papal music and musicians in late medieval and renaissance romeby richard sherr

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Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome by Richard Sherr Review by: Blake Wilson Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 368-374 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2001.54.2.368 . Accessed: 19/06/2014 04:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.229.203 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:52:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Romeby Richard Sherr

Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome by Richard SherrReview by: Blake WilsonJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 368-374Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2001.54.2.368 .

Accessed: 19/06/2014 04:52

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.203 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:52:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Romeby Richard Sherr

368 Journal of the American Musicological Society 368 Journal of the American Musicological Society

difficult midcentury period, it exhibits intellectual courage and, especially in the ultimate chapter, significantly advances our understanding and apprecia- tion of the motet as a characteristic art form of the fifteenth century.

ROBERT NOSOW

Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, edited by Richard Sherr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xxviii, 339 pp.

The twelve essays in this volume are the fruits of a 1993 symposium, "Music, Musicians, and Musical Culture in Renaissance Rome," held in conjunction with an exhibit sponsored by the Library of Congress, "Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture." The scope and nature of this ex- hibit may be revisited in the magnificent catalogue edited by Anthony Grafton, which includes Richard Sherr's broad essay "Music and the Renais- sance Papacy: The Papal Choir and the Fondo Cappella Sistina."1 What nei- ther exhibit nor symposium title makes explicit, however, is the intention of the entire project to explore, in the words of James Billington of the Library of Congress, "the active role of the papacy in the flowering of human creativ- ity in all disciplines that occurred in this period" (p. vii). While only ten of the original nineteen papers presented at the symposium are published in this vol- ume (the contributions of Sherr and Giuliano Di Bacco with John Nfadas were later additions), the expertly edited and ordered results may now be placed next to Christopher Reynolds's study of papal patronage at St. Peter's and Sherr's own volume of essays as the most important and comprehensive schol- arship on papal patronage of music during the late Middle Ages and Renais- sance.2

Of the three sections into which the essays are divided ("Music for the Pope and His Chapel," "The Papal Choir as an Institution," and "Studies of Individuals"), the first is by far the most successful in transcending the sundry nature of most such collections. These six chronologically ordered essays occupy nearly two-thirds of the book; taken together they constitute a very suggestive history of papal patronage of music from the fourteenth to the six- teenth centuries, and stimulate the reader through a variety of subject matter

1. Anthony Grafton, ed., Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress; New Haven: Yale University Press; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1993).

2. Reynolds, Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995); and Sherr, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (Aldershot, U.K., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999).

difficult midcentury period, it exhibits intellectual courage and, especially in the ultimate chapter, significantly advances our understanding and apprecia- tion of the motet as a characteristic art form of the fifteenth century.

ROBERT NOSOW

Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, edited by Richard Sherr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xxviii, 339 pp.

The twelve essays in this volume are the fruits of a 1993 symposium, "Music, Musicians, and Musical Culture in Renaissance Rome," held in conjunction with an exhibit sponsored by the Library of Congress, "Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture." The scope and nature of this ex- hibit may be revisited in the magnificent catalogue edited by Anthony Grafton, which includes Richard Sherr's broad essay "Music and the Renais- sance Papacy: The Papal Choir and the Fondo Cappella Sistina."1 What nei- ther exhibit nor symposium title makes explicit, however, is the intention of the entire project to explore, in the words of James Billington of the Library of Congress, "the active role of the papacy in the flowering of human creativ- ity in all disciplines that occurred in this period" (p. vii). While only ten of the original nineteen papers presented at the symposium are published in this vol- ume (the contributions of Sherr and Giuliano Di Bacco with John Nfadas were later additions), the expertly edited and ordered results may now be placed next to Christopher Reynolds's study of papal patronage at St. Peter's and Sherr's own volume of essays as the most important and comprehensive schol- arship on papal patronage of music during the late Middle Ages and Renais- sance.2

Of the three sections into which the essays are divided ("Music for the Pope and His Chapel," "The Papal Choir as an Institution," and "Studies of Individuals"), the first is by far the most successful in transcending the sundry nature of most such collections. These six chronologically ordered essays occupy nearly two-thirds of the book; taken together they constitute a very suggestive history of papal patronage of music from the fourteenth to the six- teenth centuries, and stimulate the reader through a variety of subject matter

1. Anthony Grafton, ed., Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress; New Haven: Yale University Press; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1993).

2. Reynolds, Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995); and Sherr, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (Aldershot, U.K., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999).

University of California Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to

Journal of the American Musicological Societywww.jstor.org

®

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.203 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:52:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Romeby Richard Sherr

Reviews 369

and methodology that no single author could achieve alone. Margaret Bent's subtle investigation of early papal motets traverses the century of Avignon pa- pacy circa 1320-1420, and her delineation of the problems involved in identi- fying a papal repertory during the period also demonstrates effectively the character of late medieval papal patronage. The chronic itinerancy of the popes (a centuries-old phenomenon by the time of the Avignon papacy); the multiple schismatic popes, their often conservative and ambivalent attitude to- ward polyphony, and the instability of their retinues (including musicians); and the blurred distinctions among the roles of composers, singers, and clerics in papal chapels all militated against the creation and preservation of any co- herent repertory and laid the groundwork for some nightmarish archival work. Indeed, in such a disjointed environment there is very little that can be securely attributed to the direct and deliberate patronage of a pope. Bent in- stead speaks of "remnants" of repertories that emanate from specific papal "orbits" (such as that of "Pisa-Bologna from the years 1409-1414" [p. 29]). Even for those motets that are explicitly written for a particular pope (e.g., Argi vices / Cum Philemon for John XXIII), Bent moves beyond the tradi- tional text-based assumption that these were ceremonial coronation pieces and posits a wider range of contexts and purposes for them: as music for coun- cil openings, as edifying and politically charged chamber music, and (their primary function, she argues) as musical propaganda to promote papal diplo- macy. Bent's methodology is a model of scholarly expertise and flexibility: her various analyses of texts, musical style, manuscript compilation, political con- texts, and archival evidence enable her to make a number of persuasive argu- ments regarding composer attributions (especially with respect to de Vitry's motets) and the assignment of these motets to specific contexts.

The contribution of Giuliano Di Bacco and John Nadas, "The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony During the Great Schism," is alone worth the price of the volume, both because it makes their important research more accessible and because it complements their previously published schol- arship3 as well as Bent's contribution to this volume. Most readers will find in this essay some surprising and important correctives, above all that Rome re- sumed its importance as a stable center of culture not with the end of the Great Schism and Martin V's entry into Rome in 1420, but in 1377 when Gregory XI reestablished the papacy there "with its entire administrative structure and the whole of the curial entourage, including not only papal singers but also the cappellani capelle of curial cardinals" (p. 45). Moreover, the continuous presence of northern musicians in Italy-a crucial component in stylistic developments on the eve of the Renaissance-begins not with Ciconia's years in Padua during the early fifteenth century, or even with his

3. Giuliano Di Bacco and John Nadas, "Verso uno 'stile internazionale' della musica nelle cappelle papali e cardinalizie durante il Grande Scisma (1378-1417): II caso di Johannes Ciconia da Liege," Collectanea 1 (1994): 7-74.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.203 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:52:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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370 Journal of the American Musicological Society

probable stay in Rome and Pavia during the 1390s (though Di Bacco and Nadas present new evidence about both), but with his presence in the curial entourages in Rome after 1377. It is within this lively Roman context, the au- thors argue, that both Ciconia and Antonio Zacara da Teramo began their compositional activity, and it is through this Roman papal orbit that some of their works entered the written tradition of the papal chapels. This argument is advanced through detailed stylistic and textual analysis of Ciconia's O virum omnimoda / 0 lux et decus / 0 beate Nicholae and his troped Gloria "Suscipe Trinitas," and Zacara's Credo no. 23 (which also leads to their argument for the association of a group of sources-including Grottaferrata 197, Warsaw 378, and the Cortona, Egidi, and Foligno fragments-with late Trecento Rome). As a result of this judicious blend of evidence and hypothesis, we can now begin to speak not only of papal Rome as a major cultural center in Trecento Italy alongside Florence, the Veneto, and Milan/Pavia, but also of Ciconia's and Zacara's "Roman years," and perhaps of a context in which a distinctively Italian motet emerges.

The next four essays move more briskly through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and together confirm the traditional view of the papal chapel as a rel- atively insular and conservative institution that did not retain major composers or generate distinctive repertory with any consistency. Alejandro Planchart's investigation, "Music for the Papal Chapel in the Early Fifteenth Century," underscores this point by surveying the evidence of papal singers whom we know were also composers during the papacies of Martin V and Eugene IV (1418-47). For some of these figures (e.g., Guillaume Modiator, Gautier Liebert, and Jehan Sohier) no sacred music has survived, while little or none of the extant sacred music of Barthelemy Poignare, Nicolas Grenon, Guil- laume le Macherier, Johannes Brassart, and Arnold de Lantins can be linked to the papal chapel. One composer-Guillaume Du Fay-stands out from this group, both for the length of his tenure in the papal chapel (most of October 1428 to May 1437) and for the number of compositions that might be identi- fied as papal repertory. With the caveat that polyphonic performance was still an exceptional practice in any liturgical environment at this time, Planchart stakes out three kinds of music by Du Fay: a group of prose settings probably datable to the 1430s, isolated Kyrie settings that may represent an attempt to provide a complete liturgical cycle, and the hymns which, as Planchart demon- strates, do in fact represent a complete cycle composed in two layers and prob- ably revised several times. In "Liturgical (and Paraliturgical) Music in the Papal Chapel Towards the End of the Fifteenth Century," Adalbert Roth then shows us "a [papal] repertory in embryo" (p. 125), a development implicitly linked to a critical period when Renaissance popes like Sixtus IV began to view their chapels as important manifestations of princely magnificence. Though this essay is too short to frame conclusive arguments and clear pictures of this critical period, Roth sketches the rapid and deliberate assembly of a papal repertory during the years 1487-95 (including a remarkable sixty polyphonic

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.203 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:52:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Reviews 371

cycles of the Mass Ordinary) and credits the impetus for this to three events of the 1480s: the building of a new palace chapel, a radical renewal of the chapel personnel, and the compilation of the first normative Ceremonial for the papal court.

The final two essays in this chronological section of the book attempt to ex- plain the apparently conservative tendencies of papal practice and repertory, particularly evident in the post-Tridentine era. Jeffrey Dean's lucid discussion, "The Evolution of a Canon at the Papal Chapel: The Importance of Old Music in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," seems particularly apt for an institution-the papacy in general-that has largely determined the meaning of the term canon for Western culture. A dominant and enduring body of works in vernacular literature and art had already evolved by the late sixteenth century, but as Dean points out, the oldest such instance of a "cultural" canon in Western music arose with the liturgical music of Palestrina and a few later composers like Allegri, which came to dominate papal repertory by the mid- seventeenth century. Dean traces the antecedents of this canonizing tendency in the papal repertory (Du Fay, Ockeghem, Basiron, Compere, and Mouton all figure prominently, as does an anonymous setting of Lumen ad revela- tionem, edited and presented as a bona fide canonic work), arguing in the process against assumptions that canons are rigid and immutable, and warning that canonical status attaches as often to modest works (like substitution polyphony) as to refined masses or motets. Mitchell Brauner examines the re- lated topic of traditions in the repertory of the papal choir during this same period, but distinguishes types or categories of pieces "to which were attached ceremony, lore, and symbolism" ("tradition") from individual pieces ("canon") (p. 167). Brauner's brief but enlightening survey outlines the important sources, works, practices, and composers associated with these traditions: non-alternatim Magnificats, alternatim Lamentations and certain antiphon/ canticle pairs, the "Spanish" manner of performing the Passions, the perfor- mance of "subgenres" of Mass Ordinary cycles (such as the L'Homme arme), and distinctive performing traditions for motets (e.g., after the offertory). Brauner also argues for a "hidden" or "underground" repertory of works never copied into papal choirbooks, a consideration that might have strength- ened some of the previous essays.

The next two essays, neither one strictly concerned with chronology or specific individuals, are loosely grouped together in part 2 under the title "The Papal Choir as Institution." Pamela Starr's contribution, "Strange Obituaries: The Historical Uses of the per obitum Supplication," contains some of the most revelatory archival material in the volume. Examining documents related to the legal process by which clerics laid claim to the benefices left vacant by recently (or sometimes not quite yet) deceased colleagues, Starr has found a rich source of biographical information about clerical musicians. Among the fascinating case studies devoted to Johannes Dornart, Johannes Vincenet, Johannes Brassart, and Nicolaus Zacharie, the investigation of the composer

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372 Journal of the American Musicological Society

Vincenet (Vincentius du Bruecquet, d. 1479) resolves a number of nagging biographical questions. Sherr's essay, "A Curious Incident in the Institutional History of the Papal Choir"-a conflict between the papal singers and their maestro di cappella in the 1540s-in fact sheds the most light of any essay in the collection on the actual corporate structure and status of the papal choir. Unique among sixteenth-century choirs, the papal choir was organized as a college, with a dean, internal rules, codified procedures, papal privileges, and, after 1545, a constitution granted them by Pope Paul III. The strong corpo- rate identity this gave to the singers was challenged by the choir's maestro, Ludovico Magnasco, who blatantly attempted to gain control over the most important conditions of the singers' professional lives-hiring, firing, and the appointment of benefices. Remarkably, the group succeeded in outmaneuver- ing and ultimately ousting Magnasco, and Sherr's lively account of the whole tale is occasion for a close examination of both the court documents related to this case (here summarized in translation) and papal bulls and relevant sections of the 1545 constitution (edited and not translated, though usually para- phrased in the essay).

The final four essays (James Haar's on Josquin's "Roman" masses, Lewis Lockwood's on the singer Bidon, Louise Litterick's on Ninot's chansons, and Jesse Ann Owens's on Palestrina's compositional procedures) are unified in their concentration on specific individuals, if more oblique in the light they shed on "papal music and musicians." Haar suggests that the five Josquin masses in Petrucci's 1502 print (the two L'Homme arme masses, and the Missae Gaudeamus, La solfa re mi, and Fortuna desperata) were known in dif- fering and independent Roman versions before their printing by Petrucci. Though speculative, Haar's brief but careful survey of these Roman versions and their relationship to the Petrucci prints nevertheless constitutes an impor- tant step in dating these works and reconstructing Josquin's Roman career of the early 1490s. In a fascinating excursus, Haar argues persuasively for the identity of the turbaned figure in an illumination (plate 16b in the volume) contained in a Roman source for Josquin's Missa La solfa re mi (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Capella Sistina 41) as Prince Jem, son of Mohammed II, conqueror of Constantinople, whose presence in Rome dur- ing Josquin's time there might have contributed to a "crusader mania" that in turn fueled the vogue for L'Homme arme masses.

Litterick's consideration of "who wrote Ninot's chansons" is similarly grounded in the source study of works by a single composer, but here the goal is more ambitious and the argument more complex. Primarily on the basis of the provenance and contents of the extant sources transmitting Ninot's chan- sons, Litterick argues that Ninot le Petit was active in the north through the first decade of the sixteenth century and is therefore not the same person as the sometime papal musician Johannes Baltazar (Johannes Petit alias Baltazar), who was active primarily in Italy and had died by 1502. The argument is of some consequence, for it implies that the new chanson style emerging around 1500, of which Ninot was a leading and formative exponent, probably cannot

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Reviews 373

be associated with Roman compositional activity at that time. Litterick also engages Francois Lesure's suggestion that Ninot might be identical with Jean Lepetit of Langres, but in the course of her detailed stylistic analyses of two very different chansons attributed to Ninot le Petit-his earlier Mon seul plaisir and a later N'as tu poinct mis ton hault bonnet (both edited here in their entirety)-one can't help wondering given the biographical ambiguity surrounding Ninot whether this is an argument less for Ninot's dramatic styl- istic "evolution" than for the possibility that these two works are by different composers.

Lockwood's essay on the famous soprano singer Antonio Collebaudi ("Bidon," b. ca. 1480) may be placed alongside Sherr's as another revealing case study of the social status of Renaissance musicians constructed from archival documents skillfully brought to life. In this case, two letters to Duke Ercole I d'Este in 1517 (edited, but not translated, in an appendix) reveal a famous but ultimately powerless Bidon attempting to regain the patronage of the duke, whose disfavor he risked when he left the duke's service for a Roman career in expectation of support from Leo X that never materialized. If the re- sults do not fundamentally alter our picture of how quickly the courtly wheel of fortune might turn for such individuals, we do benefit from a vivid example as well as a more enriched biography of Collebaudi.

A version of Jessie Ann Owens's study, "Palestrina at Work," appears in her book Composers at Work,4 and while the latter version contains a number of plates not found in the conference catalogue, the essay in Sherr's volume is richer in musical examples and analysis of Palestrina's corrections. Several let- ters from 1578-79 reveal Palestrina at work on a series of masses for Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga and the newly revised liturgy of the Mantuan basilica of Santa Barbara. The peculiar references to Palestrina playing through or work- ing out a Kyrie and a Gloria on the lute (porre sul leuto could imply either) form the prelude to a broader consideration of Palestrina's composing method. Owens focuses on an autograph choirbook (Rome, San Giovanni in Laterano, Archivio musicale lateranense, Codice 59) containing primarily lamentations and hymns. These apparently served Palestrina as a kind of per- sonal notebook for revising and preserving versions of compositions that might subsequently serve as exemplars for scribes and typesetters. From the fragmentary evidence of corrections found in this choirbook (and in accor- dance with evidence for other sixteenth-century composers), she concludes that Palestrina in this case was not composing in score, but instead was using a variety of approaches, including "quasi-score, choirbook format, a haphazard arrangement of parts on a page, and possibly even separate sheets of paper" (p. 295), and that revision and polishing were ongoing through and beyond the preparation of fair copies.

4. Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition, 1450-1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), chapter 11 of which is devoted to Palestrina's compositional process.

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Page 8: Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Romeby Richard Sherr

374 Journal of the American Musicological Society 374 Journal of the American Musicological Society

While the collection of essays in this volume goes far in charting some of the contours and major themes of a history of early modern papal patronage of music, the daunting task of writing a coherent history of this topic would be still another matter. Some of the contributions, particularly those con- cerned with the fifteenth century, sound a note of disappointment that the papal choir did not always keep pace with the best contemporary princely chapels. Indeed, why this is so for much of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies is a very interesting question, but one that is rarely addressed in this vol- ume. A tendency throughout to chart histories according to the presence or absence of great composers and according to written sources of artistic polyphony suggests that the entire period is an evolutionary arch with the decades around 1500 at the peak. This portrait of the period may in fact be ac- curate, but it seems premature until we can overcome our largely negative (and therefore anachronistic) view of chant, unwritten and improvisatory practices, and simpler forms of "substitution" polyphony, and pursue the his- torical evidence of these practices according to values more consonant with a culture that clearly embraced them. Nor do we yet have a convincingly syn- chronous view of papal patronage. It is unfortunate, for example, that the scholarship of Christopher Reynolds on papal patronage at St. Peter's in 1380-1513, which was published in 1995 during the long interval between oral and printed versions of these papers, could not be incorporated into Papal Music and Musicians (his book appears in the general bibliography at the back of the volume, but he is absent from the general index). But these are less shortcomings than indications -of the current state of research on a complex subject, and this indispensable volume offers a panoramic and thought-provoking view of papal patronage of music during the medieval and Renaissance periods.

BLAKE WILSON

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, by Christoph Wolff. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2000. xvii, 599 pp.

A full-scale biography of Johann Sebastian Bach is surely among the more per- ilous missions a musicologist might choose to undertake. How can one possi- bly take full measure of this colossus of the musical canon, a figure whose life and works have been painstakingly, perhaps exhaustively, analyzed, studied, and commented on, and around whom is tangled a vast and complicated scholarly literature that creeps ever more quickly upward? Only the brave and well equipped will answer the call, knowing that errors of fact will gleefully be pounced on by the legions of specialists lying in wait. The Bach biographer

While the collection of essays in this volume goes far in charting some of the contours and major themes of a history of early modern papal patronage of music, the daunting task of writing a coherent history of this topic would be still another matter. Some of the contributions, particularly those con- cerned with the fifteenth century, sound a note of disappointment that the papal choir did not always keep pace with the best contemporary princely chapels. Indeed, why this is so for much of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies is a very interesting question, but one that is rarely addressed in this vol- ume. A tendency throughout to chart histories according to the presence or absence of great composers and according to written sources of artistic polyphony suggests that the entire period is an evolutionary arch with the decades around 1500 at the peak. This portrait of the period may in fact be ac- curate, but it seems premature until we can overcome our largely negative (and therefore anachronistic) view of chant, unwritten and improvisatory practices, and simpler forms of "substitution" polyphony, and pursue the his- torical evidence of these practices according to values more consonant with a culture that clearly embraced them. Nor do we yet have a convincingly syn- chronous view of papal patronage. It is unfortunate, for example, that the scholarship of Christopher Reynolds on papal patronage at St. Peter's in 1380-1513, which was published in 1995 during the long interval between oral and printed versions of these papers, could not be incorporated into Papal Music and Musicians (his book appears in the general bibliography at the back of the volume, but he is absent from the general index). But these are less shortcomings than indications -of the current state of research on a complex subject, and this indispensable volume offers a panoramic and thought-provoking view of papal patronage of music during the medieval and Renaissance periods.

BLAKE WILSON

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, by Christoph Wolff. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2000. xvii, 599 pp.

A full-scale biography of Johann Sebastian Bach is surely among the more per- ilous missions a musicologist might choose to undertake. How can one possi- bly take full measure of this colossus of the musical canon, a figure whose life and works have been painstakingly, perhaps exhaustively, analyzed, studied, and commented on, and around whom is tangled a vast and complicated scholarly literature that creeps ever more quickly upward? Only the brave and well equipped will answer the call, knowing that errors of fact will gleefully be pounced on by the legions of specialists lying in wait. The Bach biographer

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.203 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:52:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions