Keyboard Music Before 1700 (Studies in Musical Genres and Repertories)

Keyboard Music Before 1700 is an introduction and guide to the most significant keyboard literature of the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Covering music written for organ as well as stringed keyboard instruments, Keyboard Music Before 1700 surveys the central keyboard repertory before Bach. The book explores through representative works the styles, textures, genres, instruments, and performance practices that characterize the keyboard music of this period.
Because national musical traditions were quite distinct in this period, the volume is divided into chapters devoted to the main regions, with major composers treated within the context of national styles. Each chapter has been written by a specialist in the music of a particular region: Alan Brown writes on England, where Byrd and the virginalists began a tradition of finely crafted keyboard works; Bruce Gustafson on France, where the Couperins and other composers evolved a "classic" style all their own; John Butt on Germany, where the blind fifteenth-century organist Conrad Paumann became the first celebrity of the keyboard; Robert Judd on Italy, where grand basilicas inspired majestic compositions for the organ; and Robert Parkins on Spain and Portugal, where keyboard music retained a Renaissance flavor well into the seventeenth century. Volume editor Alexander Silbiger has supplied a general introduction to the rich and diverse keyboard repertory of the years before 1700.

Alexander Silbiger is Professor of Music at Duke University. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.