Henricus Isaac gehört zu jenen frankoflämischen Komponisten, die durch ihr Wirken an zentralen musikalischen Institutionen Europas die Musik um 1500 maßgeblich beeinflussten. Seine Tätigkeit u. a. für Kaiser Maximilian I. brachte ihn in Kontakt mit verschiedenen kompositorischen Traditionen, Musizierpraktikten und Repertoires, was sich auch in der Art und Stilhöhe der Kompositionen niederschlägt. Der vorliegende Band präsentiert Beiträge, die anlässlich des 500. Todesjahres Isaacs im Jahr 2017 entstanden sind und die unterschiedlichsten Bereiche von dessen Wirken berücksichtigen. Schwerpunkte bilden Untersuchungen zu seinen Wirkungsstätten, Fragen der Quellenüberlieferung und die Auseinandersetzung mit der instrumentalen Rezeption und Aufführungspraxis seiner Werke.

Authorship is a pertinent issue for historical musicology and musicians more widely, and some controversies concerned with major figures have even reached wider consciousness. Scholars have clarified some of the issues at stake in recent decades, such as the places of borrowing and arranging in the creative process and the wider cultural significance of these practices. The discovery of new sources and methodologies has also opened up opportunities for reassessing specific authorship problems. Drawing upon this wider musicological literature as well as insights from other disciplines, such as intellectual history and book history, this book aims to build on what has already been achieved by focussing on keyboard music. The nine chapters cover case studies of authorship problems, the socioeconomic conditions of music publishing, the contributions of composers, arrangers, copyists and music publishers in creating notated keyboard compositions, the functions of attribution and ascription, and how the contexts in which notated pieces were used affected concepts of authorship at different times and places.

Nicholas Kenyon explores the enduring appeal of the classical canon at a moment when we can access all music—across time and cultures Immersed in music for much of his life as writer, broadcaster and concert presenter, former director of the BBC Proms, Nicholas Kenyon has long championed an astonishingly wide range of composers and performers. Now, as we think about culture in fresh ways, Kenyon revisits the stories that make up the classical tradition and foregrounds those which are too often overlooked. This inclusive, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic guide highlights the achievements of the women and men, amateurs and professionals, who bring music to life. Taking us from pianist Myra Hess’s performance in London during the Blitz, to John Adams’s composition of a piece for mourners after New York’s 9/11 attacks, to Italian opera singers singing from their balconies amidst the 2020 pandemic, Kenyon shows that no matter how great the crisis, music has the power to bring us together. His personal, celebratory account transforms our understanding of how classical music is made—and shows us why it is more relevant than ever.

We bring into full light some excerpts on musical subjects which were until now scattered throughout the most famous scientific texts. The main scientific and musical cultures outside of Europe are also taken into consideration. The first and most important property to underline in the scientific texts examined here is the language they are written in. This means that our multicultural history of the sciences necessarily also becomes a review of the various dominant languages used in the different historical contexts. In this volume, the history of the development of the sciences is told as it happened in real contexts, not in an alienated ideal world.

Mattias Lundberg investigates the historical role of a deviant psalm-tone, the tonus peregrinus, focusing on its applications in polyphonic music within all major branches of Western liturgy. Throughout the remarkably persistent tradition of applying this melody to polyphony, from the ninth century right up to the twenty-first, coeval music theory is able to shed light on the problems it has posed to modal and tonal practice at various historical stages. The musical settings studied hold up a mirror to the general development of psalmody, concerning practices of organum, diverse regional forms of fauxbourdon, cantus firmus composition, free imitation, parody, fugue, quodlibet, monody, and many other compositional techniques where the unique features of the psalm-tone have necessitated modification of existing practices. The conclusions drawn reveal a musico-liturgical tradition that was not in real danger of extinction until the general decline of Western liturgy that followed in the eighteenth century, at which point the historiography of the tonus peregrinus became a factor stimulating scholarly and musical interest in its alleged pre-Christian origins. Lundberg demonstrates that the succession of works based on the tonus peregrinus often preserved a distinctly conservative musical and theological conception even during periods of drastic liturgical reform.

Focusing on the royal chapel established by Philip II in Madrid, the essays in this richly illustrated volume offer a series of different perspectives on the development of the main court chapels of Europe. English version edited by Tess Knighton The royal chapel, in Europe as a whole and in Spain in particular, was a cultural institution where court ceremonial, politics, music and the arts were brought together in terms of space and function. The ramifications for the patronage and cultivation of the arts and the dynamic between music and the arts and the concept of kingship form the focus of the text. The phenomenon of groupings of singers, chaplainsand musicians at the service of the different European monarchies is of great significance both for the history of music, and the political and cultural history of the court in general. The royal chapel established by Philip II in Madrid was the central religious and musical institution of royal power until well into the eighteenth century, and using this as a focus, the essays in this richly illustrated volume offer a series of different perspectives onthe development of the main court chapels of Europe. These papers were delivered at the international seminar, 'La Real Capilla de Palacio en la época de los Austrias', under the auspices of the Fundación Carlos de Amberes,Madrid from 14 to 16 December, 2000. The volume is edited by Tess Knighton, Juan José Carreras and Bernardo García García, and translated by Yolanda Acker.