Music, scholasticism and reform Salian Germany 1024-1125 [Hardcover]

This fascinating study looks at music and its intellectual context in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Drawing on a rich body of theoretical literature and manuscript sources, this book paints a detailed picture of the study of music in eleventh-and early twelfth-century Germany. It focuses on the activity of a group of prominent intellectuals based in the monastic and cathedral schools of the German Kingdom, charting their sources and shared concerns, while subtly examining their reception and modification of each others' ideas. Distilling a considerable amount of German scholarship, it situates music in its proper place among other intellectual developments that took place in eleventh-century Germany.

This book is above all a study of motivations and thought processes of a group of medieval thinkers: it and will appeal to specialist and non-specialist ecclesiastical, intellectual and cultural historians, as well as to historians of music and of medieval culture.

Introduction

1. The south-German circle: an historical introduction

2. Ancient doctors and modern masters: the south-German circle at work

3. Dialectic and the theory of music

4 .Plato, his interpreters and the south-German circle

5. Textbook codices': the music theory manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries

Bibliography

Index

T. J. H. McCarthy has held teaching and research positions at Trinity College, Dublin, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto and New College of Florida.