Bonnie J. Blackburn - Böcker

'Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages' is an entirely new addition to the New Oxford History of Music series rather than a revision of the volume's predecessor published in 1960. It takes account not only of the developments in late-medieval music scholarship during the latter decades of the twentieth century, but also of the experience gained through significant changes in the performance practice of the late-medieval repertory witnessed during this period. All the chapters include areas of discussion whose coverage in the series hitherto has been either wholly lacking or, at best, marginal: Muslim and Jewish musical traditions of the Middle Ages, late-medieval office chant, medieval dance music, musical instruments in society, music in Central and Eastern Europe, music theory of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, music and early Renaissance humanism. The first chapter and the last three present the conceptualization of music in speculative theory, philosophy, compositional and didactic practice, and musical historiography. Four chapters, and part of the first, illustrate important musical repertories and genres as they were developed within diverse societies. The eight authors - all of them with a long-standing interest in their respective subjects - have created through their collaboration a blend of mature scholarship and original investigation. The volume's novelty of approach and content is complemented by a firm anchorage in the specialist literature and documentary source material. Today, no single view of 'the Middle Ages' can be acceptable to the musician or to the historian. The present volume, which addresses itself to both, provides solid information on formerly marginal themes, and advocates further exploration of the 'other' Middle Ages.

Between 1485 and 1492 Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was the recipient of a music treatise composed for him by “Florentius Musicus” (Florentius de Faxolis), who had served him in Naples and Rome. Now in Milan, the richly illuminated small parchment codex bears witness to the musical interests of the cardinal, himself an avid singer taught by Duke Ercole d’Este. Florentius, whose treatise, found in no other source, is edited here for the first time, evidently took the cardinal’s predilections into account, for the Book on Music is unusual for its emphasis on “the praises, power, utility, necessity, and effect of music”: he devotes far more space to citations from classical and medieval authors than is the norm, and his elevated style shows that he aspires to appear as a humanist and not merely a technician. Likewise, the production quality of the manuscript indicates the acceptance of music’s place within the high culture of the Quattrocento. The author’s unusual insights into the musical thinking of his day are discussed in the ample commentary. The editors, a Renaissance musicologist (Bonnie Blackburn) and a classical scholar (Leofranc Holford-Strevens), have combined their disciplines to pay close attention both to Florentius’ text and to his teachings.

The first articles here focus on Johannes Tinctoris, the prominent late 15th-century music theorist. They deal with the discovery of his lost pedagogical motet, and his treatise on counterpoint; this forms the basis of a wide-ranging investigation of contemporary practices of improvisation and composition (singing super librum and writing res facta), in which the question of ’successive’ and ’simultaneous’ composition is reconsidered. Tinctoris's sometimes sharp rebukes to famous composers are also investigated in the context of works by Ockeghem. Ottaviano Petrucci's first publication of music, the ’Odhecaton’ of 1501, is the subject of another three articles. These identify the editor of the work, and make new proposals on the provenance and editing of this repertory. The last article presents an edition of a treatise of ca. 1600 in the form of a letter from the virtuoso cornettist Luigi Zenobi to an unknown prince, which offers new insights on the change in performance practice at the end of the Renaissance.