The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 54
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.1017/9780511675874
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN
- 9780521195942
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/music/medieval-and-renaissance-music/cambridge-history-sixteenth-century-music?format=HB&isbn=9780521195942
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The overall conception of this component volume of the now completed Cambridge History of [European art] Music makes a deliberate break with the general organisational approach of the other volumes in the series for two main reasons. First, rather than producing yet another historical survey of ‘major’ and ‘minor’ composers, musical genres, and institutions, arranged by national characteristics, which has been the approach in most standard single-volume treatments of the music history of this era, going back at least to Reese’s Renaissance Music (1950), the editors set out to treat music as something that happens, experienced by people in their daily lives in particular locations and social environments, and in different intellectual and ideological contexts. Secondly, we took advantage of the overall division of the series into single-century volumes to ‘liberate’ the music of the sixteenth century from its traditional confinement within the construct of ‘the Renaissance’, a contested and decidedly anachronistic historiographical term, particularly ill-suited to understanding the musical culture of this era. The jointly written Introduction sets out this approach through an extended critical re-examination of both the premises and conclusions of the historical narratives about many different aspects of the music of this period as they have been constructed over the last 70 years or so, and particularly, the taxonomies and delimitations that they have imposed on the definition of what in fact constitutes ‘music’ and musical experience. The two single-authored chapters by Wistreich, ‘Music and War’ and ‘Musicians’ Lives’ exemplify in different ways how a broad range of evidence, much of it normally considered either secondary or downright irrelevant to conventional music histories, can be mustered and organised to produce a fresh and rich understanding of the role of music and musical experience within the broader context of sixteenth-century European social, cultural and political history.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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