A Dictionary of Early Music: From the Troubadours to Monteverdi

Here is an invaluable ready reference to the world of early music. No other single book currently available gives the reader the essential facts about the composers, their music, and the bewildering variety of instruments for which is was written.
There are entries for some 700 composers from the troubadours to Monteverdi, featuring especially those composers whose music is available in modern editions and on recordings. Every medieval or Renaissance instrument likely to be heard in modern performance is described, often with the help of line drawings. The dictionary also provides a succinct and lucid guide to technical terms, musical forms, manuscript and printed sources, Renaissance music publishers, and the more important contemporary theorists. A Dictionary of Early Music has been compiled for everyone who goes to concerts and buys recordings of early music. Students, performers, and listeners alike will find it indispensable.

Jerome Roche, Lecturer in Music at Durham University, has written the standard textbooks on Palestrina and The Madrigal. He has provided over 100 articles for the new Grove's Dictionary of Music, to which his wife Elizabeth Roche, a specialist in German baroque church music, has also contributed.