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Richard Wistreich, Renaissance theory in practice, Early Music, Volume 40, Issue 2, May 2012, Pages 315–318, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cas037
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Extract
In the very first sentence of the preface to this engaging and useful study, Ann Smith nails her colours firmly to the mast: ‘This book is intended for practical musicians’. One of the reasons why this needs saying so early on is because of the implications (and realities) of the second half of the book’s title. ‘Theory’, especially Renaissance music theory, can seem daunting and off-putting—even irrelevant—to many performers (including professionals), who just want to sing or play the fabulous motets, Masses, madrigals and consort music of the Golden Age and for whom traditional aspects of ‘performance practice’—using the right instruments and attending to matters of tuning, pronunciation and ornamentation—are as far as they normally feel their own supporting knowledge needs to go. Ann Smith, a veteran of 40 years of studying, performing and teaching Renaissance flute, recorder and music theory (mainly at the Schola Cantorum in Basel) argues passionately that not only are such things as hexachords, modes and rhetoric worth the attention of performers, but that understanding and actually ‘doing’ them ‘can make the difference between a stunning performance and one of relative mediocrity’ (p.1). She notes how her own journey into theory has had the paradoxical effect characteristic of all genuine historical endeavour, making the music she plays ‘seem much more foreign to me than I had ever envisioned it could be’. Taking as its premise the idea of approaching music in order to try to ‘perceive it from the point of view of those who conceived it’ (p.162), the book takes its readers through a graduated curriculum, leading them progressively deeper into 16th-century music’s ‘foreignness’, following a plan designed to provoke performers into taking personal responsibility for reading below the surface of notation that can seem so straightforward to modern eyes.
