Early music

Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical music.

Terminology

Interpretations of historical scope of "early music" vary. The original Academy of Ancient Music formed in 1726 defined "Ancient" music as works written by composers who lived before the end of the 16th century. Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries would have understood Early music to range from the High Renaissance and Baroque, while some scholars consider that Early music should include the music of ancient Greece or Rome before 500 AD (a period that is generally covered by the term Ancient music).^[1] Music critic Michael Kennedy excludes Baroque, defining Early music as "musical compositions from [the] earliest times up to and including music of [the] Renaissance period".^[2]

Musicologist

Today, the understanding of "Early music" has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence."[5]

Revival

In the later 20th century there was a resurgence of interest in the performance of music from the Medieval and Renaissance eras, and a number of

The revival of interest in Early music has given rise to a scholarly approach to the performance of music. Through academic

• Ancient music
• Early music festivals
• History of music
• List of Baroque composers
• List of early music ensembles
• List of Medieval composers
• List of Renaissance composers
• Neo-Medieval music

Citations

Further reading

• Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl. 2008. Aspects of Early Music and Performance. New York: AMS Press.
  ISBN 978-0-404-64601-1
  .
• Donington, Robert. 1989. The Interpretation of Early Music, new revised edition. London and Boston: Faber and Faber.
  ISBN 0-571-15040-3
  .
• Epp, Maureen, and Brian E. Power (eds.). 2009. The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music: Essays in Honour of Timothy J. Mcgee. Farnham, Surrey (UK); Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
  ISBN 978-0-7546-5483-4
  .
• Haynes, Bruce. 2007. The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford and New York:
  ISBN 978-0-19-518987-2
  .
• Remnant, M. "The Use of Frets on Rebecs and Medieval Fiddles" Galpin Society Journal, 21, 1968, p. 146.
• Remnant, M. and Marks, R. 1980. "A medieval 'gittern' ", British Museum Yearbook 4, Music and Civilisation, 83–134.
• Remnant, M. "Musical Instruments of the West". 240 pp. Batsford, London, 1978. Reprinted by Batsford in 1989
  ISBN 9780713451696
  . Digitized by the University of Michigan 17 May 2010.
• Remnant, Mary (1986). English Bowed Instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor Times. Clarendon Press.
  ISBN 978-0-1981-6134-9
  .
• Remnant, Mary (1989). Musical Instruments: An Illustrated History : from Antiquity to the Present. 54. Amadeus Press.
  ISBN 978-0-9313-4023-9
  .
• Roche, Jerome, and Elizabeth Roche. 1981. A Dictionary of Early Music: From the Troubadours to Monteverdi. London: Faber Music in association with Faber & Faber; New York: Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 0-19-520255-4
  (US, cloth).
• Sherman, Bernard. 1997. Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers. New York: Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 0-19-509708-4
  .
• Stevens, Denis. 1997. Early Music, revised edition. Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides. London: Kahn & Averill.
  ISBN 1-871082-62-5
  . First published as Musicology (London: Macdonald & Co. Ltd, 1980).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Early music.

• Early Music FAQ
• Renaissance Workshop Company the company which has saved many rare and some relatively unknown instruments from extinction.
• Celebrating Early Music Master Orlando Gibbons
• Early MusiChicago – Early Music in Chicago and Beyond, with many links and resources of general interest