Music in the Renaissance

This is a fine book on a wonderful period in music history. The Renaissance era produced a revolution in music and many of us feel that this era was a high point in liturgical music. The music of this period was the subject of a great deal of research and performance in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but has fallen off somewhat in the past decade or two. That is a shame, because it is remarkably beautiful music. It is also music that can be played by informed amateurs. It requires an informed approach and great aesthetic sensibility, and the more skill the better. However, it doesn't require the kind of virtuosity that, say, Chopin or Brahms might demand. That is where this book comes in. It is a large book, but it is full of wonderful information about the music of these centuries and covers the various developments throughout Europe. Reese divides the period into two large parts: development and then diffusion. Within these parts he looks at what happens by geography. This is important because there were very different traditions and developments that slowly made their way to other courts. There are many musical examples that are translated into our musical notation (reading the old mensural notation is a specialized discipline of its own). Reese includes some illustrations, but not an abundance of them for a book of this size. If you don't know the music of Dufay, Josquin, Ockeghem, Brumel, Obrecht, and Isaac to name just a very few, well, you owe yourself the wonderful experience of the art of these geniuses. I am a huge fan of Josquin des Prez and consider him one of the supreme geniuses of music, but I am willing to discuss this with anyone with a different view. We used this book in music school as a text in music history courses on this period and I found it quite interesting and very helpful. It remains a very important text on this fabulous era in music history.