his own hand and those copied by his colleagues. Robert Shay and Robert Thompson offer a richly illustrated study of Purcell's sources, examining in detail the physical features of the manuscripts as well as their musical content. Their survey sheds light on the chronology of composition and copying of Purcell's works and reassesses the place of extant autographs in his musical development. Major sources are fully catalogued, providing information about the context in which Purcell's music was collected and performed, and his handwriting is more closely examined than ever before. The book represents a significant reference tool for scholars, applying a forensic approach that greatly enriches our knowledge of the composer and the music of his time.
Musical Creativity in Restoration England is the first comprehensive investigation of approaches to creating music in late seventeenth-century England. Understanding creativity during this period is particularly challenging because many of our basic assumptions about composition - such as concepts of originality, inspiration and genius - were not yet fully developed. In adopting a new methodology that takes into account the historical contexts in which sources were produced, Rebecca Herissone challenges current assumptions about compositional processes and offers new interpretations of the relationships between notation, performance, improvisation and musical memory. She uncovers a creative culture that was predominantly communal, and reveals several distinct approaches to composition, determined not by individuals, but by the practical function of the music. Herissone's new and original interpretations pose a fundamental challenge to our preconceptions about what it meant to be a composer in the seventeenth century and raise broader questions about the interpretation of early modern notation.
Music criticism has played a fundamental and influential role throughout music history, with numerous composers such as Berlioz, Schumann, and Wagner, as well as many contemporary musicians, also maintaining careers as writers and critics. The Cambridge History of Music Criticism goes beyond these better-known accounts, reaching back to medieval times, expanding the geographical reach both within and beyond Europe, and including key issues such as women and criticism of recordings, as well as the story of criticism in jazz, popular music and world music. Drawing on a blend of established and talented young scholars, this is the first substantial historical survey of music criticism and critics, bringing unprecedented scope to a rapidly expanding area of musicological research. An indispensable point of reference, The Cambridge History of Music Criticism provides a broad historical overview of the field while also addressing specific issues and events.
The tercentenary of Henry Purcell's death fell in 1995, and this 1995 volume of specially commissioned essays was collected to celebrate Purcell's music in his tercentenary year. The essays are representative of the best research and deal mainly with the autograph manuscripts, Purcell's compositional technique, the relationship between Purcell and his teacher John Blow, a reassessment of Purcell court odes, performance practice and wordsetting, and eighteenth-century reception history, particularly regarding King Arthur. The volume is well illustrated with music examples and photographs of important manuscripts. It also analyses Purcell's compositional techniques through detailed study of his manuscripts and reports on the discovery of two important autograph manuscripts. The book opens with an assessment of Purcell's illusive personality.
In this important study, Margaret Seares places Johannes Mattheson’s Pièces de clavecin (1714) in the context of his work as a public intellectual who encouraged German musicians and their musical public to embrace a universalism of style and expression derived from contemporary currents in music of the leading European nations. Seares’s understanding of Mattheson’s ideas is based on a thorough study of his non-musical writings, especially Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre of 1713, the third part of which is offered here in English translation for the first time.
Both from the Ears and Mind offers a bold new understanding of the intellectual and cultural position of music in Tudor and Stuart England. Linda Phyllis Austern brings to life the kinds of educated writings and debates that surrounded musical performance, and the remarkable ways in which English people understood music to inform other endeavors, from astrology and self-care to divinity and poetics. Music was considered both art and science, and discussions of music and musical terminology provided points of contact between otherwise discrete fields of human learning. This book demonstrates how knowledge of music permitted individuals to both reveal and conceal membership in specific social, intellectual, and ideological communities. Attending to materials that go beyond music’s conventional limits, these chapters probe the role of music in commonplace books, health-maintenance and marriage manuals, rhetorical and theological treatises, and mathematical dictionaries. Ultimately, Austern illustrates how music was an indispensable frame of reference that became central to the fabric of life during a time of tremendous intellectual, social, and technological change.