Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture is a Festschrift ("Megschrift") in honor of Margaret Bent's 65th Birthday. Throughout, the essays are characterized by accessible prose and meticulous scholarship. The book is particularly vital because, while many of the essays had a former life as conference and seminar papers, very little of the material here is available elsewhere in print.
It is divided into three basic topic areas: "The Tradition of Music Theory" (essays by Susan Rankin, Gilles Rico, Christian Thomas Leitmeir, and Barbara Haggh); "Vitry and Machaut (essays by Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Andrew Wathey, Keven Brownlee, Alice V. Clark, Lawrence M. Earp, and Virginia Newes); and "Influence, Models, and Intertextuality (essays by John Milsom, David Howlett, Reinhard Strohm, Theodor Dumitrescu, Cristle Collins Judd, and Bonnie J. Blackburn).
The book covers a vast topic, one that pervades much of early music, examined from a wide variety of scholarly vantage points through myriad ideological lenses. It contains specific and general information about the use and transmission of knowledge as it impacts Medieval and Renaissance music, with a particular focus on florilegia, the Medieval and Renaissance equivalent of a dictionary of quotations.
The specific practice of composition in this period receives attention from virtually all of the writers-whether it be of melody lines, or, as in the case of Bonnie Blackburn's insightful essay "The Eloquence of Silence: Tacet Inscriptions in the Alamire Manuscripts," the use, primarily by scribes, of myriad ways to fill blank space created by the need for one line to be silent. Particularly important and pervasive in Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture is the practice of borrowing. As the editors state, "As technology replaces the human mind in this endeavour, a question that has always lurked in the shadows comes into sharp focus, namely the degree to which the citations that are traced were intended by the author" (xxiii).
Two of the essays provide nuanced information about the music of the spheres: Susan Rankin's "Naturalis Concordia Vocum Cum Planetis: Conceptualizing the Harmony of the Spheres in the Early Middle Ages' and Gilles Rico's "Auctoritas cereum habet nasum: Boethius, Aristotle, and the Music of the Spheres in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries' While the base ideology of musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis remains unchallenged, the scholars present new material and creative interpretations that reconcile conflicting ideologies of Boethius and Aristotle.
Also of particular note are essays by Wathey and by Clark. Wathey's "Authoritas and the Motets of Philippe de Vitry" provides a clear explanation of florilegia and its explicit and implicit uses. Clark's "Machaut Reading Machaut: Self-Borrowing and Reinterpretation in Motets 8 and 21" offers a significant explanation not just of borrowing, but of the extent to which the borrowing impacts interpretation.
For scholars seeking research topics, several of the essays are an excellent source, particularly (but not exclusively) those by Earp and Milsom. In Earp's "Declamatory Dissonance in Machaut," the author applies Graeme Boone's compositional model for Dufay to Machaut with successful results, ones that have implications for the method's use with other composers. Earp concludes, "I think that consideration of declamation according to Boone's model ought to be part of our analytical arsenal. He provides us with a general point of departure, a horizon of expectation against which one can measure normal practice and exceptional practice." Moreover, regarding "the possible emergence of the model in repertories equally dependent on rhyme and syllable count and yet not precisely measured in rhythm ..."a fresh look at the question focusing on rhyme, syllable count, and patterns of declamation may well provide a new refinement of our views of words and number in medieval music and open a window on the establishment of text-setting conventions"(122).
John Milson also provides a gateway for new scholarship, in his essay "Imitatio, "Intertextuality," and Early Music," by focusing on the changing connotations of "intertextuality." He concludes, "Armed, then, with a suitable lexicon and the ability to read any musical work against the "deep models" of its "grammar" and attendant procedures-- instead of (or as well as) against the "surface model" of any specific antecedent--the analyst will be well equipped to evaluate not only a work's intertextuality, but also its individuality" (151).
Overall, this is an outstanding volume, not only as a tribute to Margaret Bent, but taken together, as an informative, provocative study of a seminal topic in Medieval and Renaissance compositional practice and analysis.