Although the musical achievements of the Franco-Flemish school have attracted many writers, this book is the first to show how the artists and composers of Bruges worked side by side to shape their acoustic and visual environment and to express their fellow citizens' spiritual needs in art. By combining the methods of modern musicology and those of local historiography, Strohm vividly recreates the music of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Flanders in its socio-economic context, from the pageants and minstrelsy of the court to popular entertainments and the earliest public concerts.

This entirely new volume of NOHM takes account of developments in late-medieval music scholarship, along with significant changes in the performance practice of the late-medieval repertory, witnessed during the latter half of the 20th century.

This book collects twelve of the papers given at a conference held at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., on 1-3 April 1993, in conjunction with the exhibition `Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture'. A group of distinguished scholars considered music in medieval and Renaissance Rome. The volume presents a series of wide-ranging and original treatments of music written for and performed in the papal court from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. New discoveries are offered which force a radical reevaluation of the Italian papal court as a musical centre during the Great Schism. A series of motets for various popes are subject to close analysis. New interpretations and information are offered concerning the repertory of the papal chapel in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the institutional life of the papal singers, and the individual biographies of singers and composers. Thought-provoking, even controversial, evaluations of the music of composers connected with, or thought to be connected with, Rome and the papal court, such as Ninot le Petit, Josquin, and Palestrina round out the volume.

An exploration of what self-referential compositions reveal about late medieval musical networks, linking choirboys to canons and performers to theorists.

Spanning a millennium of musical history, this monumental volume brings together nearly forty leading authorities to survey the music of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. All of the major aspects of medieval music are considered, making use of the latest research and thinking to discuss everything from the earliest genres of chant, through the music of the liturgy, to the riches of the vernacular song of the trouvères and troubadours. Alongside this account of the core repertory of monophony, The Cambridge History of Medieval Music tells the story of the birth of polyphonic music, and studies the genres of organum, conductus, motet and polyphonic song. Key composers of the period are introduced, such as Leoninus, Perotinus, Adam de la Halle, Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut, and other chapters examine topics ranging from musical theory and performance to institutions, culture and collections.

Public religious practice lay at the heart of civic society in late medieval Europe. In this illuminating study, Andrew Brown draws on the rich and previously little-researched archives of Bruges, one of medieval Europe's wealthiest and most important towns, to explore the role of religion and ceremony in urban society. The author situates the religious practices of citizens - their investment in the liturgy, commemorative services, guilds and charity - within the contexts of Bruges' highly diversified society and of the changes and crises the town experienced. Focusing on the religious processions and festivities sponsored by the municipal government, the author challenges much current thinking on, for example, the nature of 'civic religion'. Re-evaluating the ceremonial links between Bruges and its rulers, he questions whether rulers could dominate the urban landscape by religious or ceremonial means, and offers new insight into the interplay between ritual and power of relevance throughout medieval Europe.

This book seeks to understand the music of the later Middle Ages in a fuller perspective, moving beyond the traditional focus on the creative work of composers in isolation to consider the participation of performers and listeners in music-making.