Table of Contents

Prologue: the culture of Renaissance instrumental music; 1. Renaissance instrumental music and its patrons; 2. A source-based history of Renaissance instrumental music; 3. The players; 4. Instrumental music for celebration and ceremony; 5. The instrumentalist's workshop: pedagogy, intabulation, and compositional process; 6. Renaissance instruments: images and realities; Epilogue.

Promotional Information

This is the first in-depth study in any language exploring the vast cultural range of instrumental music during the Renaissance.

About the Author

Victor Coelho is Professor of Music and Director of the Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University. A Fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, his books include Music and Science in the Age of Galileo (1992), The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music (1995), Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela (Cambridge, 1998), and The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar (Cambridge, 2003). In 2000 he received the Noah Greenberg Award given by the American Musicological Society for outstanding contributions to the performance of early music, resulting in a recording (with Alan Curtis) that won a Prelude Classical Award in 2004. His recordings as lutenist and director appear on the Stradivarius, Toccata Classics and Teldec labels. Keith Polk is a Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, and has also taught at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, the New England Conservatory, and Regents College, London. He is one of the foremost authorities on Renaissance instrumental music, and has produced numerous articles and several books on the subject, including German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992). He is also a professional player of the French horn, having performed with the San Diego Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Baroque, and the Smithsonian Chamber Players. His Festschrift, Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300–1600, edited by Timothy McGee and Stewart Carter, was published in 2013.

Reviews

'… a rich and variegated picture of how instrumentalists created, functioned, and lived. Specific case studies of individual Renaissance instrumentalists and events serve to illustrate trends in instrumental practice during the long Renaissance.' Michael Eisenberg, Notes

'Victor Coelho and Keith Polk have both made significant contributions to the study of instrumental music in the Renaissance … a welcome and much needed contribution to the scholarship of instrumental music in the Renaissance.' Eric Thomas, European History Quarterly