MISC 8. Medieval Music in Practice. Studies in Honor of Richard Crocker. Edited by Judith A. Peraino

Richard Crocker once wrote "we understand many things about the history of music--specifically its development--better from the earlier periods." Since his first publications in 1958, Crocker pioneered a radically phenomenological and critical approach to the study of early music and musical style. Medieval Music in Practice: Studies in Honor of Richard Crocker brings together eleven essays that take up Crocker's call to consider the continuity of medieval and later musical practices in performance, composition, and pedagogy. Two introductory essays open this collection. Judith Peraino surveys the disciplinary questions that emerge in Crocker's work: What constitutes a coherent category of music? What are the "ruling ideas" of musicology? Richard Taruskin pays tribute to Crocker's remarkable prescience in the 1960s of anti-essentialist and anti-universalist arguments that characterized "new musicology" in the 1980s. Nine further essays focus on repertories from the eleventh century to the sixteenth century, reflecting different facets of Crocker's scholarly legacy: Lori Kruckenberg, James Grier, and Margot Fassler explore the use of medieval chant in the crafting of personal and institutional histories; Sarah Fuller, Margaret Hasselman, and Julie Cumming consider pedagogy, continuity, and intertextuality in Medieval and Renaissance compositions; Sean Curran, Anna Maria Busse Berger, and Dorit Tanay examine the material, written artifacts of Medieval music for information about its contexts and meanings. Scholars of early music and those interested in the intellectual history of musicology will find in these essays new historical discoveries and critical insights that enrich our view of the practice of medieval music as well as our practice of musicology. For more information, see http://www.corpusmusicae.com/misc/misc_cc008.htm