Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France - Hardcover

Page, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198163460 ISBN 13: 9780198163466

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1993

Synopsis

For many centuries, the Western imagination has pictured the medieval period as a kind of odyssey: a journey that took humankind to a strange country and ended in the Renaissance with its homecoming and the restoration of its inheritance. In this stimulating and provocative book, Christopher Page, Director of the acclaimed early music vocal group Gothic Voices, explores the kinds of generalizations that we habitually make about "the Middle Ages" and which, whether we know it or not, sustain the false image of a medieval odyssey. In chapters that proceed chronologically from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, he examines what we suppose to be the serenity of medieval reflection on such matters as the "numerical" explanation of musical beauty, and he questions the modern tendency to regard Ars antiqua motets as music for "an intellectual elite." Turning to the Ars Nova and beyond, he discusses the relation between fourteenth century innovations and contemporary science. A final chapter explores the powerful influence of Johan Huizinga's classic The Waning of the Middle Ages upon musicology. Page's lively prose is full of provocative ideas, and is enriched by an uncommonly deep experience of medieval music.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Page is Lecturer in Medieval English Literature, Cambridge University, and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Review

"This is a stimulating book, full of lively issues and ideas, that grasps many controversial nettles with vigour."--Early Music

"Page's talents are displayed to exceptional advantage in his analysis of the textual and musical features of the rondeau."--The Catholic Historical Review

"A new book or a new compact disc from Christopher Page is always a welcome event. His exceptional talents as scholar and performer lend a particular persuasiveness to the views about early music that he advocates....The originality of Page's work resides in his wide-ranging command of sources linked to the experience of translating such knowledge into elegant music making....Discarding Images is a rich and insightful book....A book that deserves to be read and discussed. It will both please and provoke; but even at its most provocative, it will surely increase our understanding of music and culture in medieval France."--Speculum

"The strengths of this book stem from the author's contact with music performance, his knowledge of the technical medieval literature and his lively awareness of the organic untidiness of cultural life."--French History

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0198163460
• ISBN 13: 9780198163466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246