Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music by Stanley BoormanReview by: Dennis SlavinNotes, Second Series, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Sep., 1985), pp. 56-58Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/898246 .

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56 MLA Notes, September 1985

material" (p. 12), sums up the central as- sumptions on which his study is based. This formulation produces some tension, how- ever, with his earlier assertion that he pre- fers "to discuss Bach's style without refer- ring to separate 'Baroque' or 'Classical' components" (p. 3). Although he never rigorously defines just what such Baroque or Classical characteristics may be, he does in fact resort repeatedly to those labels in the course of analyzing particular musical events. Furthermore, while the standard of Classic style is not used as a yardstick for critical judgement, it seems to have gen- erated many of the criteria for stylistic analysis; Bach's style is thus often de- scribed not "on its own terms," but in terms of the ways in which it resembles or-more usually-differs from the style of a later generation.

Most of the stylistic analysis is focused on harmonic practice. Particular emphasis is laid on structural devices typical of har- monically unstable sections (especially the use of stepwise bass lines and sequence), the use of harmonic digressions and interpo- lations to extend sections and phrases, and the (largely harmonic) means used to bridge phrases, sections, and even movements. A discussion of the nature and importance of "variation" in eighteenth-century theory, as well as in Emanuel Bach's music, estab- lishes an especially useful principle for un- derstanding an essential element of Bach's compositional technique. "Variation" in this case does not refer to the altered restate- ment of a completed section of music, but rather to one possible way of working out a harmonic framework; the technique of variation is thus a "means of converting an abstract harmonic progression, in the form of a figured bass, into an individual com- position" (p. 25). The lengthy discussion of forms focuses almost exclusively on aspects of sonata form, which the author-taking his model partly from Heinrich Christoph Koch-conceives loosely enough so that it can be applied to the vast majority of Bach's instrumental movements. This form, it is repeatedly asserted, is "a rigid sonata form" (p. 163), serving merely as a "scaffolding" (p. 97) that is unresponsive to "the nature of his motivic material" (p. 49), a circum- stance that frequently leads "to a tension between form and content" (p. 50). Schu- lenberg concentrates on the middle parts of sonata-form movements, which he finds

most interesting because of' their freely modulating harmony, and concludes with analyses of two non-sonata works, a fan- tasia and a rondo with extended fantasia- like episodes. In all his analyses he gener- ally avoids f'unctional harmonic analysis, providing instead "sketches" showing two or three structural lines, with f'igures that spell out the vertical combinations (but that are seldom the subject of' the discussion). It seems unfortunate that the figured basses in Schulenberg's sketches are never related to the ones that Bach himself provided in his discussion of the free fantasia, which appears in the final chapter of his Versuch Uber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Part 2, Berlin, 1762).

In a few instances, sources for works un- der discussion are insufficiently or un- clearly identified; for the most part, how- ever, the author has simply depended on sources made available to him by Eugene Helm, and has not attempted to summa- rize the source information which will be available in Helm's forthcoming catalogue. Despite an occasional typo and somewhat inelegant musical examples, this volume, like the others in this series, is clearly and at- tractively produced.

JANE R. STEVENS Yale University

Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music. Edited by Stanley Boorman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. [xv, 282 p.; $49.50]

This important collection of essays ad- dresses a variety of issues concerning four- teenth- and fifteenth-century music, focus- ing primarily on the questions that arise when we try to perform that music in ways that will do it justice. Earlier versions of these papers were read at a conference at New York University in October 1981 or- ganized by Stanley Boorman. We should be grateful to him for bringing them to- gether in revised form and for his exem- plary preface. The methodologies used sometimes overlap but, as a group, these essays represent a cross-section of current approaches.

Several of these studies reflect a growing consensus among scholars that most writ-

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Book Reviews 57

ten polyphony of the time was performed entirely by voices. This applies to both sa- cred and secular music (agreement regard- ing the former is nearly unanimous, the latter remains controversial), regardless of whether the contemporary sources provide text for all of the parts. A wealth of evi- dence in support of a cappella performance of sacred music is presented in several of the present studies, while the application of this hypothesis to the song repertory has been largely prompted by the work of the Oxford philologist and musician Christo- pher Page, whose writings on the subject are frequently cited here.

In the essay that lies at the heart of this volume, David Fallows argues persuasively in favor of a cappella performance for "composed polyphony" of the first seventy- five years of the fifteenth century. For Fal- lows "the issue is surely not whether a par- ticular performance could conceivably have taken place in the middle ages, so much as what was then considered the best perfor- mance . . . the ideal performance, the one that is worth emulating in an attempt to re- vive the music today" (p. 109). This is a no- ble goal. Fallows cites virtually all of the relevant archival and literary documents of the period (a fifteen-page appendix to his study presents the music-related passages from the 1469 court ordinances of Charles the Bold), as well as the music that may be associated with them. His conclusions re- garding the performing forces they imply are compelling.

Scholars have often looked to pictures for evidence relating to performance practice. Three of the essays here use iconography in this manner, albeit from somewhat dif- ferent points of view. James McKinnon's contribution is a brilliant example of how one may approach the topic. McKinnon develops a series of five principles (at one point he calls them cautions) for evaluating iconographic evidence, the first of which is-to my mind-the most important: that a painting first "represents itself"; that the artist's primary concerns are aesthetic, not archival; and that a painting should no more be viewed as an inhereitly defective pho- tograph than should a piece of music be thought of as a "defective imitation of everyday sounds."

In his elegant essay on the trecento harp, Howard Brown distinguishes among three main types of harp and delineates their

historical and geographical distribution. He speculates convincingly regarding the mu- sical ranges of those instruments and their appropriateness for the music of Landini. The study concludes with a valuable ap- pendix listing seventy-five trecento artworks which show harps. This list is described as provisional-I counted eleven items added since the 1981 conference, and others will likely follow.

Alejandro Planchart's contribution is the latest in his important series of studies dealing with the chronology, style, and performance of fifteenth-century conti- nental Masses. Here he relates the appear- ance of multiple texts in the sources of sev- eral Masses to the influence of English procedures and to the development of the cantus firmus Mass on the continent. Plan- chart's illuminating analysis of the relation- ship between the textual problems in the sources of Dufay's Sanctus "Papale" and the composition's shifting textures is extremely interesting, as is his more general discus- sion of the relationship between texting practices and texture.

The composition of the ensembles that sang English church polyphony in the fourteenth century is explored by Roger Bowers, who reduces the possibilities to only a handful of voice range combinations. Bowers suggests that all of these combi- nations were singable by the standard group of three or four soloists employed by many English churches of that period.

Anne Hallmark's "French influence in northern Italy, c. 1400" provides a fasci- nating glimpse of contemporary intersec- tions of musical cultures and styles. Hall- mark's conclusions are based primarily on her extensive work in the Paduan archives and her analysis of notational practices. Much here is new and thought provoking; her forthcoming dissertation on Johannes Ciconia is eagerly awaited.

Several thorny transcription problems are solved by Ursula Gunther, taking clues from the texts of the pieces themselves. One small quibble: why, in her otherwise excellent transcription of the anonymous II vient bien (f. 63v of the Reina Codex), didn't Gunther consider texting the contratenor-espe- cially in light of the ease and naturalness of this solution?

In two of the more provocative and con- troversial essays here Tilman Seebass and Wolf Arlt urge musicologists (and, for Arlt,

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58 MLA Notes, September 1985

performers) to step beyond traditionally accepted limits of expertise. Seebass stresses the need for music historians to develop a deeper appreciation of the meaning a work of art had for its original audience in order to appreciate what it may say about music of its time. Arlt's essay argues that an au- thentic performance (not his adjective) of medieval instrumental music requires the performer to go beyond the pitches and rhythms given in the sources to the deeper structural levels of the music, and to im- provise accordingly.

The book is handsomely produced and contains fine plates, neatly tucked into their corresponding studies. In some cases, how- ever, enlargements of details of the paint- ings or illuminations would have been more helpful than reproductions of the com- plete works. The jacket contains two splen- did photographs of a manuscript fragment from the orbit and approximate vintage of Oxford Canonici 213. It is delightful to have such a readily accessible, clear facsimile of Grenon's Je ne requier, if libraries do not discard the book jacket. I hope that the other side of this single leaf containing Du- fay's Se la face ay pale, and Je loe amour by Binchois will soon be made similarly acces- sible.

DENNIS SLAVIN Princeton University

Organ Literature: A Comprehensive Survey. Second Edition. By Corliss Richard Arnold. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984. [2 v.; $43.50]

Corliss Richard Arnold, Professor of Music at Michigan State University, has provided a revision of the 1973 first edi- tion of his book. The work now stands as a two-volume conspectus of the organ lit- erature; each volume takes a different point of departure.

The first volume, a historical survey, provides an overview of the chronological development of organ music (according to national school) from the earliest manu- scripts to the early 1970s. Its relationship to the "course on organ literature" from which it grew is apparent-it is clearly in- tended as an introduction for the perform- ing student and will probably be most use- ful as a syllabus/text for such a course.

Five-and-one-half centuries of music can

hardly be discussed with rigor in only 275 pages, though the larger skeleton is in place. Historical information is presented in an expository rather than an interpretive fashion; discussions of music are descrip- tive rather than analytic. Arnold draws few parallels to the broader picture of the de- velopment of musical style; only minimal space is devoted to the organ itself.

Comparison with the first edition reveals that very few changes have been made in volume 1; such revisions are chiefly to be found in the charts of composers. Disturb- ing is the fact that no reference is made (in either footnotes or chapter bibliographies) to the large body of books and articles on the subject appearing since 1973. This lack is hardly mitigated by the selective list of "Corollary Readings" inexplicably located at the end of volume 2. No evidence of the important work accomplished in the past ten years is to be found in the text itself.

Volume 2, a "Biographical Catalog," is stronger and will be more generally useful. Its greatly expanded scope provided the impetus for the second edition. The vol- ume is essentially a guide to printed mod- ern editions of organ music: entries pro- vide basic biographical data concerning composers and listings of editions of their works. A wealth of information is to be found here for the performing musician- the catalogue will facilitate the often dif- ficult task of locating a performing edition of a particular organ composition and pro- vide information for programs. It is less useful for scholarly purposes.

The catalogue is somewhat difficult to use for several reasons. First, the criteria which determine whether a particular composer, work, or edition is included are somewhat vague. The catalogue is particularly strong for works of acknowledged masters and twentieth-century composers (much of this latter information is otherwise unavaila- ble), less strong for minor historical fig- ures, and anonymous compositions are al- most completely excluded. Second, works are not listed under uniform titles but rather under the titles of the editions or collec- tions in which they appear. In many cases this presents no problem, but it can lead to a lengthy search for a specific work by ma- jor composers such as J. S. Bach (BWV numbers are not indicated), Pachelbel, Ca- bez6n, and many others. Third, there are lacunae, especially concerning scholarly

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