Readings in the History of Music in Performance

Selected, translated, and edited by Carol MacClintock.

Readings on the performance of Western music from the late middle ages to the early nineteenth century describe the accepted conventions and actual practices of former times.

These 65 selections include travelers' accounts; review of operas, ballets, and concerts; letters; descriptions of famous composers performing their own works, and pedagogic texts. They reveal the conventions of earlier musical notation, what constituted a concert in other times, how musicians performed their music, how their audiences heard it, and what liberties may have been taken with a particular piece.

CONTENIDO:

Preface

- Part I: Before 1500
1. The late middle ages
Jerome of Moravia, from Tractatus de musica
Anonymous XIII, Treatise on Discant

2. The early Renaissance
Conrad von Zabern, from De modo bene cantandi
Olivier de la Marche, Banquet of the Oath of the Pheasant

- Part II: The Renaissance
3. Music in Daily Life
Giovanni Boccaccio, from The Decameron
Baldassare Castiglione, from The Book of the Courtier
Vincenzo Giustiniani, from Discorso sopra la musita

4. On Singing and Ornamentation
Adrian Petit Coclico, from Compendium musices
Giovanni Camillo Maffei, Letter on Singing
Hermann Finck, from Practica musica
Ludovico Zacconi, from Prattica di musica

5. Rules for Performers and Composers
Nicola Vicentino, from L'antica musica
Gioseffo Zarlino, from Istitutioni harmoniche
Girolamo Diruta, from Il Transilvano
Thomas Morley, from A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Praeticall Musick

- Part III: The Seventeenth Century
6. Music a Gentleman's Recreation
Henry Peacham, from The Compleat Gentleman
Izaak Walton, from The Life of George Herbert
Roger North, from Memoirs of Music

7. Travelers' Accounts of Musical Performances
Thomas Coryat, from Coryat's Crudities
André Maugars, Response to an Inquisitive Person on the Italian Feeling about Music

8. On Organ Playing
Adriano Banchieri, from Conclusioni nel suono dell' organo
Agostino Agazzari, Letter on Style in Organ Playing
Girolamo Frescobaldi, Three Prefaces

9. The Performance of Sacred Music
Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, from Parasceve ad solemnitatem evangelicam
Heinrich Schütz, Preface to Historia der Auferstehung Jesu Christi
Michael Praetorius, from Syntagma musicum, On Arranging Choirs

10. Tempo, Tactus, and Musical Terms
Michael Praetorius, from Syntagma musicum, On Choral Music, On Musical Terms
Marin Mersenne, from Harmonie universelle, On Beating the Measure
Henry Purcell, from A Choice Collection of Lessons

11. On Singing
John Dowland, from Andreas Ornithoparcus His Micrologus
Michael Praetorius, from Syntagma musicum, Instruction for Singers
Marin Mersenne, from Harmonie universelle, How to Train Voices

12. Music for the Theater
Claudio Monteverdi, Four Letters
Emilio de' Cavalieri, from Rappresentazione di Anima, et di Corpo
Marco da Gagliano, Preface to Dafne
Thomas Campion, from The Description of a Maske
Giovanni Battista Doni, from "Trattato della musica scenica"

13. On Ballet
Michel Depure, from Idées des Spectacles anciens et nouveaux

- Part IV:The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

14. Instructions for Playing the Clavecin
Michel de Saint-Lambert, from Les Príncipes du Clavecin
François Couperin, from L'Art de toucher le Clavecin
Jean Philippe Rameau, from Piéces de clavecín

5. Opera: Pro and Con
Jacques Bonnet-Bourdelot, from Histoire de la musique et de ses effets
Charles de Saint-Évremond, Letter on the Opera
Charles Burney, from A General History of Music
Charles de Brosses, from Lettres familiéres

16. The Violin
Roger North, from Musicall Grammarian and Other Memoirs
Francesco Geminiani, from The Art of Playing on the Violín
Georg Muffat, from Florilegium secundum

17. The New Instruction Methods
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, from Essay on the True Art of Playing the Clavier
Johann Joachim Quantz, from Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte
Leopold Mozart, from Versuch einer gründliche Violinschule
Daniel Gottlob Türk, from Clavíerschule

18. The Dance
Jean-Georges Noverre, from Letters on the Dance

19. On Vocal Music
Pier. Francesco Tosi, from Observations on the Florid Song
Johann Joachim Quantz, from Versuch einer Answeisung die Flöte, Requirements of a Good Singer

20. Travelers' Reports
Charles de Brosses, from Lettres familiéres
Charles Burney, from The Present State of Music in France and Italy and The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Provinces

21. On the Performance of Famous Men
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, from "Bach the Clavier Player"
Sir John Hawkins, from A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (Handel)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Four Letters
Carl Czerny, from "Recollections from My Life" (Beethoven)
Anton Schindler, from The Life of Beethoven and Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven

22. Opinion and Criticism
Charles Avison, from An Essay on Musical Expression
William Jackson, from Observations on the Present State of Music, in London
Johann Friedrich Reichardt, from Vertraute Briefe aus Paris
Hector Berlioz, from Voyage musical and A travers chants