Discarding Images : Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Clarendon Paperbacks)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
For many centuries, the Western imagination has pictured the medieval period as a kind of odyssey: a journey that took humankind to a strange country and ended in the Renaissance with its homecoming and the restoration of its inheritance. In this stimulating and provocative book, Christopher
Page, Director of the acclaimed early music vocal group Gothic Voices, explores the kinds of generalizations that we habitually make about "the Middle Ages" and which, whether we know it or not, sustain the false image of a medieval odyssey. In chapters that proceed chronologically from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century, he examines what we suppose to be the serenity of medieval reflection on such matters as the "numerical" explanation of musical beauty, and he questions the modern tendency to regard Ars antiqua motets as music for "an intellectual elite." Turning to the Ars Nova
and beyond, he discusses the relation between fourteenth century innovations and contemporary science. A final chapter explores the powerful influence of Johan Huizinga's classic The Waning of the Middle Ages upon musicology. Page's lively prose is full of provocative ideas, and is enriched by an
uncommonly deep experience of medieval music.
Discarding Images : Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Clarendon Paperbacks),Christopher Page,Oxford University Press,0198166796,1000-1328,1328-1600,500-1400,Civilization,France,History & Criticism - General,History and criticism,Medieval Music,Music,Social Aspects Of Music,Cultural studies,Medieval & Renaissance music (c 1000 to c 1600),Music / History & Criticism,Music | Music History, Western | Early Music, Medieval, & Renaissance,World history: c 500 to C 1500,c 1000 CE to c 1500,c 1500 to c 1600
Discarding Images : Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Clarendon Paperbacks)
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