Ars Antiqua, Music and Culture in Europe c. 1150-1330

The long thirteenth-century saw the emergence and proliferation of a diverse and unprecedented outpouring of musical activity known as the "ars antiqua". Polyphonic, monophonic, liturgical, paraliturgical, secular, Latin, and vernacular genres were cultivated and disseminated throughout Europe on a scale not seen since the imposition of the liturgical plainchant repertory centuries earlier. This volume presents eleven new contributions that address the principal polyphonic genres of the time (organum, motet, conductus) as well as vernacular and monophonic songs, issues of musical and poetic aesthetics, manuscript tradition and production, authorship, liturgical practices, the continuance of "ars antiqua" ideas well into the fourteenth-century era of the "ars nova", and the role that information technologies may play in future "ars antiqua" scholarship.
With its examination of musical and cultural contributions from all across Europe through a wide variety of different perspectives by a range of scholars from all over the globe, this book both contributes to and substantiates the healthy state of inquiry into one of the most significant artistic achievements of pre-modern Europe.