Böcker i Music Theory in Britain, 1500-1700: Critical Editions-serien

The critical edition of John PlayfordâEUR(TM)s Introduction to the Skill of Musick (1672, Sixth edition) represents the contents of PlayfordâEUR(TM)s seminal pedagogical treatise in the middle of its development. Although PlayfordâEUR(TM)s Introduction was one of the most famous music texts of the period, a satisfactory modern edition of its contents has not yet been published. This is due, in part, to the fact that the interior contents of the Introduction changed markedly throughout its publication run from 1654 to 1730 (though post-1694 changes are minimal). This edition addresses this issue by presenting not only the transcription of the 1672 edition, but detailed contents of the entire publication run to better understand the shifting contents of the major sections of the work from its beginnings to the turn of the century. The contents include an introductory essay concerning the development of the series, divided according to the main sections of the text: The Grounds and Rules of Musick, Instructions and Lessons for the Bass Viol, and The Art of Descant. The body is a full transcription of the 1672 edition with images. Two appendices contain 1) critical notes on the text and a comparison of the major changes-section changes, major wording and style changes, repertoire lists, along with significant codicological amendments-between editions using 1672 as the model, and 2) a list of all of the music in the different editions of the Introduction, including information regarding in which editions the pieces may be found and a reference to modern editions on those works.

Elway Bevin''s A Briefe and Short Instruction of the Art of Musicke begins with rudimentary instruction on consonance, dissonance and proportions but quickly turns to a presentation of examples of plainsong-based canonic writing of increasing complexity and remarkable diversity. Bevin''s book was well known in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was quoted or commented upon by Christopher Simpson, Henry Purcell, Charles Burney, John Hawkins and Augustus Kollmann. In the introduction to this modern edition of the work, the first edition to appear since the original was published in 1631, Denis Collins establishes the great importance of A Briefe and Short Instruction of the Art of Musicke in the history of canon. He assesses Bevin''s relationship to English theories of canon and to manuscript collections of plainsong canons from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and he proposes a typology for canonic processes and structures which is applied in the discussion of Bevin''s canons.

Comprises instruction on understanding notation and intervals, descriptions of common vocal ornaments and instruction in the process of learning to sing. This work also consists of a selection of psalms, songs and catches. These pieces provide insight into the way music might have been performed by amateur musicians in the Restoration period.

Regarded as one of the most important English music treatises in the 17th century, this work reveals progressive ideas about the latent theory of inversions, the fundamental bass, cadences and tonality, and the major-minor octave scale. The text is annotated, and has an introduction and appendix.

John Wallis (1616-1703), was one of the foremost British mathematicians of the seventeenth century, and is also remembered for his important writings on grammar and logic. An interest in music theory led him to produce translations into Latin of three ancient Greek texts - those of Ptolemy.

Thomas Ravenscroft is best-known as a composer of rounds owing to his three published collections: Pammelia and Deuteromelia (both 1609), and Melismata (1611), in addition to his harmonizations of the Whole Book of Psalmes (1621) and his original sacred works. A theorist, composer and editor, Ravenscroft wrote two treatises on music theory.

John Birchensha (c 1605-1681) is chiefly remembered for the impression that his theories about music made on the mathematicians, natural philosophers and virtuosi of the Royal Society in the 1660s and 1670s. This book allows scholars to see how Birchensha's rules and theories developed over a period of fifteen years.

Edited from a set of music lectures delivered by Taverner at Gresham College around 1611 (British Library. Sloane MS 2329).