One of Europe's foremost experts on early guitar music explores this little known but richly rewarding repertoire.

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) occupies a special place in the history of music as the first significant European composer who concentrated his major creative efforts into the realm of instrumental music. In this collection of papers based on the Quadricentennial Frescobaldi Studies Conference, sixteen American and European specialists examine important aspects of the life and works of this composer and of his role in the creation of a new musical language of the Baroque.

This book offers an overview of all facets of musical life in sixteenth-century Venice. It addresses the city’s institutions (churches, confraternities, and academies) against the background of public and private occasions of music making. Supported by a generous collection of archival, literary, and iconographical sources, it treats both ceremonial life in the Serenissima and private forms of patronage. The Companion also addresses the dense web of musical activity (from chapel masters and singers to instrumentalists and instrument makers to music printers and theorists) and the rich variety of styles and musical genres (the frottola, the madrigal, motets and masses, instrumental music, polychoral music, Venetian-language polyphony), broadening the geographical perspective beyond the Veneto to Istria and Dalmatia. Contributors are Rodolfo Baroncini, Sherri Bishop, Bonnie J. Blackburn, David Bryant, Ivano Cavallini, Paolo Da Col, Daniel Donnelly, Rebecca Edwards, Iain Fenlon, Jonathan Glixon, Don Harrán (†), Jeffrey Kurtzman, Giulio M. Ongaro, Francesco Passadore, Elena Quaranta, Katelijne Schiltz, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, and Giovanni Zanovello.

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1628) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. In the field of instrumental music, he established the trio sonata as a standard combination of voices for 17th-century chamber music and developed the sonata into a vehicle of virtuoso display. In his vocal works, he wrote music to texts of some of the most fashionable poets of his day, including Battista Guarini, Gabriello Chiabrera, and Ottavio Rinuccini. The mannerist poet Giovan Battista Marino particularly captured his attention: with 33 settings of Marino's verses, among them the remarkable Canzone de' baci in eight strophes, Rossi stands in the vanguard of contemporary literary developments. Rossi composed a book of duets and trios (Madrigaletti) that paved the way for similar chamber works by Agostino Steffani and others from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Last but not least, Rossi carved out his own niche in the history of sacred music by composing the first and only collection of polyphonic settings of Hebrew texts (his `Songs of Solomon') before the mid-nineteenth century. As a Jewish composer working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of a socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.

This innovative and multi-layered study of the music and culture of Renaissance instrumentalists spans the early institutionalization of instrumental music from c.1420 to the rise of the basso continuo and newer roles for instrumentalists around 1600. Employing a broad cultural narrative interwoven with detailed case studies, close readings of eighteen essential musical sources, and analysis of musical images, Victor Coelho and Keith Polk show that instrumental music formed a vital and dynamic element in the artistic landscape, from rote function to creative fantasy. Instrumentalists occupied a central role in courtly ceremonies and private social rituals during the Renaissance, and banquets, dances, processions, religious celebrations and weddings all required their participation, regardless of social class. Instrumental genres were highly diverse artistic creations, from polyphonic repertories revealing knowledge of notated styles, to improvisation and flexible practices. Understanding the contributions of instrumentalists is essential for any accurate assessment of Renaissance culture.

Revised and expanded, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth Century Music is a comprehensive reference guide for students and professional musicians. The book contains useful material on vocal and choral music and style; instrumentation; performance practice; ornamentation, tuning, temperament; meter and tempo; basso continuo; dance; theatrical production; and much more. The volume includes new chapters on the violin, the violoncello and violone, and the trombone—as well as updated and expanded reference materials, internet resources, and other newly available material. This highly accessible handbook will prove a welcome reference for any musician or singer interested in historically informed performance.

"Spring focuses on the lute in Britain, but also includes two chapters devoted to continental developments: one on the transition from medieval to renaissance, the other on renaissance to baroque, and the lute in Britain is never treated in isolation. Six chapters cover all aspects of the lute's history and its music in England from 1285 to well into the eighteenth century, whilst other chapters cover the instrument's early history, the lute in consort, lute song accompaniment, the theorbo, and the lute in Scotland."--Jacket.