Overview

For many centuries, the Western imagination has pictures the medieval period as a kind of odyssey: a journey that took Mankind to a strange country and ended in the Renaissance with his homecoming and the restoration of his inheritance. In this stimulating and provocative book, Christopher Page explores the kinds of generalisation that we habitually make about `the Middle Ages' and which, whether we know it or not, sustain the false image of a medieval odyssey. In chapters that proceed chronologically from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth, he examines what we suppose to be the serenity of medieval reflection on such matters as the `numerical' explanation of musical beauty, and he questions the modern tendency to regard Ars antiqua motets as music for `an intellectual elite'. Turning to the Ars Nova and beyond, he discusses the relation between fourteenth century innovations and contemporary science. A final chapter explores the powerful influence of Johan Huizinga's classic The Waning of the Middle Ages, upon musicology. Page's lively prose is full of ideas, is based upon first-hand learning, and is enriched by an uncommonly deep experience of medieval music.

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9780198166795

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Reviews

A valuable collection of essays ... Drawing on the wealth of recent research which has deepened our understanding of later chivalric orders and traditions. Page shows that writers on the fifteenth-century chansons have underestimated their quality of originality. * The Times *

A valuable collection of essays ... Drawing on the wealth of recent research which has deepened our understanding of later chivalric orders and traditions. Page shows that writers on the fifteenth-century chansons have underestimated their quality of originality. The Times

Author Information

Page is a frequent broadcaster on Radio 3 and has presented on TV. He writes for music journals, including Early Music, and is the Director of the early music vocal ensemble, Gothic Voices. One of their recordings of the music of Hildegard de Bingen, is one of the best-selling and best-known recordings of medieval music. He is author of Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France 1100-1300 (London, 1987), and The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100-1300 (London, 1989)

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