Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony (Paperback)

Thomas Forrest Kelly

ISBN 10: 0521106893 / ISBN 13: 9780521106894

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008

About this Item

Paperback. From at least the eighth century and for about a thousand years the repertory of music known as Georgian chant, or plainsong, formed the largest body of written music AND was the most frequently performed and the most assiduously studied in Western civilisation. But plainsong did not follow rigid conventions. It seems increasingly clear that, whatever may have been intended with respect to uniformity and tradition, the practice of plainsong varied considerably within time and place. It is just this variation, this living quality of plainsong, that these essays address. The contributors have sought information from a wide variety of areas: liturgy, architecture, art history, secular and ecclesiastical history and hagiography, as a step towards reassembling the tesserae of cultural history into the rich mosaic from which they came. From at least the eighth century and for about a thousand years the repertory of music known as Georgian chant, or plainsong, formed the largest body of written music. But plainsong did not follow rigid conventions. It is just this variation, this living quality of plainsong, that these essays address. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780521106894

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony (Paperback)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521106893
• ISBN 13: 9780521106894
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

From at least the eighth century and for about a thousand years the repertory of music known as Georgian chant, or plainsong, formed the largest body of written music AND was the most frequently performed and the most assiduously studied in Western civilisation. But plainsong did not follow rigid conventions. It seems increasingly clear that, whatever may have been intended with respect to uniformity and tradition, the practice of plainsong varied considerably within time and place. It is just this variation, this living quality of plainsong, that these essays address. The contributors have sought information from a wide variety of areas: liturgy, architecture, art history, secular and ecclesiastical history and hagiography, as a step towards reassembling the tesserae of cultural history into the rich mosaic from which they came.

Review

'I would recommend this book to every academic music library.' Katherine Hogg, Brio