Media of Secular Music in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (1110-1650)

This book brings a new perspective to secular music sources from the Middle Ages and early modernity by viewing them as media communication tools, whose particular features shape the meaning of their contents. Ranging from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries, and across countries and genres, the chapters offer innovative insights into the historical relationship between music and its presentation in a wide variety of media.

The lens of media enables contributors to expand music history beyond notated music manuscripts and instruments to include images, furniture, luxury items, and other objects, and to address uniquely visual and material aspects of music sources in books and literature. Drawing together an international group of contributors, the volume pays close attention to the medial and material dimensions of musical sources, considering them as multifaceted objects that not only contain but also determine the nature of the music they transmit.

Transforming our understanding of musical media, this volume will be of interest to scholars of musicology, art history, and medieval and early modern cultures.

Vincenzo Borghetti is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Verona, Italy. His research interests include Renaissance polyphony and opera. His essays and articles have appeared in Early Music History, Acta musicologica, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, and Imago Musicae, among other journals, and in several edited collections. He is the co-editor with Tim Shephard of The Museum of Renaissance Music: A History in 100 Exhibits (2023).

Alexandros Maria Hatzikiriakos is Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, UK. His research focuses on auditory history and cultural history of music in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. His publications include essays on sound and music in early modern Crete, medieval vernacular song, and the monograph Musiche da una corte effimera: Lo Chansonnier du Roi (Paris, BnF, fr. 844) e la Napoli dei primi angioini (2020).