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Improvisation and Inventio in the Performance of Medieval Music

A Practical Approach

Angela Mariani (Associate Professor of Musicology, Associate Professor of Musicology, Texas Tech University)

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English
Oxford University Press Inc
09 November 2017
"Improvisation and Inventio in the Performance of Medieval Music: A Practical Approach is an innovative and groundbreaking approach to medieval music as living repertoire. The book provides philosophical frameworks, primary-source analysis, and clear, actionable practices and exercises aimed at recovering the improvisatory and inventive aspects of medieval music for contemporary musicians. Aimed at both instrumentalists and vocalists, the book explores the utilization of musical models, the inventive implications of medieval notation, and the ways in which memory, mode, rhetoric, and primary source paradigms inform the improvisatory process in both monophonic and polyphonic music of the Middle Ages. Angela Mariani, an experienced performer of both medieval music and folk and traditional musics, rediscovers and explicates the processes of imagination, invention, and improvisation which historically energized both medieval music in its own period and in its revival in our own time. Based on decades of research, university teaching, ensemble direction, collaboration, and performance, Mariani's impassioned stance that ""the elusive element of inventio, as the medieval rhetoricians would have called it, must always be provided by the performer in the present,"" emphasizes medieval music performance practice as a dynamic and still-vital tradition. Students, teachers, directors, and those interested in the wealth of expressive beauty found in the music of the middle ages will likewise find value and meaning in her clear and accessible prose, and in the practical processes and exercises that make this book unique within the literature of medieval performance practice."
By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 231mm,  Width: 155mm,  Spine: 18mm
Weight:   422g
ISBN:   9780190631185
ISBN 10:   019063118X
Pages:   264
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
"CONTENTS List of Figures List of Tables List of Examples List of Practices 1. The Process of Inventio 2. Models: Living and ""Imagined"" 3. Notation and Memoria: What's Not on the Page 4. Mode: The Vocabulary of Melody 5. Inventing Melody: Old Instruments, New Voices 6. Inventing Organum: Memoria and Formula 7. Playing Poetry: The Rhetoric of Invention 8. The Long Memory: Reflections on Teaching Medieval Music APPENDIX 1: Mode Models BIBLIOGRAPHY"

Angela Mariani is Associate Professor of Musicology and director of the Collegium Musicum at the Texas Tech University School of Music. She studied medieval music with Thomas Binkley, Benjamin Bagby, and Barbara Thornton, and was a founding member of Altramar medieval music ensemble, who toured internationally and recorded seven CDs for the Dorian label. Since 1991, she has hosted the nationally-syndicated public radio program Harmonia. In 2017 she was the recipient of Early Music America's Thomas Binkley Award, given for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by a university early music ensemble director.

Reviews for Improvisation and Inventio in the Performance of Medieval Music: A Practical Approach

One of the major challenges for students of medieval music is understanding the basic principles of composition and performanceDLchant, organum, modes, language, or a combination of these. As the subtitle indicates, Mariani (Texas Tech Univ. School of Music) provides a commonsense and practical approach to this specialized topic, giving real-life and step-by-step guidelines for tackling and being successful in the understanding and application of the concepts and constructs of medieval music ... A must-have book for those involved in the performance or study of medieval music. --Choice


  • Winner of Winner of the Texas Tech University First Place President's Faculty Book Award.

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