Owens - Böcker

Composers at Work discusses a problem that has fascinated scholars for a long time: how did Renaissance composers write their complex vocal polyphony? Twentieth-century scholars are so accustomed to scoring music, carefully lining up the vertical simultaneities, and carefully aligning the bar lines in order to study and perform music, that the idea that a composer could create elaborate polyphony, even in eight parts, without the aid of a score, seems incomprehensible. How then did sixteenth-century composers write their music, and what evidence exists to document this compositional process?Using sketches and other documentary evidence, long a matter of intense study in later centuries, Professor Owens' study is the first full-length investigation of the topic in Renaissance music. It sets out the indispensable background to an inquiry and into the fundamental processes of Renaissance composition.

Birds show bewildering diversity in their life histories, mating systems and risk of extinction. Why do albatrosses delay reproduction for the first 12 years of their life while zebra finches breed in their first year ? Why are fairy-wrens so sexually promiscuous while swans show lifelong monogamy? Why are over a quarter of parrot species threatened with global extinction while woodpeckers and cuckoos remain secure? Some of these topics, such as delayed onset of breeding in seabirds, are classic problems in evolutionary ecology, while others have arisen in the last decade, such as genetic mating systems and extinction. Birds offer a unique opportunity for investigating these questions because they are exceptionally well-studied in the wild. By employing phylogenetic comparative methods and a database of up to 3,000 species, the authors identify the ecological and evolutionary basis of many of these intriguing questions. They also highlight remaining puzzles and identify a series of challenges for future investigation. This is the most comprehensive reappraisal of avian diversity since David Lack's classic "Ecological Adaptations for Breeding in Birds". It is also the most extensive application of modern comparative methods yet undertaken. This novel approach demonstrates how an evolutionary perspective can reveal the general ecological processes that underpin contemporary avian diversity on a global scale.