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Annotated Bibliography of Non-Costuming Books
Many of these works are actually published scores (music), which seem to have the distressing habit of not having a publication date printed anywhere on them. To make it slightly clearer which book I mean (I hope), I have included library of congress call numbers with each citation
Orgel Oder Instrument Tabulaturbuch, Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach; Charles Jacobs, ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984. Original publication 1571 and 1583. M6 A54O73
166 pieces originally in organ tablature, reproductions of the pages from the introductory sections as well as a few samples of what the tablature looks like. The introductory sections are also transcribed and translated, which is exceptionally useful because they include instructions on fingering and tuning a keyboard instrument. There is a long discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of the music, which I didn’t read this time around, but which I’m sure is very informative. The pieces themselves aren’t that thrilling – maybe they sound better on the organ, but on the other hand they are a lot closer structurally to the pieces I learned to write in my music theory class, and now I have another source to imitate if I’m writing keyboard music myself.
Score: 
. Exceptionally informative and another good source, but the pieces aren’t super fun to play.
The History of Keyboard Music to 1700, Willi Apel. Translated and revised by Hans Tischler. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1972.
This is the most comprehensive and scholarly book I know of on this topic. It explains the forms, and outlines all of the major composers, sources, and manuscripts. It doesn't have much to say about the theory underlying the various time periods, but there are other books for that.
Score:
Opera Novi de Balli, Francesco Bendusi. London Pro Musica Edition, 1974. “Italian Instrumental Music of the Renaissance”, volume 5. Original printing 1553. M486.B46 O64
24 dance tunes in 4 parts. The introduction says they are not arrangements of popular dances, but suggests they might be dances original to the composer which no longer have extant choreography. This is good because it means if someone was so inclined they could write new choreographies, but I don’t know enough about Italian dances yet and I don’t have a 4-part consort to hear what the music sounds like.
Musica Britannica: A National Collection of Music. Volume XIV: John Bull Keyboard Music I. Edited by John Steele and Francis Cameron, with additional material by Thurston Dart. Second Revised Edition. Stainer and Bell, London, 1967.
This has a whole bunch of introductory material on the keyboard instruments of the time, especially containing a lot of information about pipes on pipe organs which is techical material that has never made any sense to me, but perhaps pipe organ players like or need to know this stuff. Anyway, then it has a big long chronology of John Bull’s life, which is really cool because I discovered that he was from Hereford and had some of his early career there. That, of course is cool because my family is also from Hereford and I’m quite familiar with the Hereford Cathedral, where he was the organist, and my persona is also living in Hereford, so maybe I can work some sponsorship of John Bull’s career into my persona.
John Bull is one of my favorite composers from the FWVB. He tried a number of things that were really new and experimental for the time, including an enharmonic Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and an In Nomine in 11/4, still one of my favorite intellectual pieces of music. I think this compilation also includes many pieces not to be found in FWVB, and it was highly recommended to me by a music laurel (Mistress Cecille de Beaumund), so it gets
Score:
Nobilta di Dame, Fabritio Caroso; Translated from the printing of 1600, edited, and with an introduction by Julia Sutton, the music transcribed and edited by F. Marian Walker. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986.
If this is the only modern translation and transcription of Caroso, I guess I can’t complain too much, except it REALLY bugs me that instead of retaining Caroso’s names for the steps, they’ve tried to translate the names of the steps into English, eg. falling jump for trabucchetto. I have trouble enough keeping all of the steps straight in Italian. Anyway, I think these dances are a little beyond my technical ability at the moment, but maybe someday. And hey, I can always play the lute tablature on the keyboard while other people dance.
Score:
Danze da ‘Nobilta di Dame’ for recorder, viola da gamba, and lute, Marco Fabrizio Caroso. Pietro Verardo ed. Ricordi, Milan, 1975. M386 C36 N63
Transcriptions of some of the dances from Nobilta di Dame. They appear to be the same arrangements as are found in the Walker edition of the book, but if you were only going to have one of these books you would find the Walker book to be much more useful because it also has the dance steps in it.
Materials for the study of the fifteenth century basse danse, Frederic Crane. Brooklyn, Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1968.
This book discusses the various sources for bassedanses, brings together the instructions and choreographies from the various manuals, and reprints the dance melodies, mostly as black breves. I'm not sure there's an awful lot of useful information in it, at least, if you don't read Renaissance Castilian or French (the instructions are all reproduced in their original languages), but it might come in handy some day.
Score:
Music for Harpsichord by Francois Dandrieu. Edited by John White. Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, 1965.
Now I remember why I don’t like French Baroque music. There are, as someone once famously said, too many notes. Every second note has some kind of ornament on it, and the French baroque keyboard composers had about ten billion different signs for ornaments, each one signifying something slightly but subtly different. Anyway, French Baroque music = frivolous, flighty, and over-ornamented. German Baroque music says so much more with so much less. Very intellectual. Bach is still The Master.
Score:
,
but only because I think it's a good edition.
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in two volumes, from Dover Publications
I don't have the full citation for this with me, but suffice it to say this is the most comprehensive source of late 16th century English keyboard music that I am aware of, and a fairly faithful edition. It even has facsimile pages of one or two of the actual leaves, in case someone wanted to hand copy some of her favorite early keayboard music for an arts and sciences project.
Score:
Style and Interpretation: An Anthology of 16th - 19th Century Keyboard Music Edited with introductions and notes by Howard Ferguson. Volume 1: Early Keyboard Music (I) England and France. Oxford University Press, London, 1963. MT245 F45 1963
Ferguson gives an introductory paragraph or two for each piece, describing possibilities and likelihoods of how the piece might have been played when it was written, and sometimes something about the construction or form of the piece, but leaves the actual music free of editorializing. This book has only a few pieces from the pre-baroque period, but Ferguson also has several books entitled "Early (national) Keyboard Music" which focus more specifically on Renaissance music.
Score:
because of limited selection -- other Ferguson books would get more pints.
Premier Livre de Danseries, 1559, Jean d’Estrees; Bernard Thomas ed. London, Pro Musica Edition. In the series “Early Dance Music”.
A whole bunch of bransles for four-part consort, none of which appear to have extant choreography in Arbeau or elsewhere. This is either bad because it means we can’t use them for anything, neutral because if we had a four-part consort we could play them anyway and have fun listening to them, or good because we can write our own choreography for them. I’m voting for the last.
Score:
. Might be upgraded if I can get a consort together to read them and/or if I write steps for them.
Oeuvres Completes Pour Clavecin en 2 tomes et 4 volumes, Johann Jakob Froberger. Howard Schott, ed. Tome 2 - Volume 2: Suites et pieces diverses. Heugel & Cie., Paris. M22.F74 S36 T.2 V.2
More than a little bit out of period (ie., early baroque) and therefore not to be potentially performed at events or anything, but fun little pieces nonetheless. This is a good edition without lots of extraneous stuff added by the editor.
Score:
Samtliche Werke fur Tasteninstrumente (Complete Keyboard Works), Andrea Gabrieli. Giuseppe Clericetti, ed. Vol v: Canzoni alla francese e ricercari ariosi. Diletto Musicale, Doblingers Reihe Alter Musik, ca 1997. M22.G326 C54 HEFT5
This is a good edition because the editor hasn't gone through and added a bunch of tempo and dynamic markings that were never supposed to be there, which causes me to assume that it's a fairly faithful transcription of the original. I'm not such a big fan of Gabrieli's keyboard works -- like Clementi Sonatinas they mostly consist of scale passages, but a few were quite nice.
Score:
Twenty-five dances for four instruments, Valentin Haussmann. London Pro Musica Edition, 1975. “German Instrumental Music of the late Renaissance” volume six. M486 H38N48
Exactly what it sounds like. None of the dances have names, and they are all in cut time with a nachtanz (afterdance) in 3. Most of the nachtanzes are triple time variations of the dances. I have never seen any choreography for German dances of this period, but they are all like this no matter what source you see them in. Maybe one day I will find some choreography.
Dance History Research: Perspectives from Related Arts and Disciplines, proceedings of the Second Conference on Research in Dance. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku, ed. Congress on Research in Dance, New York, 1969. GV 1583 A1C64
- "Perspective Three, Part II: Reconstruction of Sixteenth-Century Dances", p. 56-63, Julia Sutton. How to be a dance authenticity nazi. Not super-informative, except about which other publications the author feels to not be authentic enough.
- "Perspective Three, Part III: Bassedanse, Bassadanza and Ballo in the Fifteenth Century", p. 64-79, Ingrid Brainard. Fairly in-depth discussion of bassedanse steps, less so of Italian steps. A bit of a whiggish article - 15th-century dance just being one little step closer to the grand development of ballet, and of course the bassedanse steps are described in terms of ballet foot "positions", but on the other hand, the original instructions are also included, so you can sort of figure it out from there if you don't speak ballet-ese.
- Speaking of dancer-ese, in another publication by the same group (CORD) an entire renaissance dance is transcribed into something called "Labanotation", which takes about 15 pages to convey the whole dance. I bet the same dance, translated from Italian into English with a few short notes on what the terms mean would take less than one full page. But who knows, maybe this Labanotation is as much more precise than the written word for a dancer than music notation is more precise than "Play F# below middle C for a breve with the left hand, the right hand playing a melodic F#- scale in semiquavers beginning on A above middle C and ending on ..."
Score: , little useful information from an "I want to dance in the SCA" perspective.
A Performer's Guide to Renaissance Music, Jeffery T. Kite-Powell, ed. From the series "Performers' Guides to Early Music". Schirmer Books, New York, 1994. ML457 P48 1994
This book is a collection of introductory articles on renaissance instruments, music theory, performance practice, etc. It is aimed at the junior professor from the music department who has just been informed that she is heading the Early Music ensemble this year, having never studied early music before, but except for the recommendations on syllabus structure and promoting concerts, that makes it a pretty good resource for anyone else who needs an introduction to Renaissance music. In addition to excellent and accessible articles, it has a very extensive bibliography of more detailed and in-depth books and articles on renaissance music and performance practice.
Score:
Known World Dance Symposium III GV 1583.K58 2001
I'm really not sure how to cite this one -- it's a sort of self-published job, like a big collection of handouts from an Ithra, but it came from the University library and it has a LC call number on it. Anyway, it is very useful from a standpoint of having been produced by SCA people for an SCA audience. It has dance steps for Italian dances, listed together with discography suggestions. Most fun of all, it has info on the Old Measures (Inns of Court dances) which is automatically of interest to me as an Elizabethan type and a law student.
Score:
Inventory of 15th Century Bassedanze, Balli, and Balletti, W. Thomas Marrocco. CORD Dance Research Annual XIII, 1981, New York University Press. GV 1583 A1C64
Just what it sounds like, a listing of which dances are found in which manuscripts. No choreography, but the dance tunes are given in modern notation.
Score:
I reserve the right to change my ranking of this once I have had a chance to look at it more closely.
Musicque de Joye (29 Dances), Jacques Moderne; Bernard Thomas, ed. London, Pro Musica Edition. In the series “Early Dance Music”
Like the d’Estrees, A bunch of dance music for four-part consort for which we appear to have no extant choreography. This one has a number of different sorts of dances – basse danses, tourdions, pavanes, gaillardes, and branles.
Score:
Anthology of Early English Harpsichord Music. Compiled and Edited by Anthony Newman. Great Performer’s (sic) Edition, G. Schirmer, Now York, 1984.
Excerpts from My Ladye Nevill’s Booke, the Cosyn Virginal Book (cool, I’ve never heard of it before…must try to track it down), Parthenia, Priscilla Bunbury’s Virginal Book (also one I haven’t seen, though I think it’s slightly out of period), and then more than half from the (in)famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Unfortunately the first two pages are missing, I imagine there might have been some kind of introduction or something that is now lost, as well as at least the first page of the first piece in the collection.
Anyway, because of its containing mostly FWVB pieces it’s not something I need to own, although I like the fact that it has pieces from other collections that I’m not so familiar with. I think if you were looking for an introductory compilation to Virginal music this would be a good one. There are nebulous letter notations over most of the ornaments (probably explained in the now-lost first two pages) and in some places the editors have added fingering suggestions that are clearly not what the original composers intended, but I think it’s mostly a pretty good edition.
Score:
The Second Part of Musick's Hand-Maid Revised and Corrected by Henry Purcell. Transcribed and edited by Thurston Dart, second revised edition. London, Stainer and Bell Ltd. M21 P85M86
Purcell, like Froberger, is definitely OOP but lots of fun to play. One of Purcell's hornepypes (not in this book) is the usual music for Hole in the Wall. A good edition with no extraneous stuff added by the editor.
Score:
Aus alten Spielbuchern: 32 Tanze und Stucke aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert fur Tasteninstrumente, Anna Barbara Speckner, ed. Mainz, Edition Schott, 1972.
The first half of this book contains pieces from sources previous to the FWVB, and the other half contains pieces from the FWVB or contemporary sources. There is a really short preface in English that says nothing more than, “I hope you enjoy playing these pieces.” Thing is, most of the FWVB pieces vary either slightly or drastically from the edition I’m familiar with (which is a fairly faithful edition) so then you can’t be sure that the other pieces are a very faithful edition either. She sort of seems to have arranged them for organ. Anyway, like the Tagliapietra, it gets some points for having pieces I can’t find anywhere else, but loses points for the faithfulness of the edition.
Score:
Antologia di Musica Antica e Moderna per Pianoforte, Tagliapietra, ed. Volume 1: Grandi Maestri del XVI Sec. Ricordi, 1932. M21 T33 R52 V.1
Where the Gabrieli gets few pints because I don't like the pieces, this gets few pints because it was enthusiastically edited by Tagliapietra (at least I think Tagliapietra is the editor) to make it more "pianistic", because obviously all those early keyboard composers would have made their works sound exactly like late Romantic works with delicate shadings of dynamics and umpteen billion changes in tempo if they had only known the full range of possibilities open to the piano player. Worst are the "liberal transcriptions", which are at least marked as such, with all voices doubled at the octave, but you really can't be sure how many liberties he's taken with the other transcriptions either.
Score: , but only because there are a few works in here which to my knowledge have not been published in any other modern source.
A Dance Pageant: Renaissance and Baroque Keyboard Dances, Donald Waxman, ed., with Wendy Hilton. Boston, ECS Publishing, 1992.
From the works I am familiar with in this compilation, I’d say it’s a fairly faithful edition. Not too many dances from the Renaissance period, though, mostly Baroque, and the notes on how the dances were done were astoundingly un-useful. I suspect the notes on the dances were actually included to help the pianist better interpret the dances, rather than to help someone learn the dances. A fun book, but not really germane to renaissance dance and adding nothing new to renaissance keyboard music.
Score:
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