The theme of the essays in this volume is the identification of the resources which between c.1320 and 1642 the English church saw fit to provide for the performance of the music of its liturgy. Individual essays describe the music and the choirs of Canterbury and Lincoln Cathedrals, Winchester Cathedral Priory and the private chapel of Cardinal Wolsey, while the personnel of the chapels of Edward III, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt emerge from study of the texts of compositions of the 14th century. From the alignment of contemporary musical and archival sources there arises a web of conclusions relating to the size of ensemble, vocal scoring and sounding pitch envisaged by its composers for English church polyphony of the period c.1320-1559. These essays thus encompass the two most profound of the revolutions to which the music of the English church was subject at this period: the inauguration and widespread adoption of choral polyphony in the years c.1455-85 and the liturgical and doctrinal Reformation of 1547 to 1563.

These nine essays consider for the first time the day-to-day performing practice of English composers of choral music of the period 1440-1650.

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 study demonstrates that the composers used their musical skills to not only create beautiful music but also raise certain elements of the text to the foreground of perception and relegate others to supporting roles, inviting listeners to experience the familiar words of the liturgy in unique ways. Providing new insights into the changing musical and religious world of the sixteenth century, this book is relevant to anyone researching music or religion in early modern England, while offering a flexible and widely adaptable tool for the analysis of musical-textual relationships.

The Historical Dictionary of English Music seeks to identify and briefly annotate a wide range of subjects relating to English musical culture, largely from the early 15th century through 1958, dates that reflect the coalescence of an identifiable English style in the early Renaissance and the death of the iconic Ralph Vaughan Williams in the mid-20th century. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about English music.

Companion volume (v. 2) contains examples of the music, sources and critical notes.

Examinations of the culture - artistic, material, musical - of English monasteries in the six centuries between the Conquest and the Dissolution. The cultural remains of England's abbeys and priories have always attracted scholarly attention but too often they have been studied in isolation, appreciated only for their artistic, codicological or intellectual features and notfor the insights they offer into the patterns of life and thought - the underlying norms, values and mentalité - of the communities of men and women which made them. Indeed, the distinguished monastic historian David Knowles doubted there would ever be sufficient evidence to recover "the mentality of the ordinary cloister monk". These twelve essays challenge this view. They exploit newly catalogued and newly discovered evidence - manuscript books, wall paintings, and even the traces of original monastic music - to recover the cultural dynamics of a cross-section of male and female communities. It is often claimed that over time the cultural traditions of the monasteries were suffocated by secular trends but here it is suggested that many houses remained a major cultural force even on the verge of the Reformation. James G. Clark is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. Contributors: DAVID BELL, ROGER BOWERS, JAMES CLARK, BARRIE COLLETT, MARY ERLER, G. R. EVANS, MIRIAM GILL, JOAN GREATREX, JULIAN HASELDINE, J. D. NORTH, ALAN PIPER, AND R. M. THOMSON.

This is a detailed and comprehensive survey of music in the late middle ages and early Renaissance. By limiting its scope to the 120 years which witnessed perhaps the most dramatic expansion of our musical heritage, the book responds, in the 1990s, to the tremendous increase in specialised research and public awareness of that period. Three of the four main Parts (I, II, IV) describe the development of polyphony and its cultural contexts in many European countries, from the successors of Machaut (d. 1377) to the achievements of Josquin des Prez and his contemporaries working in Renaissance Italy around 1500. Part III, by contrast, illustrates the musical life of the institutions, and musical practices outside the realm of composed polyphony that were traditional and common all over Europe. The book proposes fresh views in each chapter, discussing dozens of musical examples adducing well-known and hitherto unknown documents, and referring to and evaluating the most recent scholarship in the field.

Musica ficta is the practice of sharpening or flattening certain notes to avoid awkward intervals in medieval and Renaissance music. This collection gathers Margaret Bent's influential writings on this controversial subject from the past 30 years, along with an extensive author's introduction discussing the current state of scholarship and responding to critics. Also includes 25 musical examples.

This is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites on choral music. This book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared since publication of the previous edition.

This volume presents a series of important essays on some of the problems involved in attempting to perform music of the late Middle Ages.