The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideology, Performance

by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson

Overview

Scholars and performers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries attempted to revive music that could evoke the Middle Ages. They invented new sounds and new ways of understanding medieval music. This is the fascinating story of the musicians and the societies in which they worked to remake a lost musical world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521818704
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2002
Series:	Musical Performance and Reception
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson is a writer and broadcaster on medieval music. He is Reader in Historical Musicology at King's College, London and his previous books include studies and editions of the fourteenth-century poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The invention of the voices-and-instruments hypothesis; 2. The re-invention of the a cappella hypothesis; 3. Hearing medieval harmonies; 4. Evidence, interpretation, power and persuasion; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a good read for anyone who is interested in medieval music or has an interest in how history, particularly music history, is written and developed." Music Educators Journal

"Part histoiography and part reception history, this meticulously researched volume reminds readers that no attempt to re-create the music of the past is likely to avoid doing sos through perspectives that are decidedly embedded in the present. Highly recommended." Choice

"The Modern Invention of Medieval Music is n important book. It raises fundamental questions about the relation among music, performance, and historical writing. It belongs on the reading lists of every graduate course in musicological methods, and by extension in the hands of any musicologist interested in how and (more importantly) why we write about music. I cannot praise this book enough for its imagination, daring and élan. It is a book that hits us where we live." Current Musicology, Thomas Irvine

From the Publisher