A re-evaluation of the Latin-texted motet during the age of Du Fay.

Ruth I. DeFord offers new insights on Renaissance theories of rhythm and their application to the analysis and performance of music.

The first large-scale study of how fifteenth-century motets were used across Western Europe, dispelling the mysteries surrounding these outstanding works.

Through forty-five creative and concise essays by an international team of authors, this Cambridge History brings the fifteenth century to life for both specialists and general readers. Combining the best qualities of survey texts and scholarly literature, the book offers authoritative overviews of central composers, genres, and musical institutions as well as new and provocative reassessments of the work concept, the boundaries between improvisation and composition, the practice of listening, humanism, musical borrowing, and other topics. Multidisciplinary studies of music and architecture, feasting, poetry, politics, liturgy, and religious devotion rub shoulders with studies of compositional techniques, musical notation, music manuscripts, and reception history. Generously illustrated with figures and examples, this volume paints a vibrant picture of musical life in a period characterized by extraordinary innovation and artistic achievement.

This volume explores the work of one of medieval music's most important figures, and in so doing presents an extended panorama of musical life in Europe at the end of the middle ages. Guillaume Du Fay rose from obscure beginnings to become the most significant composer of the fifteenth century, a man courted by kings and popes, and this study of his life and career provides a detailed examination of his entire output, including a number of newly discovered works. As well as offering musical analysis, this volume investigates his close association with the Cathedral of Cambrai, and explores how, at a time when music was becoming increasingly professionalised, Du Fay forged his own identity as 'a composer'. This detailed biography will be highly valuable for those interested in the history of medieval and church music, as well as for scholars of Du Fay's musical legacy.

When we sing lines in which a fifteenth-century musician uses ethereal polyphony to complain mundanely about money or hoarseness, more than half a millennium melts away. Equally intriguing are moments in which we experience solmization puns. These familiar worries and surprising jests break down temporal distances, humanizing the lives and endeavors of our musical forebears. Yet many instances of self-reference occur within otherwise serious pieces. Are these simply in-jokes, or are there more meaningful messages we risk neglecting if we dismiss them as comic relief? Music historian Jane D. Hatter takes seriously the pervasiveness of these features. Divided into two sections, this study considers pieces with self-referential features in the texts separately from discussions of pieces based on musical self-referential elements. Examining connections between self-referential repertoire from the years 1450–1530 and similar self-referential creations for painters' guilds, reveals musicians' agency in forming the first communities of early modern composers.