Early English Composers and the Credo: Emphasis as Interpretation in Sixteenth-Century Music

This book develops an innovative approach for understanding the relationship between music and words in the works of five major composers of the English Renaissance: John Taverner, Christopher Tye, John Sheppard, Thomas Tallis, and William Byrd. Focusing on these composers’ settings of the Latin Credo, the author shows how musical and linguistic emphasis can be used to understand the composers’ theological interpretations of the text. By combining markedness theory with style analysis, this...