Part of the seminal Cambridge History of Music series, this volume departs from standard histories of early modern Western music in two important ways. First, it considers music as something primarily experienced by people in their daily lives, whether as musicians or listeners, and as something that happened in particular locations, and different intellectual and ideological contexts, rather than as a story of genres, individual counties, and composers and their works. Second, by constraining discussion within the limits of a 100-year timespan, the music culture of the sixteenth century is freed from its conventional (and tenuous) absorption within the abstraction of 'the Renaissance', and is understood in terms of recent developments in the broader narrative of this turbulent period of European history. Both an original take on a well-known period in early music and a key work of reference for scholars, this volume makes an important contribution to the history of music.
Introduction Iain Fenlon and Richard Wistreich; Part I. Confessions, Identities, and Rhetorics of Power: 1. Catholic music in the sixteenth century Robert L. Kendrick; 2. Lutheranism and Calvinism Alexander Fisher; 3. Music and reform in France, England and Scotland Magnus Williamson; 4. Music in the early colonial world Olivia Bloechl; 4.1. Mexico City Melinda Latour; 4.2. The Catholic Mission to Japan 1549–1614 Olivia Bloechl; 5. Music and War Richard Wistreich; Part II. Culture, Place and Practice: 6. Urban soundscapes Iain Fenlon; 7. Interior spaces for music Flora Dennis; 8. The lives of musicians Richard Wistreich; 9. Domestic music Kate van Orden; Part III. Institutions, Ideas and the Order of Nature: 10. Institutions and intellectual life; 10.1. Italy Giuseppe Gerbino; 10.2. Germany Inga Mai Groote; 11. Music theory and pedagogy Thomas Christensen; 12. Music and science Floris Cohen and Jacomien Prins; 13. Music and magic Angela Voss.
Iain Fenlon is Emeritus Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He is the Editor of the journal Early Music History. His most recent books are The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (2008), Piazza San Marco (2009), and (co-edited with Inga Groote) Heinrich Glarean's Books: The Intellectual World of a Sixteenth-Century Musical Humanist (Cambridge, 2013). Richard Wistreich is Professor of Music and Director of Research at the Royal College of Music in London. His published work includes The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi (edited, with John Whenham, Cambridge, 2007) and Warrior, Courtier, Singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (2007). He has also had a long career as a professional singer specialising in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music, during which he has made more than 100 commercial recordings, appeared in opera, solo recitals, and as a member of several seminal ensembles of the early music revival.
Reviews for The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music
'… rich in detail … The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music, in short, invites us to consider these themes, and to revisit the beautiful music of the period with renewed curiosity.' Richard Freedman, Revue de musicologie
