The Critical Nexus

The Critical Nexus is a milestone in every respect, which appeals to specialists and novices alike. It deserves to be ranked among the classic studies on the subject and will be of lasting value to anybody interested in the formation of music thought in the Middle Ages. --Fontes Artis Musicae The Critical Nexus will become required reading for musicologists, music theorists, and medievalists interested in the reception of ancient texts. --Speculum A meticulously researched survey of early medieval theory and its application to plainsong, it will form the starting point for future research in the field. --James Grier, Professor of Music History, University of Western Ontario A comprehensive study, fine-tuning our understanding of the challenges faced by medieval theorists as they adopted terminology and concepts from Antiquity to make sense of the music of their own time - the chant repertory of the Christian church. Professor Atkinson brings a unique perspective to this history of tone-system, mode, and notation through his command of Greek and Latin text sources, combined with his forage into the chant repertory itself. The scholarly community will prize this contribution for years to come. --Dolores Pesce, Professor of Music, Washington University in St. Louis In this meticulous examination of the texts on music that were the most widely read from the ninth to the eleventh century, Charles Atkinson reveals how medieval theorist musicians reinterpreted the tone systems of ancient Greece and the writings of Latin grammarians to explain and notate the new practice of plainchant. His elegant and remarkably lucid argument is the crowning achievement of decades of scholarship: it not only explains early medieval tonality but resolves the longstanding problem of the derivation of the earliest Carolingian notations. It truly transforms our understanding of medieval music. Every musician and medievalist will benefit from reading it. -- Barbara Haggh-Huglo, Professor of Music, University of Maryland, College Park This important book is of a kind to stimulate one's thoughts about the inherent nature of medieval chant and to provoke discussions about contested issues; above all, however, it presents in al its wealth of detail the evidence for the remarkable story of the earliest developments in the history of Western art music. --Music & Letters All readers, regardless of their level of specialization, will find their understanding both broadened and deepened. To be sure, this is a work that merits to become a classic, that deserves to be read and reread, studied and discussed among students and scholars time and again, and is therefore highly recommended to all musicologists and libraries. --Notes