Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Those privileged enough to attend performances of masques at court in the early seventeenth century invariably commented on the sumptuousness of the music (and often had little to say about the literary aspects of the entertainments). Yet our view of the masque has been dominated by the texts, and indeed, the modern scholarship has tended to treat the masque first and foremost as a literary genre. This book is the first complete study of the multi-faceted view of its subject, piecing together a picture of what the music was actually like from musical score, documentary evidence, and the dramatic texts. Vocal music and dance in the Jacobean masque are treated separately - a division that reflects the way in which the music was originally composed, with one group of composers writing songs while violinist/dancing masters prepared dances. There are chapters offering a reconsideration of the musical and documentary evidence for the William Lawes masques, on Inigo Jones's musical priorities, and an investigation of French influence in the Caroline masques. The book also describes the departures from court norms in masques which took place away from Whitehall.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Plates (p. xiii)
• List of Tables (p. xiv)
• List of Music Examples (p. xv)
• Abbreviations (p. xviii)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• 1. Texts, Scores, and Musicians (p. 7)
• Speculative and Practical Music in the Masque (p. 7)
• Attitudes to the Masque (p. 12)
• The Nature of Masque Texts (p. 17)
• Musical Sources for the Jacobean Masque (p. 23)
• Composers and the Court Masque (p. 33)
• 2. Masque Song (p. 43)
• The Function and Types of Main Masque Songs (p. 46)
• Masque Song Settings (p. 50)
• The Place of Vocal Music in the Antimasque (p. 75)
• The Origins of English Recitative (p. 86)
• 3. Dance and Instrumental Music (p. 104)
• Interpreting Masque Dances (p. 104)
• Choreography (p. 108)
• The Musical Structure of Masque Dances (p. 123)
• Instrumentation in the Jacobean Masque (p. 148)
• Campion's Masques: A Special Case? (p. 154)
• 4. The William Lawes Masques (p. 159)
• The Triumph of Peace: A Case Study in Job Demarcation (p. 159)
• The Staging of The Triumph of Peace (p. 169)
• The Musicians (p. 173)
• Musical Sources for the Caroline Masque (p. 177)
• William Lawes's Music (p. 195)
• 5. Music for the Eyes (p. 206)
• Postscript (p. 218)
• 6. French Influence in the Caroline Masque (p. 221)
• French Dancing-Masters (p. 221)
• Masque and Ballet de Cour (p. 224)
• The Entry in the Caroline Masque (p. 231)
• Music for the Ballet de Cour (p. 237)
• English Musical Sources (p. 255)
• 7. Masques away from Whitehall (p. 260)
• The Inns of Court (p. 261)
• Royal Entertainments (p. 267)
• Private Masques (p. 280)
• A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle (p. 289)
• 8. Realizations (p. 304)
• The Music of Fame (p. 305)
• Oberon (p. 308)
• The Revels (p. 324)
• Epilogue (p. 333)
• Appendix A Calendar of Masque Texts (p. 341)
• Bibliography (p. 349)
• Printed Musical Sources (p. 349)
• Books, Articles, and Editions of Masque Texts (p. 351)
• Index (p. 361)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This reviewer is tempted to call this book "definitive," so comprehensive is its coverage and research, so full of commonsense, so devoid of padding and puffery. Walls (Victoria Univ., NZ) seems to have read everything published on the problematic courtly masque and its music. Since he has also worked in manuscript collections and edited music for use in modern masque reconstructions, he speaks with confidence about the coming together of "poetry, music, and visual spectacle ... projecting a coherent ideology for the Stuart court," which, alas, many contemporary revelers probably thought of "as purely social occasions ... an incidental framework for dancing." Walls discusses composers, songs, and dance music; "choreography," staging, and visual effects; performers; instruments--and evidence that has survived for all of this. He analyzes the contributions of Ferrabosco, Lanier, Dowland, Campion, Lupo, Robert Johnson, Ben Jonson, and Inigo Jones; the various types of songs (polyphonic, simple tuneful, and declamatory) and dances used; the influences of Italian monody and French dancing-masters and the ballet de cour. Readers learn of the difficulty of attributing dances to specific masques, of the large musical forces employed, and of the wonderfully varied sounds they made (as many as 42 played "violins," lutes, hautboys, flutes, cornets, sackbuts, percussion and trumpets), of the still-open question of when English recitative began (1617? 1628?). Rich in detail, convincing in argument, pleasing in prose style, perfectly splendid! Upper-division undergraduate and up. W. Metcalfe University of Vermont

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Peter Walls is at Victoria University of Wellington.