The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideology, Performance (Musical Performance and Reception) - Hardcover

Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521818702 ISBN 13: 9780521818704

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Medieval music has been made and remade over the past two hundred years. For the nineteenth century it was vocal, without instrumental accompaniment, but with barbarous harmony that no one could have wished to hear. For most of the twentieth century it was instrumentally accompanied, increasingly colourful and increasingly enjoyed. At the height of its popularity it sustained an industry of players and instrument makers, all engaged in recreating an apparently medieval performance practice. During the 1980s it became vocal once more, exchanging colour and contrast for cleanliness and beauty. But what happens to produce such radical changes of perspective? And what can we learn from them about the way we interact with the past? How much is really known about the way medieval music sounded? Or have modern beliefs been formed and sustained less by evidence than the personalities of scholars and performers, their ideologies and their musical tastes?

About this title

Review:

"This book is a good read for anyone who is interested in medieval music or has an interest in how history, particularly music history, is written and developed." Music Educators Journal

"Part histoiography and part reception history, this meticulously researched volume reminds readers that no attempt to re-create the music of the past is likely to avoid doing sos through perspectives that are decidedly embedded in the present. Highly recommended." Choice

"The Modern Invention of Medieval Music is n important book. It raises fundamental questions about the relation among music, performance, and historical writing. It belongs on the reading lists of every graduate course in musicological methods, and by extension in the hands of any musicologist interested in how and (more importantly) why we write about music. I cannot praise this book enough for its imagination, daring and élan. It is a book that hits us where we live." Current Musicology, Thomas Irvine

Book Description:

Medieval music has become hugely popular but it is largely a modern construct. The story of the reinvention of medieval music is told here - a story of individuals, the societies in which they worked, their tastes and beliefs, all interacting to remake a lost musical world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0521818702
• ISBN 13: 9780521818704
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 348