This volume explores the work of one of medieval music's most important figures, and in so doing presents an extended panorama of musical life in Europe at the end of the middle ages. Guillaume Du Fay rose from obscure beginnings to become the most significant composer of the fifteenth century, a man courted by kings and popes, and this study of his life and career provides a detailed examination of his entire output, including a number of newly discovered works. As well as offering musical analysis, this volume investigates his close association with the Cathedral of Cambrai, and explores how, at a time when music was becoming increasingly professionalised, Du Fay forged his own identity as 'a composer'. This detailed biography will be highly valuable for those interested in the history of medieval and church music, as well as for scholars of Du Fay's musical legacy.

Ruth I. DeFord offers new insights on Renaissance theories of rhythm and their application to the analysis and performance of music.

The relationship between text and music is a central issue in fifteenth-century music studies. Decades of research and performance have failed to provide clear answers to the most basic questions, such as which notes go with which syllables and why. Patterns in Play focuses on the early French songs of Guillaume Dufay and proposes a basis for determining some rules of common procedure for interpreting both underlay and style. Graeme M. Boone examines questions of rhythm and declamation, considering mensuration, linguistic and poetic prosody, and prosody in song. The first three chapters comprise a set of discussions preliminary to close rhythmic analysis of Dufay?s texted song melodies. Beginning with mensural rhythm and proceeding to poetics and the relationship between Dufay?s poetic and musical rhythms and musical declamation, Boone examines the musical features of rhythm, melody, tonal organization, counterpoint, text setting, and text expression. Offering fresh insight into the issues he raises, Boone clarifies the relationship between underlay and style and provides a better understanding of the technical and aesthetic issues that Dufay and other composers faced in weaving their patterns of song.

Through forty-five creative and concise essays by an international team of authors, this Cambridge History brings the fifteenth century to life for both specialists and general readers. Combining the best qualities of survey texts and scholarly literature, the book offers authoritative overviews of central composers, genres, and musical institutions as well as new and provocative reassessments of the work concept, the boundaries between improvisation and composition, the practice of listening, humanism, musical borrowing, and other topics. Multidisciplinary studies of music and architecture, feasting, poetry, politics, liturgy, and religious devotion rub shoulders with studies of compositional techniques, musical notation, music manuscripts, and reception history. Generously illustrated with figures and examples, this volume paints a vibrant picture of musical life in a period characterized by extraordinary innovation and artistic achievement.

When we sing lines in which a fifteenth-century musician uses ethereal polyphony to complain mundanely about money or hoarseness, more than half a millennium melts away. Equally intriguing are moments in which we experience solmization puns. These familiar worries and surprising jests break down temporal distances, humanizing the lives and endeavors of our musical forebears. Yet many instances of self-reference occur within otherwise serious pieces. Are these simply in-jokes, or are there more meaningful messages we risk neglecting if we dismiss them as comic relief? Music historian Jane D. Hatter takes seriously the pervasiveness of these features. Divided into two sections, this study considers pieces with self-referential features in the texts separately from discussions of pieces based on musical self-referential elements. Examining connections between self-referential repertoire from the years 1450–1530 and similar self-referential creations for painters' guilds, reveals musicians' agency in forming the first communities of early modern composers.

Archeofuturism, an important work in the tradition of the European New Right, is finally now available in English. Challenging many assumptions held by the Right, this book generated much debate when it was first published in French in 1998. Faye believes that the future of the Right requires a transcendence of the division between those who wish for a restoration of the traditions of the past, and those who are calling for new social and technological forms - creating a synthesis which will amplify the strengths and restrain the excesses of both: Archeofuturism. Faye also provides a critique of the New Right; an analysis of the continuing damage being done by Western liberalism, political inertia, unrestrained immigration and ethnic self-hatred; and the need to abandon past positions and dare to face the realities of the present in order to realise the ideology of the future. He prophesises a series of catastrophes between 2010 and 2020, brought about by the unsustainability of the present world order, which he asserts will offer an opportunity to rebuild the West and put Archeofuturism into practice on a grand scale. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the course that the Right must chart in order to deal with the increasing crises and challenges it will face in the coming decades. Guillaume Faye was one of the principal members of the famed French New Right organisation GRECE in the 1970s and '80s. After departing in 1986 due to his disagreement with its strategy, he had a successful career on French television and radio before returning to the stage of political philosophy as a powerful alternative voice with the publication of Archeofuturism. Since then he has continued to challenge the status quo within the Right in his writings, earning him both the admiration and disdain of his colleagues.

A detailed inventory of polyphonic songs from 1415-1480 in any European language, with language subdivisions: English, French, German (including Flemish), Italian, Latin, Spanish, and textless (this last with musical incipits). Each entry includes full details of all sources, facsimiles, modern editions, paraphrases, citations, etc. The aim is to account for everything that survives or is confidently known to have existed. There are approximately 2,000 main entries, derived from some 200 central sources, with another 200 sources that contain only a few pieces, poetic texts, or otherwise related material. The volume also includes brief descriptions of all the main sources as well as biographical entries for all the composers and poets (keyed to the main catalogue) and an extensive bibliography.

In the early fourteenth century, musicians in France and later Italy established new traditions of secular and sacred polyphony. This ars nova, or "new art," popularized by theorists such as Philippe de Vitry and Johannes de Muris was the among the first of many later movements to establish the music of the present as a clean break from the past. The rich music of this period, by composers such as Guillaume de Machaut and Francesco Landini, is not only beautiful, but also rewards deep study and analysis. Yet contradictions and gaps abound in the ars nova of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries-how do we read this music? how do we perform this music? what was the cultural context of these performances? These problems are well met by the ingenuity of approaches and solutions found by scholars in this volume. The twenty-seven articles brought together reflect the broad methodological and chronological range of scholarly inquiry on the ars nova.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Austro-German scholars made decisive advances in developing concepts to account for harmonic processes in late medieval music. Despite the considerable potential these ideas hold for analysis and criticism of early music, they have hitherto exerted little influence outside their countries of origin. In order to render this valuable literature more immediately accessible to English-speaking students and scholars, this book presents translations of twelve seminal articles that originally appeared during the years 1948-1967, along with a comprehensive introductory chapter detailing the evolution of competing theories and terminology.