Posts Tagged ‘music’

Adam Matthew Digital – A vast collection of digitized texts, including the Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor, and Armburgh papers, medieval travel writing (“journeys of famous travellers from Prester John and Marco Polo to Sir John Mandefille and John Capgreve”, with translations, maps, and “fully searchable”). Unfortunately, it costs; I could not get at the pricing structure but the site seems to be aimed at institutions. They do have a “free trial” bit, which I did not access.

Early Book Society – for the study of manuscripts and printing history”. Started by Sara Horrall and Martha Driver “out of sessions planned for” the Medieval Congress at K’zoo; started in 1987. Their site is limited, but there are a couple of interesting bits (see, e.g., the Old Spice Answer Man on libraries).

Brepols Publishers – A publisher based in Belgium, with an international reach. They are the printers/publishers for an astounding number of journals, many of which are of interest to historains, medievalists, and archaeologists.

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies – Duke University. Individual subscriptions are $38, for three issues annually. The site has no information about what periods or subjects the journal covers, so you’ll have to rely on the title.

Journal of Late Antiquity – from Johns Hopkins University. “…the first international English-language journal dedicated to the study of Late Antiquity writ large”. Individual subscriptions are $30/year (two issues), for either the print or electronic delivery.

Fifteenth Century Studies – put out regularly by Boydell & Brewer, publishers. “Fifteenth-Century Studies offers essays on diverse aspects of the period, including liberal and fine arts, historiography, medicine, and religion.“ It seems to be $75/issue. I am not sure whether one can subscribe or purchase book-by-book / issue-by-issue. The URL delivers you to issue #34.

Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies – It offers a journal titled “Mediaeval Studies”, “…established in 1939 and from the outset its purpose has been the publication of research on the Middle Ages by scholars throughout the world, particularly research involving unedited manuscript and archival material.” Variously priced; the newest volumes are $90, and decrease to $40 for the ones printed before 1997. PIMS also publishes books, most of which are, although medieval in subject, tend to be aimed at a very particular, churchly market.

Plainsong and Medieval Music – courtesy of Cambridge Journals Online, “in association with the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society and Cantus Planus, study group of the International Musicological Society”. Back issues seem to cost $110, or $1,700 for the complete set (1992-2008). Cambridge Journals has other historical-type journals – Anglo-Saxon England, The Antiquaries Journal (mentioned in a previous post, I believe), Archaeologia, Archaeological Reports.

Viking Society for Northern Research (VSNR) – “…the world’s foremost learned society in the field of medieval Scandinavian and Northern studies.” Started as “the Orkney, Shetland and Northern Society, or the Viking Club.” A British group, although membership is apparently open to all; “…founded as an Antiquarian, Literary and Social Society.” A list of their publications. This page points to a North American sales agent at ACMRS (see previous blog entries), but when I clicked on the link, I got back a 404 Page Not Found error message. Perhaps one might instead contact Roy Rukkila, Managing Editor, ACMRS, at mrts@asu.edu

Magnum Legendarium Austriacum – or, rather, the Wikepedia article on it. At the bottom of this page are 3 links to the M.L.A. and one to the Diplomarbeit zum Thema, which seems to be a thesis on the MLA submitted for the degree of MPhil. All four of these links take you to sites in German, but damned if they don’t look interesting anyway.

SFB-Project: Visions of Community – under the auspices of Universitat Wien. “VISCOM focuses on the question how universal religions have shaped the construction of particular communities and identities in the middle ages. The project proposes a comparative approach focusing on Christian, Islamic and Buddhist examples in the course of the ‘Middle Ages’ in order to explore the interaction between religious and political ‘visions of community’. “

I have a note about one of the exhibitors at K’zoo that reads “king alfred’s notebook – ‘”the worlds most famous lost medieval book’”, with an address in South Carolina. I Googled it, and found only one reference, to the LLC registration at the South Carolina’s Secretary of State’s office. Any more information would be gladly received; I have a severe case of curiosity about a guy who’d pay for a table at K’zoo for something that might not exist.

Ashgate Publishing has available a series (Music in Medieval Europe) that looks to be of interest to musicians with a fair knowledge of early practices and theory. Unfortunately, as you can see from the listed prices, they are expensive. We have a list of books we already want to order from Ashgate; we are wondering if there’s enough interest in these that they should be appended to that order.
While we will not be taking deposits (yet), we would hope that anyone who expresses an interest would carry through on that interest as we do so dislike expensive stock that collects dust rather than orders. Please drop us a line at owner@potboilerpress.com if you are seriously interested, with which books you are interested in and how many. And passing this information along to others would, as always, bring a smile to our lips and a song to our heart (albeit not necessarily one in medieval Occitan or Church Latin).

Series Editor: Thomas Forest Kely, Harvard University.
“This series of … volumes provides an overview of the best current scholarship in the study of medieval music. Each volume is edited by a ranking expert, and each presents a selection of writings, mostly in English which, taken together, sketch a picture of the shape of the field and of the nature of current inquiry. The volumes are organised in such a way that readers may go directly to an area that interests them, or they may provide themselves with a substantial introduction to the wider field by reading through the entire volume. The editors introduce readers to an enormous swathe of musical history and style, and present the best of recent musical scholarship. Taken together, they will increase access to a rich body of music, and provide scholars and students with an authoritative guide to the best of current thinking about the music of the middle ages.”
1. Ars antiqua: Organum, Conductus, Motet. Edited by Edward Roesner, New York University, 2008. Hardback, $275.00 (“The ars antiqua began to be mentioned in writings about music in the early decades of the fourteenth century, where it was cited along with references to a more modern “art,” an ars nova. The essays in this collection address the broad range of issues regarding ars antiqua polyphony: the nature and definition of genre; the evolution of the polyphonic idiom; the workings of the creative process including the role of oral process and notation and the continuum between these extremes; questions about how this music was used and understood; and of how it fits into the intellectual life of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.”)

2. Ars nova: French and Italian Music in the 14th Century. Edited by John L. Nádas, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. Hardback, $275.00 (“This collection of articles brings together scholarship that reflects a broad methodological and chronological span of analysis of the ars nova, the polyphonic tradition which blossomed in France and Italy in the fourteenth century.”)

3. Chant and its Origins. Edited by Thomas Forrest Kelly, Harvard University, 2008. Hardback, $250.00 (“Plainchant is the music that underpins essentially all other music of the middle ages and is most abundantly preserved. It is a subject that has engaged a great deal of debate in the last fifty years and the complex issues that have arisen in the course of this research form the basis of this collection of articles.”)

4. Embellishing the Liturgy: Tropes and Polyphony. Edited by Alejandro Planchart, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2008 c. 500 pages. Hardback, $250.00 (“The tropes, together with the sequences, represent the main creative activity of European musicians in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. This volume provides an introduction to the study of tropes in the form of an extensive anthology of major studies and a comprehensive bibliography, and it constitutes a classic reference resource for the study of one of the most important musico-liturgical genres of the central middle ages.”)

5. Instruments and their Music in the Middle Ages. Edited by Timothy J. McGee, 2008 c. 500 pages. Hardback, $250.00 (“This collection of twenty-nine influential articles and papers about medieval musical instruments and their repertory considers the construction of the instruments, their playing technique, the occasions for which they performed and their repertory. Taken as a whole, they paint a broad and detailed picture of instrumental performance during the medieval period.”)

6. Oral and Written Transmission in Chant. Edited by Thomas Forrest Kelly, Harvard University, 2008. Hardback, $250.00. (“The early history of chant is a history of orality. In this volume, scholars of medieval music have taken up the ideas and techniques of scholars of folklore, oral transmission and ethnomusicology—for the chant is, in fact, an ancient music transmitted for a time in oral culture. Ironically, the use of written documents is also vital for the study of chant, involving analysis of oral issues in the writing of music.”)

7. Poets and Singers: On Latin and Vernacular Monophonic Song. Edited by Elizabeth Aubrey, University of Iowa, 2008. Hardback $250.00 (“The essays gathered here represent the principal themes and issues that have occupied scholars of late medieval monophonic songs over the last half century: their place in history and society; the role of women as composers and performers; poetic and musical structures, styles and genres; relationships between poems and melodies; written and oral transmission; and performance practices.”)

(Please refer to an earlier blog entry, “Digitized Books and Manuscripts“,  for pricing information.)

Agenda. Das ist, Kyrchenordnung, Leipzig, 1540. A Protestant Ceremonial written for Heinrich of Saxony (den Frommen).

Aron, Pietro, Toscanello in Musica, 1539.

Benedictionale Ecclesiae, et Diocesis Constantiensis, Constance, 1597.

Dowland, John, Andreas Ornithoparcus His Micrologus or Introduction containing the Art of singing, 1609.

Giovanelli, Pietro, compiler, Novi [atque catholici] thesauri musici. Liber Primus [-Quintus], quo selectissime planeque, novae, nec unquam in lucem aeditae cantiones sacrae (quas vulgo moteta vocant) continentur octo, septem, sex, quinque, ac quatuor vocum, a prestantissimis ac huius aetatis, precipuis Symphoniacis compositae, quae in sacra Ecclesia catholica, summis solemnibusque, festiuitatibus, canuntur, ad omnis generis instrumenta musica, accommodatae Petri Ioannelli Bergomensis de Gandino, summo studio ac labore collectae, eiusque, expensis impressae. 1568. Approximately 250 motets included; six part-books of cantus, altus, tenor, bassus, quintus, and sextus. List of motets available upon request.

Guidetti, Giovanni Domenico, Directorium Chori Ad Usum OmniumEcclesiarum Cathedralium, & Collegiaturum…In Hac Postrema Editione A Canonico Florido De Sylvestris, Rome; 1642.

Kirchenordnung Vie es inn Des Durchleughtigen, 1570. Protestant liturgy produced for Count Palatine Wolffgang Duke of Zweibrucken and Neuberg. It was completed and supervised by Melanchthon and Brenz on the basis of the Wurttemberg church-rule of 1553

Koswick, Michael, Compendiaria Musice artis aeditio, 1518.

Liber processionum secundum Ordine[m] Fratru[m] Predicatorum. 1494

Marcos y Navas,Francisco, Arte, ó compendio general del canto-llano, figurado, y organo, en método facil, ilustrado con algunos documentos, ó capítulos muy precisos para el provechamiento, y enseñanza. Dividido en cinco tratados, de los que el primero manifiesta la teórica del canto-llano: el segundo su práctica, con el oficio de difuntos, sepultura, misa, y procesion: el tercero, y quarto la especulativa, y práctica del canto figurado, y de organo, segun el moderno estilo; y el quinto las nueve lamentaciones, y la bendicion del cirio, vestidas, ó adornadas de cláusulas sobre su mismo canto-llano. Madrid: Por D. Joachin Ibarra … se hallará en la librería de Gerónymo Solano. 1777 (The first 75 pages is a manual on how to sing Gregorian Chant, complete with a Guidonian Hand; the other 500+ pages are Gregorian Chant. I’ve digitized just the manual section.)

Misale ad vsum insignis ecclesie Sarisburiensis. 1555

Missale ad Sacrosancte Romane ecclesie Vsum. 1529

Morley, Thomas, A plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke, 1597.

Ordeninge der Misse, wo de vann denn Kerckheren unnde Seelsorgern ym lande tho Meckelnborch, im Fürstendom Wenden, Swerin, Rostock unnd Stargharde schal geholden werden. M. D, XL. 1540

Pontifical, use of Rome, 1478. Manuscript, mostly finished. The music and text are completed, but the capitials were left unilluminated.

Processional, 1494. Manuscript.

Processional, including a Carmina Burana text with music, with added Aquinas hymn 23, 1480/1530. Manuscript. “A well-executed liturgical manuscript with plain-chant music.”

Processionarium s[e]c[un]d[u]m morem almi ordinis predicator[um] nuper impressum. Atq[ue] per quosdam predicti ordinis fratres solertissime correctum & emendatu(m): cu[m] quibusdam in eo decenter additis. 1519

Psalmodia, hoc est, Cantica sacra veteris ecclesiae selecta, Wittemberg, 1579.

Psalter of the Virgin. 1490

Rituum Ecclesiasticorum Sive Sacrarum Cerimoniarum S. S. Romanae Ecclesiae Libri Tres Non Ante Impressi…1516

The Whole Book of Psalmes, collected into English meetre, by John Hopkins and Thomas Sternhold, 1591.