This is an excellent reference volume including essays on all aspects of medieval music performance. With forty essays written by experts in the field on everything from repertoire, voices and instruments to basic theory, all aspects of recreation are treated. This guide has already proven indispensable to performers and scholars of medieval music. Chapters on vocal and choral music; various types of ensembles; profiles of specific instruments; instrumentation; performance practice issues; theory; dance; regional profiles of Renaissance music, and guidelines for directors are all treated. It...

Winner of the Claude V. Palisca Award of the American Musicological Society

What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament" the equal division of the octave into twelve notes that has become our standard tuning method? Thanks to How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony, "we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor 'black'" (Wall Street Journal).In this "comprehensive plea for more variety in tuning methods" (Kirkus Reviews), Ross W. Duffin presents "a serious and well-argued case" (Goldberg Magazine) that...