1st Edition

On the Origin and Progress of the Art of Music by John Taverner

By Joseph M. Ortiz Copyright 2019
    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    176 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    John Taverner’s lectures on music constitute the only extant version of a complete university course in music in early modern England. Originally composed in 1611 in both English and Latin, they were delivered at Gresham College in London between 1611 and 1638, and it is likely that Taverner intended at some point to publish the lectures in the form of a music treatise. The lectures, which Taverner collectively titled De Ortu et Progressu Artis Musicæ ("On the Origin and Progress of the Art of Music"), represent a clear attempt to ground musical education in humanist study, particularly in Latin and Greek philology. Taverner’s reliance on classical and humanist writers attests to the durability of music’s association with rhetoric and philology, an approach to music that is too often assigned to early Tudor England. Taverner is also a noteworthy player in the seventeenth-century Protestant debates over music, explicitly defending music against Reformist polemicists who see music as an overly sensuous activity.



    In this first published edition of Taverner’s musical writings, Joseph M. Ortiz comprehensively introduces, edits, and annotates the text of the lectures, and an appendix contains the existing Latin version of Taverner’s text. By shedding light on a neglected figure in English Renaissance music history, this edition is a significant contribution to the study of musical thought in Renaissance England, humanism, Protestant Reformism, and the history of education.



    List of figures



    Series editor’s preface



    Acknowledgments



    Introduction



    I Taverner and Gresham College



    1 Biography of John Taverner



    2 The founding of Gresham College



    3 John Bull and the Gresham music professorship



    4 Taverner and the evolution of the Gresham music professorship



    5 Audiences and readers of the Gresham lectures



    II Taverner’s music lectures



    1 Overview and form of the lectures



    2 Humanism and philology in the lectures



    3 The Reformist critique of music



    4 Evolving ideas of musical literacy



    On the origin and progress of the art of music (English lectures)



    Lecture 1



    Lecture 2



    Lecture 3



    Lecture 4



    Lecture 5



    Lecture 6



    Lecture 7



    Lecture 8



    Lecture 9



    Appendix: Taverner’s Gresham College music lectures in Latin



    Editorial note



    Lecture 0 (inaugural lecture)



    Lecture 1



    Lecture 2



    Lecture 3



    Lecture 4



    Lecture 5



    Lecture 6



    Lecture 7



    Bibliography



    Index

    Biography

    Joseph M. Ortiz is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he teaches Renaissance and comparative literature. He is the author of Broken Harmony: Shakespeare and the Politics of Music (2011) and the editor of Shakespeare and the Culture of Romanticism (2013). He has written several articles and chapters on Renaissance literature, Renaissance musical thought, and the reception of classical culture in Renaissance Europe.