Ross W. Duffin - Böcker

English comedy from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century abounds in song lyrics, but most of the original tunes were thought to have been lost--until now. By deducing that playwrights borrowed melodies from songs they already knew, Ross W. Duffin has used the existing English repertory of songs, both popular and composed, to reconstruct hundreds of songs from more than a hundred plays and other stage entertainments. Thanks to Duffin's incredible breakthrough, these plays have been rendered performable with period music for the first time in five hundred years. Some Other Note not only brings these songs back from the dead, but tells a thrilling tale of the investigations that unraveled these centuries-old mysteries.

The 1613 marriage of Princess Elizabeth of England to Count Palatine was one of the most spectacular events of King James's court, lavishly celebrated with banquets, tournaments, fireworks, and most notably, with masques-extravagant entertainments with elaborate sets, costumes, dancing, and songs. Although the masque lyrics were all printed with the dialogue in 1613, music survives for only one song. In Unmasked, author Ross W. Duffin reconstructs music for the three wedding masques of Thomas Campion, George Chapman, and Francis Beaumont, revealing through close reading that the songs are partsongs sung by an ensemble, rather than an accompanied solo singer. His reconstruction enables complete performance of the masques for the first time in four centuries.Duffin's study also presents a fourth masque which survives from the Palatine wedding but was not published or performed in England at the time. Celebrating the joining of the two Protestant powers and urging the Protestant conversion of the rest of the world, it is also in French, with lyrics for singing, and dances called for at several points. The songs have been reconstructed using music from the French metrical psalm repertoire, and the dances from a collection of French dances published in Germany just months before the wedding.All four of the Palatine wedding masques appear in the book with complete dialogue and descriptions, along with reconstructed songs and dances, for the first time making them fully available for study and performance. In Unmasked, students, scholars, and renaissance readers of all stripes will find rich new material to use in their own research and teaching and a new perspective on these important court entertainments.

Sir Philip Sidney was one of Elizabethan England's greatest poets, producing an enormous body of poetry, voluminous letters, and his seminal treatise, The Defence of Poesie. He also loved music, describing "words set in delightfull proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for the well enchanting skill of Musicke." Most notably, his pastoral romance, Arcadia, is filled with poems described as songs, with descriptions of characters singing, sometimes to a particular instrument, and to tunes that are variously "joyful," "doleful," "lamentable," or "ravishing."Aside from a few specific tune titles provided by Sidney, however, most of these "songs" remain without known music. Enchanting Arcadia fills this void, setting almost 100 of the Arcadia's songs to period music. Using his extensive knowledge of early modern English song, Ross W. Duffin has carefully matched musical models to Sidney's poems using works by composers such as William Byrd, John Dowland, Thomas Morley, Thomas Campion, Robert Jones, and William Corkine, all of whom had some connection to Sidney or his family.Enchanting Arcadia aims to realize at long last the musical enchantment of Sidney's poems, allowing modern readers to experience them not only as poems to be read silently or aloud but also as songs to be sung and enjoyed.

Sir Philip Sidney was one of Elizabethan England's greatest poets, producing an enormous body of poetry, voluminous letters, and his seminal treatise, The Defence of Poesie. He also loved music, describing "words set in delightfull proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for the well enchanting skill of Musicke." Most notably, his pastoral romance, Arcadia, is filled with poems described as songs, with descriptions of characters singing, sometimes to a particular instrument, and to tunes that are variously "joyful," "doleful," "lamentable," or "ravishing."Aside from a few specific tune titles provided by Sidney, however, most of these "songs" remain without known music. Enchanting Arcadia fills this void, setting almost 100 of the Arcadia's songs to period music. Using his extensive knowledge of early modern English song, Ross W. Duffin has carefully matched musical models to Sidney's poems using works by composers such as William Byrd, John Dowland, Thomas Morley, Thomas Campion, Robert Jones, and William Corkine, all of whom had some connection to Sidney or his family.Enchanting Arcadia aims to realize at long last the musical enchantment of Sidney's poems, allowing modern readers to experience them not only as poems to be read silently or aloud but also as songs to be sung and enjoyed.

This is an excellent reference volume including essays on all aspects of medieval music performance. With forty essays written by experts in the field on everything from repertoire, voices and instruments to basic theory, all aspects of recreation are treated. This guide has already proven indispensable to performers and scholars of medieval music. Chapters on vocal and choral music; various types of ensembles; profiles of specific instruments; instrumentation; performance practice issues; theory; dance; regional profiles of Renaissance music, and guidelines for directors are all treated. It is a comprehensive and authoritative reference by leading performers in the field for a variety of enthusiasts.

Thomas Ravenscroft is best-known as a composer of rounds owing to his three published collections: Pammelia and Deuteromelia (both 1609), and Melismata (1611), in addition to his harmonizations of the Whole Booke of Psalmes (1621) and his original sacred works. A theorist as well as a composer and editor, Ravenscroft wrote two treatises on music theory: the well-known A Briefe Discourse (1614), and 'A Treatise of Practicall Musicke' (c.1607), which remains in manuscript. This is the first book to bring together both theoretical works by this important Jacobean musician and to provide critical studies and transcriptions of these treatises. A Briefe Discourse furthermore introduces an anthology of music by Ravenscroft, John Bennet, and Ravenscroft's mentor, Edward Pearce, illustrating some of the precepts in the treatise. The critical discussion provided by Duffin will help explain Ravenscroft's complicated consideration of mensuration, in particular.

Winner of the Claude V. Palisca Award of the American Musicological SocietyShakespeare lovers have long lamented that so few songs in his plays survive with original music; of about sixty song lyrics, only a handful have come down to us with musical settings. For over 150 years, scholars have aspired—without success—to fill that gap. In Shakespeare's Songbook, Ross W. Duffin does just that.Eight years in the making, Shakespeare's Songbook is a meticulously researched collection of 155 songs—ballads and narratives, drinking songs, love songs, and rounds—that appear in, are quoted in, or alluded to in Shakespeare's plays. Drawing substantially on the unmatched resources of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Duffin brings complete lyrics (many newly recovered) and music notation together for the first time, and in the process sheds new light on Shakespeare's dramatic art. With performances by leading early-music singers and instrumentalists, the accompanying audio CD brings the songbook to life. Shakespeare's Songbook is the perfect gift for lovers of Shakespeare and an invaluable reference for singers, actors, directors, and scholars.

What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament"—the equal division of the octave into twelve notes that has become our standard tuning method? Thanks to How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony, "we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor 'black'" (Wall Street Journal).In this "comprehensive plea for more variety in tuning methods" (Kirkus Reviews), Ross W. Duffin presents "a serious and well-argued case" (Goldberg Magazine) that "should make any contemporary musician think differently about tuning" (Saturday Guardian).