Margaret Bent

Like many collections of previously published essays, these pieces differ in focus, framing, and density. Several of the pieces, in particular that on the Celestines, would have profited from clearer introductions to frame for the reader how they fit within their new context of this book and how exactly they contribute to its portrait of southern Italian spirituality. It would be a pity if the very local focus of several of these chapters discouraged medievalists interested in issues other than mendicancy or southern Italy from making use of Pellegrini’s very interesting methodology in studying jurisdictions and their boundaries. This is a book that offers much more than may first appear to a more general Italian-speaking readership of scholars interested in space, jurisdiction, urban life, networks of travel and exchange, lay piety, and the eremitical life. Finally, we should welcome this as a study that brings a great deal of usable insight about the neglected field of southern Italian society to the attention of scholars and teachers of the Italian Middle Ages.

'Musicology', writes Joseph Kerman, 'is perceived as dealing essentially with the fac-tual, the documentary, the verifiable, the analysable, the positivistic. Musicologists are respected for the facts they know about music. They are not admired for their insight into music as aesthetic ...

Early music studies do not always rank high on the agendas of university music departments these days. There are of course exceptions, a recent one in Britain being the appointment of Thomas Schmidt-Beste to the chair at Bangor, followed by the appointment of an ...

In PMM 26/2 (October 2017), the title of the first book, reviewed by Margaret Bent, was wrongly printed. The correct heading should be as follows:John Nádas and Andreas Janke (eds.), The San Lorenzo Palimpsest: Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo, Ms. 2211, vol. 1: Introductory Study; vol. 2: Multispectral Images, Ars Nova, n.s. 4 (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2016). xiii pp.+ 123 fols (135 fols including blanks). €300. ISBN 978 88 7096 852 1.This error has now been rectified in the online version of the article.

... Fugue and fugato in rococo and classical chamber music. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Kirkendale, Warren. PUBLISHER: ... PAGES (INTRO/BODY): xxvii,. SUBJECT(S): Fugue; Chamber music; History and criticism; 18th century. DISCIPLINE: No discipline assigned. ...

Margaret Bent is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Asobering message is reaching us: we don't always try to re-create authentic sound even when we have access to it. Richard Taruskin has shown how we remake music, whether Mozart or Machaut, according to our own taste, and that that taste changes by generation or even faster.' Robert Philip's new book on historical recordings shows how little we aspire to re-create the sounds and techniques of pre-war works (Elgar, Puccini) even when we have recordings made under the direction of the composer or to his satisfaction.2 Is it an accident that our efforts of reconstruction are concentrated on what we can't know? That we apply them with the greatest conviction to repertories where the performing tradition has been broken and there are no recordings? This message can be transferred to musical editions. Just as we may choose to avoid some authentic aspects of performance when we could adopt them, so we avoid fidelity in the written presentation of music as a basis for performance, while surrounding it with scholarly apparatus that appears to confer authenticity. Nothing goes out of fashion as fast as authenticity. We should abandon use of the word and its false advertising. It has been assumed until quite recently that early music is not accessible until it has been edited, or at least transcribed in score, enabling a single musician to read it. There has been a deep reluctance to assume that the near-absence of early scores might mean that its first creators and performers managed quite well without them, and hence that we had better do so too if we are to master their musical language and the essentials of their musical thinking processes.3 To assume that they must have depended on visual control through aligned score imposes our canons of musicianship on them. There is little evidence that 15th-century musicians did so depend. Also, the discovery that it is not difficult to read and sing from facsimiles makes us more willing to believe that they might have been able to read their own manuscripts. Claims that modern editions represent the original in some authentic way hardly stand the test of time; even our preferred appearance (in reduction of note values and so on) has proven subject to just the same swings as our tastes in performance.

Discarding images: reflections on music and culture in medieval France CHRISTOPHER PAGE Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, ?25 Christopher Page is a major force in early music today. He has given us recordings that advocate it with power and elegance to a wide ...

John Dunstaple's reputation as the most famous English composer of the Middle Ages has stood almost unchallenged since his death. Two epitaphs attributed to one of his patrons, John Wheathamstead, Abbot of St Albans between 1420–40 and 1452–64, give him equal credit as a mathematician and astronomer (or rather, astrologer). Dunstaple was evidently proficient in the quadrivial arts of music, astronomy and mathematics (arithmetic and geometry), but only his musical activities have been thoroughly explored. At least two books that were in his library may provide hints about the level of his attainment in mathematics and astronomy. One is a fascicle within another volume that carries the often quoted ‘Iste libellus pertinebat Johanni Dunstaple cum duci Bedfordie musico’. The other and more extensive of the two manuscripts, Cambridge, Emmanuel College, MS 70, contains treatises on astronomy and astrology by standard authors in various hands. Some of these have what must be a scribal ...

The years around 1400 saw a massive increase in notational complexity, mostly confined to compositions in a few high-quality manuscripts. Because there is no overlap of repertory between the Chantilly and Old Hall manuscripts, we have no idea whether their advanced notational strategies evolved entirely independently of each other, or whether there were any channels of mutual influence. Both represent parallel but different pinnacles of sophistication, including some usages and pieces not yet satisfactorily explained. Up to the middle of the fourteenth century, English music developed largely in insular isolation, with respect to notation, rhythm, and consequently of-mostly rather straightforward-musical style; there seems to have been no exchange in either direction. 1 Later in the century, doubtless due to * This essay (written in 2008) is a revised and expanded version of part of chapter 4 of my dissertation (Bent 1969). For all references to Old Hall compositions see Hughes/Bent 1969-73. Captions to examples give the piece number in Old Hall (British Library, Add. MS 57950), and folio numbers preceded by roman I or II to indicate that piece's presence in the first or a later layer, hence in vol. I or II of the edition. Bar numbers refer to that edition. Colour images of Old Hall can be viewed on www. diamm.ac.uk. I am grateful to Theodor Dumitrescu and Ronald Woodley for invaluable comments on a draft of this essay and lively Email debate on many finer points. It has benefited from comments by Elizabeth Eva Leach, Anand Blank, Emily Zazulia and Philippa Ovenden. Examples from the Old Hall manuscript are reproduced with the permission of the British Library Board; all rights reserved. The example from Aosta, Seminario Maggiore, MS 15 is reproduced with the authorisation of the Ufficio Beni Culturali della Diocesi di Aosta,

The 1529 edition of Pietro Aaron's Toscanello in Musica2 included an appendix, entitled Aggiunta del toscanello a com-placenza de gli amicifatta,s known to us for its advocacy of full notation of accidentals. The special and unique interest of this Appendix is that the accidentals are ...

Théorie et analyse musicales 1450-1650  (Music Theory and Analysis), ed. Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans and Bonnie J. Blackburn. 'Musicologica neolovaniensia Studia', n° 9 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Département d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie, Collège Érasme, 2001), pp. 65-118

in Music in the Mirror: Reflections on the History of Music Theory and Literature for the 21st Century, ed. Andreas Giger and Thomas J. Mathiesen, Publications of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature, vol. 3 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002),  pp. 45-59