Walter Porter : Collected Works
- Submitting institution
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University of York
: A - A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - A - Music
- Output identifier
- 55005732
- Type
- R - Scholarly edition
- DOI
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- Title of edition
- Walter Porter
- Publisher
- A-R Editions
- ISBN
- 9780895798466
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Walter Porter is known only to a small group of musicologists and performers, yet he is a significant figure for two reasons: he was the composer of the last book of English madrigals and was the self-styled pupil of Claudio Monteverdi. He was also one of a small number of English composers from the first half of the seventeenth century who embraced ‘progressive’ Italianate methods of composition. As such, a critical edition of Porter’s Collected Works was long overdue.
The edition stands within a specific editorial paradigm. It demonstrates extreme rigour of methodology and an extensive knowledge of seventeenth-century printed and manuscript sources. The author’s archival work at Westminster Abbey (where Porter was Master of the Choristers) clarified and corrected a number of biographical facts, and the particular rigour of the edition arises from the complexity of the source materials. Porter’s works survive primarily in two printed collections: Madrigales and Ayres (1632) and Mottets of Two Voyces (1657). Both sources have issues (only one complete set of Madrigales and Ayres survives and two versions of the Mottets exist) and exemplars of both publications were annotated extensively by the composer. The section of the introduction that concerns the printing and publication of Porter’s music is a significant contribution to the study of the methods and practices of music printing in Commonwealth England. All thirty-two existing partbooks of Porter’s two publications were examined in detail to build up a picture of the print histories; this, in turn, informed the editorial decisions made throughout the edition. The introduction explores the significance of Walter Porter’s music, as it does his links with Richard Dering and Angelo Notari (the subjects of the author’s other REF submissions).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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