Early music is music, especially Western art music, composed prior to the Classical era.[1][failed verification] The term generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1760), and, according to some authorities such as Kennedy (who excludes Baroque),[1]Ancient music (before 500 AD). According to the UK's National Centre for Early Music, the term "early music" refers to both a repertory (European music written between 1250 and 1750 embracing Medieval, Renaissance and the Baroque) – and a historically informed approach to the performance of that music.[2] However, today this term 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."[3]
According to Margaret Bent, "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness. Accidentals … may or may not have been notated, but what modern notation requires would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint".[4]
^ abMichael Kennedy, "Early Music"", in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second revised edition, Associate Editor Joyce Bourne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-869162-9.
^"About Us". National Centre for Early Music. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
^Bent, Margaret. 1998. "The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis", p. 25. In Tonal Structures in Early Music, edited by Cristle Collins Judd, 15–59. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1998; Criticism and Analysis of Early Music 1. New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8153-2388-3.
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.
Haskell, Harry. 1988. The Early Music Revival: A History. London and New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-01449-3.
Haynes, Bruce. 2007. The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-518987-2.
Judd, Cristle Collins. 1998. "Introduction: Analyzing Early Music". In Tonal Structures in Early Music, edited by Cristle Collins Judd, 3–13. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1998; Criticism and Analysis of Early Music 1. New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8153-2388-3.
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 0-571-10035-X (UK, cloth); ISBN 0-571-10036-8 (UK, pbk); 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).
