Music Theory in Britain, 1500–1700: Critical Editions
About the Book Series
The purpose of this series is to provide critical editions of music theory in Britain (primarily England, but Scotland, Ireland and Wales also) from 1500 to 1700. By 'theory' is meant all sorts of writing about music, from textbooks aimed at the beginner to treatises written for a more sophisticated audience. These foundational texts have immense value in revealing attitudes, ways of thinking and even vocabulary crucial for understanding and analysing music. They reveal beliefs about the power of music, its function in society and its role in education, and they furnish valuable information about performance practice and about the context of performance. They are a window into musical culture every bit as important as the music itself.
The editions in this series present the text in its original form. That is, they retain original spelling, capitalization and punctuation, as well as certain salient features of the type, for example, the choice of font. A textual commentary in each volume offers an explication of difficult or unfamiliar terminology as well as suggested corrections of printing errors; the introduction situates the work and its author in a larger historical context.
Jessie Ann Owens is assisted on the series by Series Assistant Editor, Minji Kim.
Isaac Vossius's De poematum cantu et viribus rhythmi, 1673: On the Music of Poetry and Power of Rhythm
1st Edition
By Peter Martens
May 27, 2024
Dr Peter Martens provides the first complete edited English translation of, and commentary on, Issac Vossius’s De poematum cantu et viribus rythmi, a late seventeenth-century work of Continental musical humanism, all the more interesting for being published in England and dedicated to royalist ...
John Birchensha: Writings on Music
1st Edition
By Christopher D.S. Field, Benjamin Wardhaugh
December 19, 2018
John Birchensha (c.1605-?1681) is chiefly remembered for the impression that his theories about music made on the mathematicians, natural philosophers and virtuosi of the Royal Society in the 1660s and 1670s, and for inventing a system that he claimed would enable even those without practical ...
A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song by William Bathe
1st Edition
Edited
By Kevin C. Karnes
May 25, 2016
Although unjustly neglected by modern writers, William Bathe’s contributions to music pedagogy in late sixteenth-century England were profound. Bathe’s A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (1596) not only includes the first explication of a four-syllable, non-hexachordal solmization method ...
Synopsis of Vocal Musick by A.B. Philo-Mus.
1st Edition
Edited
By Rebecca Herissone
March 18, 2016
Synopsis of Vocal Musick, by the unidentified A.B., was published in London in 1680 and appears to have only ever had one edition. Its relatively short shelf-life belies its importance to the history of early British music theory. Unlike other English theoretical writings of the period, the ...
Thomas Salmon: Writings on Music: Two volume set
1st Edition
By Benjamin Wardhaugh
August 29, 2013
Thomas Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury with which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical writing, the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute quickly descended. Salmon proposed a radical reform ...
A Briefe and Short Instruction of the Art of Musicke by Elway Bevin
1st Edition
Edited
By Denis Collins
August 28, 2007
Elway Bevin's A Briefe and Short Instruction of the Art of Musicke begins with rudimentary instruction on consonance, dissonance and proportions but quickly turns to a presentation of examples of plainsong-based canonic writing of increasing complexity and remarkable diversity. Bevin's book was ...
A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint by Thomas Campion: and Rules how to Compose by Giovanni Coprario
1st Edition
Edited
By Christopher R. Wilson
September 28, 2003
Regarded as one of the most important English music treatises in the seventeenth century, Thomas Campion's A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint reveals progressive ideas about the latent theory of inversions, the fundamental bass, cadences and tonality, and the major-minor octave scale....