Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 - Softcover

Owens, Jessie Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195129040 ISBN 13: 9780195129045

Publisher: Oxford University Press USA, 1997

Synopsis

Composers at Work discusses a problem that has fascinated scholars for a long time: how did Renaissance composers write their complex vocal polyphony? Twentieth-century scholars are so accustomed to scoring music, carefully lining up the vertical simultaneities, and carefully aligning the bar lines in order to study and perform music, that the idea that a composer could create elaborate polyphony, even in eight parts, without the aid of a score, seems incomprehensible. How then did sixteenth-century composers write their music, and what evidence exists to document this compositional process?

Using sketches and other documentary evidence, long a matter of intense study in later centuries, Professor Owens' study is the first full-length investigation of the topic in Renaissance music. It sets out the indispensable background to an inquiry and into the fundamental processes of Renaissance composition.

About this title

Product Description

Composers at Work

Review

the most comprehensive and enlightening study of Renaissance musical compostion yet written ... This excellent book is important not only for its general theory but for its illumination of the everyday (Anthony Pryer, TLS 29/10/99)

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195129040
• ISBN 13: 9780195129045
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368