Description
Book SynopsisDesigned to guide students through this key topic in music studies, this book examines what Gregorian chant is, where it comes from, and how it took on the form and features which make it instantly recognizable. Containing examples from medieval manuscripts, the book shows how chants are made and notated.
Trade Review'The clarity of prose and organization are to be emulated and Hiley's welcoming style allows the reader to feel at home with some of the most challenging concepts in musicology … Maintaining the highest standards of both scholarship and writing, it is easy to imagine this book's becoming an indispensable classic for general readers.' James Vincent Maiello, Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association
'… comprehensive, written in a deliberately engaging and accessible manner, and invokes the typical twentieth-century priorities, such as the distinction between 'sacred' and 'secular', 'The Church' viewed as a more or less monolithic entity, the 'evolution' of monastic groups, 'forms' and 'styles', and the notion of 'repertory'.' Nancy van Deusen, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching
Table of ContentsPreface; 1. Gregorian chant in the service of the church; 2. The beginnings of Roman chant; other rites and other sorts of chant; 3. Tradition and innovation in medieval chant: from the ninth to the sixteenth century; 4. Thinking about Gregorian chant in the Middle Ages, and notating it; 5. New chants for new times: from the sixteenth century to the present; Aspects of performance; Glossary.
