Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) occupies a special place in the history of music as the first significant European composer who concentrated his major creative efforts into the realm of instrumental music. In this collection of papers based on the Quadricentennial Frescobaldi Studies Conference, sixteen American and European specialists examine important aspects of the life and works of this composer and of his role in the creation of a new musical language of the Baroque.

He was a prodigious virtuoso - it is said that his first organ recital at St. Peter's in Rome attracted an audience of 30,000 - and he was unquestionably the most important Italian composer of keyboard music before Bach. Baroque in every sense of the word - flamboyant, elaborate, richly ornamented, sometimes bizarre - his music was tremendously influential on composers of his own day and on musicians of future generations. The author's vivid description of Girolamo Frescobaldi's career adds up to a picture of musical life in seventeenth-century Italy: the prevalence of wealthy patrons; the kinds of church music required for services in this period; the private musical entertainments common in palaces and villas; the instruments available to Frescobaldi in the churches and residences where he played and supervised performances. Hammond discusses antecedents and sources of Frescobaldi's style, the forms he used, his thematic devices and harmonic and contrapuntal techniques. A final chapter tackles performance questions. Here is the first full-length book on Girolamo Frescobaldi in English, and the most complete in any language.

This book, the first of its kind, is a study of Bolognese instrumental music during the height of the city's musical activity in the late seventeenth century. The period?marked by a rapid expansion of the cappella musicale of the principal city church, San Petronio, by the founding of the Accademia Filarmonica, and by increasingly lavish patronage of musical events?witnessed the proliferation of repertory for instrumental ensembles. This music not only reveals crucial stages in the development of the sonata and concerto but also recalls the elaborate church rituals and the opulent public and private celebrations in which they figured prominently. Moreover, the late seventeenth century saw the heyday of Bolognese music publishing, whose output of sonatas and related instrumental genres easily surpassed that of the once-dominating Venetian presses. The approach taken here departs from composer- and genre-centered monographs on Italian instrumental music in order to illuminate an array of topics that center on the Bolognese repertory: the social condition of instrumentalist-composers; the acumen of music publishers in the creation of the repertory; the diverse contexts of the instrumental dances; the influence of liturgical traditions on sonata topoi; the impact of psalmodic practice on tonal style; and the innovative climate that led to experiments with scoring and form in the earliest instrumental concertos. In sum, this book not only illustrates the historically significant and defining features of the music, but also links the surviving repertory to the flourishing musical culture in which it was created.

The twentieth-century revival of early music unfolded in two successive movements rooted respectively in nineteenth-century antiquarianism and in rediscovery of the value of original instruments. The present volume is a collection of insights reflecting the principal concerns of the second of those revivals, focusing on early keyboards, and beginning in the 1950s. The volume and its authors acknowledge Canadian harpsichordist Kenneth Gilbert (b. 1931) as one of this revival’s leaders. The content reflects international research on early keyboard music, sources, instruments, theory, editing, and discography. Considerations that echo throughout the book are the problematics of source attributions, progressive institutionalization of early music, historical instruments as agents of artistic change and education, antecedents and networks of the revival seen as a social phenomenon, the impact of historical performance and the quest for understanding style and genre. The chapters cover historical performance practice, source studies, edition, theory and form, and instrument curating and building. Among their authors are prominent figures in performance, music history, editing, instrument building and restoration, and theory, some of whom engaged with the early keyboard revival as it was happening.

Claudio Monteverdi is now recognized as the towering figure of a critical transitional moment of Western music history: relentless innovator in every genre within chamber, church and theatre music; self-proclaimed leader of a 'new dispensation' between words and their musical expression; perhaps even 'Creator of Modern Music'. During recent years, as his arrestingly attractive music has been brought back to life in performance, so too have some of the most outstanding musicologists focussed intensely on Monteverdi as they worked through the 'big' questions in the historiography and hermeneutics of early Baroque music, including musical representation of language; compositional theory; social, institutional, cultural and gender history; performance practices and more. The 17 articles in this volume have been selected by Richard Wistreich to exemplify the best scholarship in English and because each, in retrospect, turns out to have been a ground-breaking contribution to one or more significant strands in Monteverdi studies.

Examining the roots of the classical fugue and the early history of non-canonic fugal writing, Paul Walker's Fugue in the Sixteenth Century explores the three principal fugal genres of the period: motet, ricercar, and canonza. The volume treats each genre in turn, tracing the fugue's development throughout the century and highlighting important moments and trends along the way. Taking a two-tiered approach, Walker, on one level, examines fugue from the perspective of contemporary musicians, and on another level, takes into account fugue's later history and the elements that came to play a significant role in its formation. Walker is the first scholar to successfully tie together the various strands of the "pre-Bach fugue" thanks to the growing availability of editions of the repertories involved. He also takes account of recent work elucidating the change in compositional approach around 1500 from a basis in cantus firmus and canon to one favoring non-canonical, fugal imitation. Featuring well-chosen musical examples to illustrate the compositional developments of the sixteenth century, Fugue in the Sixteenth Century is a definitive study for both specialist musicologists and organists and harpsichordists alike.