David Fallows - Böcker

In a study as deep as it is broad, Art Song of the Burgundian Era, 1415-1480 presents a rich and thorough survey of art song in the heart of the fifteenth century, during a 65-year period characterized by the rise of French repertory and the arrival of a musical style that crossed linguistic and national lines. Across the five sections of the book, David Fallows defines and describes in detail all of the elements that characterize this remarkable repertory. The first major section on Musical Techniques defines the voicings, textures, texts and structures that make up the repertoire. Following this, Historical Background defines the major forces in the music's development, and its key composers, poets, performers, and themes. Survival looks at the evidence of the music and its practice through sources and key citations of its music and poetic text. Forms lays out the key forms of this repertoire--the ballade, rondeau, and virelai--as well as less common song forms. The book concludes with a section on the language repertories that define art song in this period. An important work of history in its own right, this volume also serves as a guide to the repertory included in Fallows's Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415-1480 (OUP 1999).

A detailed inventory of polyphonic songs from 1415-1480 in any European language, with language subdivisions: English, French, German (including Flemish), Italian, Latin, Spanish, and textless (this last with musical incipits). Each entry includes full details of all sources, facsimiles, modern editions, paraphrases, citations, etc. The aim is to account for everything that survives or is confidently known to have existed. There are approximately 2,000 main entries, derived from some 200 central sources, with another 200 sources that contain only a few pieces, poetic texts, or otherwise related material. The volume also includes brief descriptions of all the main sources as well as biographical entries for all the composers and poets (keyed to the main catalogue) and an extensive bibliography.

The years since the early music revival gathered momentum in the 1960s and 70s have witnessed many new developments in the field of pre-Baroque music: some revelatory recordings and concert performances have opened our ears to a new range of possible sound worlds for music of this period, and scholars have made discoveries that in many ways challenge the accepted views about this until recently neglected end of the repertory. Much pre-1600 music, the more so the further we go back in time, sound not only unfamiliar but also strange to modern ears accustomed to the harmonies and rhythms that later came to dominate the Western musical tradition. How to account for this strangeness and how to weave it into our own musical experience are questions that confront us whenever we attempt to draw nearer to the music: its beauty is readily appreciated, but its meaning is often elusive. David Fallows and Tess Knighton, scholars and critics in the field of medieval and Renaissance music, invited a number of international researchers and performers to contribute short essays on some of the most intriguing aspects of the subject. The aim was not so much a comprehensive reference book, although the Glossary gives brief definitions of terms and composer biographies, nor a strictly chronological survey, though the Chronology provides an overview of the main developments of the period, for these basic tools are already available. Rather, the Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, spanning over eight centuries of music-making, hopes to broaden and stimulate the reader's interest by discussing issues of live debate such as the original context for the music, how it was composed, and the ways in which it was performed. What was it like to be a composer in the Middle Ages? Can we appreciate the difference between a good and a bad piece of medieval polyphony? Why did certain musical genres flourish and others fall into disuse? What can surviving documents or pictures or the musical manuscripts themselves tell us about how the music was performed, listened to, and appreciated during the period? The essays consider a wide range of the kind of evidence from which scholars and performers have to draw their conclusions and make the decisions that affect the ways in which the music can be brought back to life today.

This volume makes available, in a facsimile edition, one of the most important musical manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. Copied probably in Venice around 1430, the Oxford manuscript contains the most comprehensive surviving collection of secular songs of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Of the 326 pieces, 216 are not found in any other source. Including works by Guillaume Dufay, Binchois and nearly all other leading composers of their generation, it is central to an understanding of 15th-century song traditions. Because of the copyist's clear and distinctive hand, it is also significant for studies of late medieval musical notation. David Fallows's introduction includes a history of the manuscript, analysis of its preparation and survey of its choice of repertory, as well as a full inventory of the music and alphabetical indexes by title and composer. The original-size facsimile includes beta-radiographs of all watermarks, as well as ultraviolet photos that show the copyist's changes and revisions.This volume is the first edition in a new series called "Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music in Facsimile", edited by Margaret Bent and John Nadas and published by the University of Chicago Press. This series will include high-quality reproductions of some of the most important and frequently studied European music manuscripts of the late 13th to early 15th centuries. Each facsimile edition will include a detailed critical introduction and a complete inventory by an acknowledged expert in the field.

As a distinctive and attractive musical repertory, the hundred-odd English carols of the fifteenth century have always had a ready audience. But some of the key viewpoints about them date back to the late 1920s, when Richard L. Greene first defined the poetic form; and little has been published about them since the burst of activity around 1950, when a new manuscript was found and when John Stevens published his still definitive edition of all the music, both giving rise to substantial publications by major scholars in both music and literature. This book offers a new survey of the repertory with a firmer focus on the form and its history. Fresh examination of the manuscripts and of the styles of the music they contain leads to new proposals about their dates, origins and purposes. Placing them in the context of the massive growth of scholarly research on other fifteenth-century music over the past fifty years gives rise to several fresh angles on the music.

The essays in this volume are concerned with song repertories and performance practice in 15th-century Europe. The first group of studies arises from the author's long-term fascination with the widely dispersed traces of English song and , in particular, with the most successful song by any English composer, O rosa bella. This leads to a set of enquiries into the distribution and international currents of the song repertory in Italy and Spain. The essays in the final section, taken together, represent an extended discussion of the problems of performance, both of voice and instrument, what they performed and how.

This second selection of essays by David Fallows draws the focus towards individual composers of the 'long' fifteenth century and what we can learn about their songs. In twenty-one essays on the secular works of composers from Ciconia and Oswald von Wolkenstein via Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and Regis to Josquin, Henry VIII and Petrus Alamire, one repeated theme is how a consideration of the songs can help the way to a broader understanding of a composer's output. Since there are more song sources and more individual pieces now available for study, there are more handles for dating, for geographical location and for social alignment. Another theme concerns the various different ways in which particular songs have their impact on the next generations. Yet another concerns the authorshop of poems that were set to music by Binchois and Ciconia in particular. A group of essays on Josquin were parerga to the author's edition of his four-voice secular music for the New Josquin Edition (2005) and to his monograph on the composer (2009).

This second selection of essays by David Fallows draws the focus towards individual composers of the 'long' fifteenth century and what we can learn about their songs. In twenty-one essays on the secular works of composers from Ciconia and Oswald von Wolkenstein via Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and Regis to Josquin, Henry VIII and Petrus Alamire, one repeated theme is how a consideration of the songs can help the way to a broader understanding of a composer's output. Since there are more song sources and more individual pieces now available for study, there are more handles for dating, for geographical location and for social alignment. Another theme concerns the various different ways in which particular songs have their impact on the next generations. Yet another concerns the authorshop of poems that were set to music by Binchois and Ciconia in particular. A group of essays on Josquin were parerga to the author's edition of his four-voice secular music for the New Josquin Edition (2005) and to his monograph on the composer (2009).