See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/270446797

The Science and Art of Renaissance Music

Article  in  Renaissance Quarterly · December 2002

DOI: 10.2307/1262168

CITATIONS READS
2 392

2 authors, including:

Susan Weiss
Johns Hopkins University
14 PUBLICATIONS   5 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

published in The Hopkins Review View project

Review in Renaissance Quarterly View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Susan Weiss on 29 November 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

The Science and Art of Renaissance Music. (Reviews). 1/18/18, 9'18 PM

The Science and Art of Renaissance Music.

(Reviews).
Print
Author: Weiss, Susan
Article Type: Book Review
Date: Dec 22, 2001
Words: 702
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly
ISSN: 0034-4338

James Haar, The Science and Art of Renaissance Music. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1998. xv + 389 pp. $45. ISBN: 0-691-02874-5.

James Haar, has selected sixteen of his essays, published between 1966 and 1993 to form a
collection that serves to complement two of his earlier books, Essays on Italian Poetry ant/Music
in the Renaissance (1986) and The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century (1988). The
choices -- treasures from his many years of work in the field -- form a cohesive unit of chapters
divided into five sections -- Music in Sixteenth-Century Society, Aspects of Renaissance Music
Theory, On the Italian Madrigal, Antonfrancesco Doni: Writer, Academician, and Musician, and
Renaissance Music in Nineteenth-Century Eyes -- all related to theoretical, practical, and cultural
aspects of Renaissance music, including two chapters on Romantic views of Renaissance music,
one on Berlioz and the 'First Opera,' and another on musical historiography in which Haar
examines the sixteenth century through the eyes of historians writing at a distance of some two
hundred or more years. Haar's notes, at the end of each chapter, in addition to contributing new
bibliographic material, enable the reader to know what Haar still finds sound and justified in his
arguments and what he wishes to alter in language, in specific facts or details. In his preface,
Haar describes how he and his editor Paul Corneilson went about selecting from a very long list
of his writings. Corneilson is to be credited with a fine job of editing and sprucing from diverse
and, in one or two cases, flawed publications.

It is more than a convenience to have the collected writings of so distinguished a scholar of

Renaissance music in one volume, particularly because some of the articles are available in less
accessible journals or festschriften. It is an added treat because these pieces are models of
eloquently written scholarship in musicology. Haar's essays on Castiglione and Cosimo Bartoli,
for example, explore aspects of humanistic philosophy and literature, as well the disciplines of art
and architecture necessary to develop an understanding of where and how music fit into the
cultural schema of the times. He speculates on controversial Renaissance topics, such as why
this or that writer favored one or another Renaissance composer -- in the case of Bartoli,
Ockeghem and Josquin -- or neglected another -- Arcadelt in favor of Verdelot, with whom Bartoli
had a personal relation. Making notes in this early chapter will prove useful in drawing the
complete picture as one reads subsequent articles, particularly Chapter 13, A Gift of Madrigals to
Cosimo I: The MS. Florence Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabichi XIX, 130. Similarly, one
with an interest in Zarlino or Doni would not be limited to the information presented in the specific

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=82554411 Page 1 of 2
The Science and Art of Renaissance Music. (Reviews). 1/18/18, 9'18 PM

chapters devoted to discussions of their writings. The cross relations and interweaving create a
palette of many shades of understanding and of multifaceted approaches to discovering the
complexities of Renaissance musical thinking. Some of the material in a couple of the chapters in
section II, Aspects of Renaissance Music Theory, may prove challenging to the non-musicologist,
particularly the discussions of the complexities of musical composition, but the musical examples
are for the most part clearly described in the text and serve as necessary illustrations. Both
Chapter 7, Lessons in Theory from a Sixteenth-Century Composer, and Chapter 8, Josquin as
Interpreted by a Mid-Sixteenth-Century German Musician, are among the articles reprinted from
what would not be considered mainstream publicat ions. Despite technical challenges posed by
some of the musical examples, these chapters are welcome inclusions for the information Haar
provides on how composers learned, on the use of the treatises, and for the questions he raises
which provide fertile ground for future research. Chapter 4, The Frontispiece of Gafori's Practica
Musicae (1496), originally published in this journal (27 [1974]:7-22) is a perfect microcosm of
musicological research and writing that remains both accessible and applicable to historians with
interests in the visual arts, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, philology, and the classics.

In our quest for good texts to use as a possible foundation for a seminar on Renaissance music
and culture, Haar's latest collection, perhaps alongside his earlier works on Italian poetry and
music and the Italian madrigal, is highly recommended.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Renaissance Society of America

Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=82554411 Page 2 of 2

View publication stats