The heaven singing
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The heaven singing
（Music in early English religious drama / Richard Rastall, v. 1）
D.S. Brewer, 1996
Available at 10 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Richard Rastall's two books on music in early English religious drama complement each other. Heaven Singing provides an overview of the evidence for music in the plays, and defines the place, nature and cultural contexts ofmusic in the drama; Minstrels Playing is a discussion of the evidence for every play in that repertory, and is therefore concerned with the place and nature of musical performance in each play individually. Where should there be music in an anonymous English religious play of the fifteenth or sixteenth century? What sort of music should it be, and by what forces should it be performed? This study shows how music was used at the time of the plays' production through a close examination of individual texts and of the place of music in the intellectual and artistic life of the middle ages.
Richard Rastall begins by discussing the internal literary evidence of the play texts, the surviving notated music in the plays, and documentary evidence of productions before turning to the wider cultural context in which the plays were composed and performed. He considers the representational and dynamicfunctions of music in the plays, the relationship between music, drama and liturgy, and the performers themselves -who they were, and what they might be expected to do. Related factors necessary to the discovery of how music wasused in late medieval drama are also considered, from medieval cosmology and the numerical construction of plays to the age and size of boy actors.
Dr RICHARD RASTALL is Reader in Historical Musicology at the Universityof Leeds, and Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Arts.Dr RICHARD RASTALLis Reader in Historical Musicology at the University of Leeds, and Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Introduction: music in Middle English drama
- the repertory - historical and fictional drama
- the repertory - civic, community and institutional plays. Part 2 The internal literary evidence: the manuscripts
- dramatic directions
- text references
- the banns
- lyrics and song-texts
- the use of Latin. Part 3 The surviving music: the Shrewsbury and Pepys fragments
- York
- Coventry
- Chester. Part 4 Documentary evidence: a note on money
- guild accounts and related records
- Chelmsford - nthe summer of 1562. Part 5 Music as representation: the music of heaven
- the music of mortals
- the sounds of hell
- realism and representation. Part 6 Music and dramatic structure: the dynamic functions of music
- the music of numbers - structure and proportion. Part 7 Music and liturgy: the dramatic uses of liturgical material
- the Presentation in the Temple
- the angelic announcement to the shepherds
- the Purification
- the entry into Jerusalem
- the Last Supper - Maundy and Mass, the mandatum, the eucharist
- the harrowing of Hell
- miscellaneous scaraments and offices - baptism, betrothal, marriage, burial, scarifice and oblation, blessing
- questions of provenance. Part 8 The performers: professional and amateur
- the problem of female roles
- the angels
- the shepherds
- instumentalists
- the audience. Appendices: editions and reconstructions - the Washington "Ave regina celorum . . . Mater", the Chester "Gloria in excelsis", "Wee happy heardsmen here".
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