Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer's Guide. by Timothy J. McGeeReview by: Philip T. JacksonThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 284-286Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2541073 .

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284 The Sixteenth CenturyJournal

of monarchy, of the war, of church polity and of ecclesiastical and social discipline rather spanned a spectrum. The variety and division within puritanism is reflected, for instance, in the varying degrees of puritan commitment to the cause of the Long Parliament and especially to the cause of a Parliament in arms against the king. Again, even after royalist and many moderate puritan MPs had deserted Westminster, the puritans remaining argued long and hard about the nature of the religious reformation that they had all wanted for so long. Not only did the dissenting brethren object to presbyterianism as much as to episcopacy, even advocates of a presbyterian settlement disagreed about its Jure divino nature and about the dangers of presbyterian theocracy, "a tyranny of the clergy," should the Scots commissioners' view of proper ecclesiastical discipline be implemented. Tolerationist sentiment gained ground as division on issues of polity and discipline escalated, giving rise to yet other matters for debate and division. The advent of Presbyterian and Independent factions after 1645 appears the inevitable outcome. Puritans in the 1640s were in conflict with each other as much as with non-puritans and with the king, however earnestly they worked on compromise.

Cliffe's work is short on explicit analysis and interpretation, but its value is not thereby much diminished. The book offers a clear, detailed, readable, and meticulously documented account of the activities and ideas of puritan gentlemen in the Long Parliament to 1649. Only the last chapter treats the period after the king's execution, despite the Introduction's promise to carry the story through the Commonwealth and into the reign of Charles II. Puritans in Conflict is essential and enjoyable reading for serious students of puritanism in the Civil War. Margo Todd. . . ... Vanderbilt University

Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer's Guide. Timothy J. McGee. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. 273 pp. n.p.

McGee deals with a subject which has only fairly recently appeared within the music curriculum of North American colleges and universities. The academic collegium musicum is a byproduct of interests starting primarily in the 50s and 60s, the serious revival of "early music" performance which had its origins in Europe before World War II. While the collegium is by no means ubiquitous on all campuses, many of them do support at least a small group of dedicated student performers and scholars. Many universities and some colleges provide modest budgets for the very expensive instruments and scores plus the services of an always overworked and usually under-rewarded collegium director who receives only a few hours of faculty load credit for what often amounts to a half-time if not a full-time job. Thanks to Timothy McGee's fine volume, that job can now be a bit easier.

Owing to the focus of its topics, this book addresses itself to a specialized readership rather than a more general audience. The key to its contents lies after the colon in the title: "A Performer's Guide*" Unlike the performer of a printed musical score by Beethoven, Brahms, or Barber who can usually accept at face value most of the elements of that score, the performer of earlier music must solve many more problems. Often there is no modern score, only manuscripts and/or older prints (often contradictory) which raise more problems than they solve.

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Book Reviews XXI / 2 285

McGee's book will prove invaluable for he addresses just about every problem a collegium director will encounter. All problems except Gregorian chant, however, since he excludes it to concentrate on polyphony (music for two or more voices). To this end, he arranges his thinking into four major parts: materials, repertory, techniques, and practical considerations. While McGee devotes his book "entirely to historically authentic interpretation," his attitude towards less than authentic performance is very generous. As he states in his preface, "Is the music of Machaut or Lasso so lacking in intrinsic beauty, so much more fragile than Bach or Vivaldi, that it cannot survive a musical but stylistically unauthentic performance? I think not, and this book is not intended to support the view that there is only one way - the historical way - to present early music."

In a short review, there seems no way to encapsulate all the topics discussed by McGee, so I shall touch on just a few. One of the larger problems of the twentieth-century performer of early music is the modern edition. Without it, the performer must resort to microfilms or facsimiles which are expensive and time- consuming to acquire and translate into sound. Even with the modern edition in hand, the performer must realize that it is only a transcription of the original material with many musical nuances added by the editor and many others lost irretrievably by time. McGee makes these factors abundantly clear intellectually but they can only be truly learned by "doing" - the study and performance of the actual music. Among the many questions and answers he poses to his reader and prospective performers are the following: What instruments to use (if any)? What quality of vocal sound to employ? How do we articulate the 20th century note shapes? Which older contemporary theorists to read literally? Should the old texts be pronounced in modern or older styles? When and to what degree should one embellish a melodic line or figured bass (the bass line enhanced by numbers beneath the notes that indicate the harmony)? How many performers should be employed on a part? In vocal music, there is the problem of "text underlay." On which notes does one place the text syllables which are usually grouped together at the beginning of a piece or a phrase in the original source rather than in precise alignment as in modern editions? What should the tempo really be? Should one accept or overlook the barlines of the modern edition with their suggestions of accents which may not really be appropriate in an authentic performance? When should one change the actual pitches of the written original notes by following the often confusing contemporary theoretical directions for the application of musica ficta (the raising or lowering of a pitch by a half-step)?

As indicated above in his advice on historically authentic or simply musical performance, McGee's book is full of good sense as well as proof of practical application of musical scholarship from both primary and secondary sources. His extensive bibliography offers a fine listing of both which I plan to consult in the future. In addition to his other subjects, he offers solid advice on the actual programming, what to include in the program notes, and even "things to avoid." While I recommend this book as an excellent primer and a later guide for the beginning and maturing collegium director, its only drawbacks are those over which McGee has no control. First, there are so many problems inherent in the performance of early music that he must often limit his discussion of an important issue to just a paragraph or two that deserves a chapter or even a book of its own. Second, since

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286 The Sixteenth CenturyJournal

his book is about the realization of music whose success lies in its being heard rather than being discussed or described in print, the success of the book can only be judged by a reader who applies the insights provided by McGee in performance. Philip T. Jackson . ........ . Ball State University

Martin Luther und Epikur. Ein Beitrag zum Verstandnis des alten Luther. Gottfried Maron. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988. 66 pp. DM 16,-.

As is customary with this series, the slim volume is rather a comprehensive essay than a short monograph. In a very systematic fashion Gottfried Maron develops the concept of Epicure in Renaissance thought, namely a positive, conciliatory kind of pre-Christian figure for such thinkers as Luarentius Valla or Erasmus. Maron then shows how for "old Luther" (after 1530 when faced with an increasingly institutionalized movement) the very name became a synonym of abomination for persons (above all ambiguous Erasmus) classes (high clergy and indifferent secular authorities), and religious opponents (the Antinomists). Epicureanism became a key term in "old Luther's" battle against what he described as atheistic humanism.

The essay is carefully structured, based on abundant quotations from Luther's works, and it provides an informative insight, within a limited but significant perspective, of how Luther used a "telling name" in the spiritual defense of his reformation. The introduction is also a useful short repertorium of how the modern notion of an "old Luther" has been changing in recent times (biographical studies by H. Oberman, H. Junghans, and M. Brecht). A small appendix, containing Luther's poem Sarcasmus in Epicurum (with Maron's and Aurifaber's German translations) shows the reformer as a satirist at his best. Josef Schmidt ............................. McGill University

"Glauben" im Zeitalter des Glaubenskampfes: Eine Ode aus dem Strassburger Humanistenkreis und ihr wahrscheinliches Fortleben in Luthers Reformationslied "Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott." Vera Sack. Freiburg im Breisgau: Freiburg i. Br. Universitatsbibliothek, 1988. 184 pp. n.p.

Reconstruction of the tangled relationships between sixteenth century humanist and evangelical networks is probably one of the oldest ongoing traditions in Reformation historiography. The significance of these chains of literary and ideological influence is obvious, even in the most recent studies of more popular "discourse" and "transmission." The monograph at hand proposes to illuminate one small and heretofore "missing link" between a member of the humanist circle at Strassbourg and the reformer of Wittenberg himself. The link in question is a forty-seven line Latin poem written by Thomas Vogler (d. 1532), poet laureate of the Strassbourg circle, and recently rediscovered during restoration of a collection of sixteenth century commentaries at the Universitatsbibliothek Freiburg. According to Sack, "Deus noster, refugium et virtus" carries a threefold significance for historians of

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