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adiaphoraThe Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music</Epp, Maureen and Brian E. Power, eds. >. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009. Pp.291. $99.95. ISBN-13: 978-0754654834.
Reviewed by Jennifer Saltzstein University of Oklahoma jennifersaltzstein@ou.edu
Reviewed by Jennifer Saltzstein University of Oklahoma jennifersaltzstein@ou.edu
<i>The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music: Essays in
Honor of Timothy J. McGee</i> endeavors to investigate performance
from a broad disciplinary and historical perspective. The
contributors to this beautifully illustrated collection have been
drawn from musicology, art history, and dance history; they explore a
diverse array of materials such as musical iconography, choreography,
manuscripts and partbooks, theoretical treatises, and contemporary
music recordings.
The volume is addressed warmly to its honoree and attempts to emulate
McGee's interdisciplinary approach, which brought art and dance
history into dialog with musical sources. McGee's influential
monographs, <i>The Sound of Medieval Song: Ornamentation and Vocal
Style According to the Treatises</i> (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) and
<i>Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer's Guide</i> (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1985), are notable in the breadth of
primary sources considered, including music theoretical treatises,
iconographic and archival material, and historical accounts.
Arguably, one of the great strengths of McGee's work is its
accessibility for scholars and performers alike. Although non-
specialist readers of <i>The Sounds and Sights</i> may find the
technical language and narrow focus of some of these essays
unapproachable, several contributions have practical implications that
will be of interest to early music performers.
The book is divided into two sections. In the first, "Viewing the
evidence," the contributors address visual evidence and its
relationship to performance... In the
final essay of "Viewing the Evidence," Leslie Korrick proposes a
different context for a well-known dispute between Gioseffo Zarlino
and Vincenzo Galilei over whether the chromatic and enharmonic genera,
tuning systems associated with instruments, could be applied to the
human voice. Korrick examines how this debate involves changing
attitudes toward the categories of nature and art, and argues that
Galilei's use of an analogy involving painting demonstrates his
knowledge of contemporary theories in the visual arts.
...The second half of the volume, entitled "Reconsidering Context," opens
with Randall Rosenfeld's reassessment of a late fourteenth-century
manuscript of dances (London, British Library, MS Add. 29987). He
argues that the dances may have originated in the Morea. Three
subsequent essays deal with performance practices in renaissance
courts. Keith Polk explores chamber music of the fifteenth-century
courts of Ferrara and Burgundy, providing documentary evidence that
chamber musicians performed polyphony and that solo singers performed
with instrumental accompaniment. Jennifer Neville examines the
relationship between dance and gender roles in fifteenth-century
Italy, arguing that treatises and choreography posit dance as a
representation of a woman's inner virtue as manifest through her
beauty and grace. Barbara Sparti offers a study of the
<i>galliards</i> of Salamone Rossi. She examines the problems they
pose for both dancers and music editors and argues that the prints of
dance music produced in the mid sixteenth-century are more danceable
than previous scholars have assumed. Robert Toft's contribution takes
issue with an interpretation of Monteverdi's madrigal, "Baci soavi e
cari," posed by Gary Tomlinson in his book, <i>Monteverdi and the End
of the Renaissance</i> (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987). Toft argues that the work is not an example of Monteverdi's
compositional immaturity, but rather, is a successful work when viewed
within the context of rhetoric...
If there is
a feature that unifies the collection, it is in the careful
consideration of the practical demands of performance in explorations
of early music, even when the evidence the sources provide is
ambiguous and difficult to interpret.www.youtube.com/watch www.youtube.com/watch
Honor of Timothy J. McGee</i> endeavors to investigate performance
from a broad disciplinary and historical perspective. The
contributors to this beautifully illustrated collection have been
drawn from musicology, art history, and dance history; they explore a
diverse array of materials such as musical iconography, choreography,
manuscripts and partbooks, theoretical treatises, and contemporary
music recordings.
The volume is addressed warmly to its honoree and attempts to emulate
McGee's interdisciplinary approach, which brought art and dance
history into dialog with musical sources. McGee's influential
monographs, <i>The Sound of Medieval Song: Ornamentation and Vocal
Style According to the Treatises</i> (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) and
<i>Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer's Guide</i> (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1985), are notable in the breadth of
primary sources considered, including music theoretical treatises,
iconographic and archival material, and historical accounts.
Arguably, one of the great strengths of McGee's work is its
accessibility for scholars and performers alike. Although non-
specialist readers of <i>The Sounds and Sights</i> may find the
technical language and narrow focus of some of these essays
unapproachable, several contributions have practical implications that
will be of interest to early music performers.
The book is divided into two sections. In the first, "Viewing the
evidence," the contributors address visual evidence and its
relationship to performance... In the
final essay of "Viewing the Evidence," Leslie Korrick proposes a
different context for a well-known dispute between Gioseffo Zarlino
and Vincenzo Galilei over whether the chromatic and enharmonic genera,
tuning systems associated with instruments, could be applied to the
human voice. Korrick examines how this debate involves changing
attitudes toward the categories of nature and art, and argues that
Galilei's use of an analogy involving painting demonstrates his
knowledge of contemporary theories in the visual arts.
...The second half of the volume, entitled "Reconsidering Context," opens
with Randall Rosenfeld's reassessment of a late fourteenth-century
manuscript of dances (London, British Library, MS Add. 29987). He
argues that the dances may have originated in the Morea. Three
subsequent essays deal with performance practices in renaissance
courts. Keith Polk explores chamber music of the fifteenth-century
courts of Ferrara and Burgundy, providing documentary evidence that
chamber musicians performed polyphony and that solo singers performed
with instrumental accompaniment. Jennifer Neville examines the
relationship between dance and gender roles in fifteenth-century
Italy, arguing that treatises and choreography posit dance as a
representation of a woman's inner virtue as manifest through her
beauty and grace. Barbara Sparti offers a study of the
<i>galliards</i> of Salamone Rossi. She examines the problems they
pose for both dancers and music editors and argues that the prints of
dance music produced in the mid sixteenth-century are more danceable
than previous scholars have assumed. Robert Toft's contribution takes
issue with an interpretation of Monteverdi's madrigal, "Baci soavi e
cari," posed by Gary Tomlinson in his book, <i>Monteverdi and the End
of the Renaissance</i> (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987). Toft argues that the work is not an example of Monteverdi's
compositional immaturity, but rather, is a successful work when viewed
within the context of rhetoric...
If there is
a feature that unifies the collection, it is in the careful
consideration of the practical demands of performance in explorations
of early music, even when the evidence the sources provide is
ambiguous and difficult to interpret.www.youtube.com/watch www.youtube.com/watch
