A Briefe and Short Introduction (1631) is one of about a dozen late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English music instruction books that go beyond the basics for beginners, and it is the last of the writings dealing with the art of singing and el

Who were the first owners of the music published in England in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries? Who went to ‘the dwelling house of ... T. East, by Paules wharfe’ and bought a copy of Byrd’s Psalmes, sonets, & songs when it appeared in 1588? Who purchased a copy of Dowland’s First booke of songes in 1597? What other books formed part of their music library? In this survey of surviving books of music published before 1640, David Greer has gleaned information about the books’ early and subsequent owners by studying the traces they left in the books themselves: handwritten inscriptions, including names and other marks of ownership - even the scribbles and drawings a child of the family might put into a book left lying about. The result is a treasure trove of information about musical culture in early modern England. From inscriptions and marks of ownership Greer has been able to re-assemble early sets of partbooks, as well as collections of books once bound together. The search has also turned up new music. At a time when paper was expensive, new pieces were copied into blank spaces in printed books. In these jottings we find a ‘hidden repertory’ of music, some of it otherwise undiscovered music by known composers. In other cases, we see owners altering the words of songs, to suit new and personal purposes: a love-song in praise of Daphne becomes a heartfelt song to ‘my Jesus’; and ‘Faire Leonilla’ becomes Ophelia (perhaps the first mention of this character in Hamlet outside the play itself). On a more practical level, the users of the music sometimes made corrections to printing errors, and there are indications that some of these were last-minute corrections made in the printing-house (a useful guide for the modern editor). The temptation to ‘scribble in books’ was as irresistible to some Elizabethans as it is to some of us today. In doing so they left us clues to their identity, how they kept their music, how they used it, and the multifarious ways in which it played a part in their lives.

What were the methods and educational philosophies of music teachers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance? What did students study? What were the motivations of teacher and student? Contributors to this volume address these topics and other -- including gender, social status, and the role of the Church -- to better understand the identities of music teachers and students from 650 to 1650 in Western Europe. This volume provides an expansive view of the beginnings of music pedagogy, and shows how the act of learning was embedded in the broader context of the early Western art music tradition.

John Wallis (1616-1703), was one of the foremost British mathematicians of the seventeenth century, and is also remembered for his important writings on grammar and logic. An interest in music theory led him to produce translations into Latin of three ancient Greek texts - those of Ptolemy, Porphyry and Bryennius - and involved him in discussions with Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, Thomas Salmon and other individuals as his ideas developed. The texts presented in this volume cover the relationship of ancient and modern tuning theory, the building of organs, the phenomena of resonance, and other musical topics.

Thomas Ravenscroft is best-known as a composer of rounds owing to his three published collections: Pammelia and Deuteromelia (both 1609), and Melismata (1611), in addition to his harmonizations of the Whole Booke of Psalmes (1621) and his original sacred works. A theorist as well as a composer and editor, Ravenscroft wrote two treatises on music theory: the well-known A Briefe Discourse (1614), and 'A Treatise of Practicall Musicke' (c.1607), which remains in manuscript. This is the first book to bring together both theoretical works by this important Jacobean musician and to provide critical studies and transcriptions of these treatises. A Briefe Discourse furthermore introduces an anthology of music by Ravenscroft, John Bennet, and Ravenscroft's mentor, Edward Pearce, illustrating some of the precepts in the treatise. The critical discussion provided by Duffin will help explain Ravenscroft's complicated consideration of mensuration, in particular.

This volume of essays draws together recent work on historical music theory of the Renaissance. The collection spans the major themes addressed by Renaissance writers on music and highlights the differing approaches to this body of work by modern scholars, including: historical and theoretical perspectives; consideration of the broader cultural context for writing about music in the Renaissance; and the dissemination of such work. Selected from a variety of sources ranging from journals, monographs and specialist edited volumes, to critical editions, translations and facsimiles, these previously published articles reflect a broad chronological and geographical span, and consider Renaissance sources that range from the overtly pedagogical to the highly speculative. Taken together, this collection enables consideration of key essays side by side aided by the editor‘s introductory essay which highlights ongoing debates and offers a general framework for interpreting past and future directions in the study of historical music theory from the Renaissance.