Dance played a fundamental role in French Baroque theatrical entertainments. Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos, a comic mascarade composed by Andre Danican Philidor in 1688, is of major importance, because it is the only theatrical work from the court of Louis XIV to have survived complete in all its components - choreography, music, and text, both spoken and sung. It provides a concrete model not only of how dance was integrated into the musical theatre, but of how ballets - or even operaswere staged. Moreover, it uses a previously unknown dance notation system developed around the same time as...

Musica getutscht (Basel, 1511) is the earliest printed treatise on musical instruments in the West. Written by a priest and chapel singer named Sebastian Virdung, it provided rudimentary instruction on playing three instruments: the clavichord, the lute and the recorder. This early 'do-it-yourself' manual of instruction not only tells us about music-making in that era, it also illumines other aspects of society in the years just before the Reformation. Its author communicates in a popular style, choosing a mixture of media: a written text in the guise of an informal conversation, coupled with...

This book traces the development of the viol from its late medieval Spanish origins to the sixteenth century, when it became the most widely played bowed instrument in western Europe. Ian Woodfield examines the two most important ancestors of the instrument, the Moorish rahab and the vihuela de mano. From these two instruments emerged an early form of viol, the Valencian vihuela de arco, which spread rapidly across the Mediterranean during the papacy of Rodrigo Borgia. The viol was enthusiastically accepted by the d'Este and Gonzaga families and other Italian arbiters before migrating across...

Hiller's Treatise on Vocal Performance and Ornamentation was published in Germany in 1780 and is an important manual on vocal technique and performance in the eighteenth century. This present edition, translated with an introduction and extensive commentary by musicologist Suzanne J. Beicken, makes the treatise available for the first time in English. With its emphasis on practical aspects of ornamentation, declamation and style it will be valuable to instrumentalists as well as singers and is a significant contribution to the understanding of performance practice in the eighteenth century.

This study is a comprehensive assessment of J. S. Bach's use of articulation marks (i.e. slurs and dots) in the large body of primary sources. Dr Butt analyses the role of such markings within the compositional process, how they relate to the norms of articulation of the period, and how they might assist us in a deeper understanding and evaluation of Bach's style. With its extensive catalogue of the most common slurring patterns based on a study of over 100 concerted vocal works, this book is invaluable both for performers on all baroque instruments, and for scholars with an interest in...

Explores the revival of sixteenth-century music in nineteenth-century Germany, focusing on the reception of Palestrina.