The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music: Essays in Honour of Timothy J. McGee

The experience of music performance is always far more than the sum of its sounds, and evidence for playing and singing techniques is not only inscribed in music notation. This volume of fourteen essays presents a cross-section of the newest research on performance issues in medieval and renaissance music. The subject is approached from a broad perspective, drawing on complementary disciplines such as dance history, art history, music iconography and performance traditions from beyond western Europe. In doing so, the volume continues some of the many lines of enquiry pursued by its dedicatee, Timothy J. McGee, over a lifetime of scholarship devoted to practical questions of playing and singing early music.Expanding the bases of enquiry to include various social, political or aesthetic contexts both broadens our knowledge of the issues pertinent to early music performance and informs an understanding of other cultural activities within which music played an important role. The book is divided into three sections: Viewing the Evidence, where visually based information is drawn upon to address questions of music performance; Re-hearing Repertories, taking up ongoing discussions in early music scholarship involving performance questions that pertain to entire repertories; and Social and Historical Contexts, where diplomatic, commercial and cultural connections are considered in particular detail.The book will be of value not only to specialists in early music but to all scholars of the medieval and renaissance periods whose interests intersect with the visual and aural aspects of music.