. First book to consider courtly song and Marian devotion together in medieval and Renaissance music
. Beautifully illustrated with carefully selected and rarely seen works of art
There is a striking similarity between Marian devotional songs and secular love songs of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Two disparate genres--one sacred, the other secular; one Latin, the other vernacular--both praise an idealized, impossibly virtuous woman. Each does so through highly stylized derivations of traditional medieval song forms -- Marian prayer derived from earlier Gregorian chant, and love songs and lyrics from medieval courtly song. Yet despite their obvious similarities, the two musical and poetic traditions have rarely been studied together. Author David Rothenberg takes on this task with remarkable success, producing a useful and broad introduction to Marian music and liturgy, and then coupling that with an incisive comparative analysis of this devotional form with the words and music of secular love songs of the period.
David J. Rothenberg is Assistant Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University and the 2007 recipient of the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society for his article The Marian Symbolism of Spring, ca. 1200-ca. 1500: Two Case Studies (JAMS 59, 2006).
Contents:
Tables
Music Examples
Figures
Abbreviations
A Note on Texts and Translations
1. Introduction: Devotion to the Virgin and Earthly Love
Sacred and Secular Realms
Symbolic Harmony in Medieval and Renaissance Polyphony
Liturgical and Devotional Framework
Foundations and Case Studies
2. The Assumption Story in Two Thirteenth-Century Motet Families
The Narrative of First and Second Assumption Vespers
The Flower, Christ, and Mary in a French Motet on Flos filius eius
Mary's Ascent to Heaven in a Bilingual Regnat Motet
3. Springtime and Renewal over the In seculum Tenor
Spring, Eastertide, and Mary
Springtime Dance, a Pastourelle Motet, and the In seculum Hockets
Intertextuality in an In seculum Motet Family
Into the Fourteenth Century
4. Guillaume Dufay's Vergene bella, the Cantilena Motet, and the Italian Lyric Tradition
Cantilena, Chanson, and Cantilena Motet
Theologizing Love in Italian Lyric
The Canzone and Vulgar Eloquence
5. Walter Frye's Ave
304 pages | 13 illustrations and 28 music examples | 235x156mm
Hardback | 20 October 2011
