Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts Variorum Series & Papal Music and Musicians in Medieval and Renaissance Rome. (Reviews).

Richard Sherr, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts Variorum Series. Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 1999. x + 282 pp. $106. ISBN: 0-86078-768-0.

Richard Sherr, ed., Papal Music and Musicians in Medieval and Renaissance Rome

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xxviii + 337 pp. $95. ISBN: 0-29-816417-3.

Music and Musicians reprints 21 articles by Professor Sherr, most of them already well known to specialists in Renaissance music. These articles make enjoyable reading or rereading, especially when seen in this context of numerous other writings by Sherr. Sherr's work has dealt mostly with archival research, and reviewing his publications reminds us of the important information he has uncovered over the years, information contributing to the biographies of numerous musicians, to performance practices, to stylistic considerations of particular works, to the papal chapel as an organization, and to the machinations of the people who worked there. Several articles take us away from Rome, discussing musicians at Mantua, Urbino, Florence, Loreto, and at the courts of Anne of Brittany and Louis XII.

Nearly all the articles first appeared in refereed journals, and a reader can quickly conclude that this is solid work, illustrating Sherr's mastery of the necessary skills: languages, paleography, contextual information involving musicians and political organizations, and the patience of Job. But the book is more than that. The writing is lively and sympathetic to the subject matter, and Sherr resists getting bogged down in tangential data. Consequently, these archival studies bring music and musicians of the past to life in a way that few other studies can; we learn much about how the musicians related to each other and to their responsibilities.

Given the importance of Roman music, Sheer's many discoveries take on broad importance for understanding the music of the period. For example, one of my favorites is "Competence and Incompetence in the Papal Chapel during the 16th Century." It surfaces that, during the Age of Palestrina, various attempts to upgrade the chapel failed: up to 40% of the members were judged to sing poorly, and some of those retained their positions for many years. One reform did, however, manage to expel a singer who was deaf. This article is a sure antidote for anyone harboring romantic illusions about artistic standards in that chapel, and if papal music was plagued thus, what about other musical organizations?

As Sherr comments in his Preface, "Archival research is not fashionable these days, but it was quite fashionable when I began my scholarly career, and I have never lost my interest in it" (ix). While scholars have to be ready to swim against the currents of changing fashion, it is not easy: changes of fashion can influence the outcomes of searches for research support or publication opportunities. To me, the strongest argument for this book is that it demonstrates powerfully that continuing archival research, although not a new line of thought, is too important for us to let it die.

The book reflects the minor infelicities associated with this series. There is no running pagination; instead, articles are identified (sometimes inaccurately) by a Roman numeral, readers then needing to rely on original pagination. Articles originally published in a larger print field had to be reduced, sometimes resulting in fonts -- footnote numberings in particular -- that are too small to read comfortably. When Sherr cites an earlier writing of his, the wording of the original citation is retained; the reader is therefore directed to another publication, but not advised that the same article is available within this anthology. Some brief concluding pages of "Addenda and Corrigenda" fulfill their necessary function, but this important information is not reflected in the "Index of Names and Works." Sherr's work deserves grateful respect, but the book contains nothing new, and it sports a hefty pricetag. It therefore encourages an alternative, the growing practice of storing and distributing journals, even those appearing as hardcopy, in digital format.

PapalMusic and Musicians consists of twelve articles, ten of them originally delivered at a symposium at the Library of Congress in 1993, "Music, Musicians, and Musical Culture in Renaissance Rome." This symposium coincided with a splendid exhibit, "Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture," scenes of which are still available for viewing on the Internet. The occasion was supplemented by a commemorative volume (edited by Anthony Grafton) bearing the title of the exhibit.

Papal Music is divided into three parts, the first being "Music for the Pope and His Chapel." This section begins with Margaret Bent's virtuosic study of motets for popes from John XXII to Eugene IV, continuing with John Nadas/Giuliano di Bacco's work on polyphony during the great schism, Alejandro Planchart on early fifteenth-century papal music, Adalbert Roth on late fifteenth-century music, and Jeffrey Dean and Mitchell Brauner studying the development of musical traditions and a Roman canon. Part II, "The Papal Choir as Institution," begins with Pamela Starr on the transfer of benefices upon the death of a person who held them and continues with some of Sherr's work on the organization of the papal choir. Part III, "Studies of Individuals," offers James Haar discussing some of Josquin's masses in Roman sources, Lewis Lockwood on the singer Bidon, Louise Litterick on Ninot le Petit's chansons, and Jessie Ann Owens on Palestrina's compositional methods.

Since space is limited here, readers may wish to consult the more detailed review of Papal Music by Blake Wilson in the Journal of the American Musicological Society 54 (2001), 368-74. One curious topic involves another book, Christopher Reynolds' Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513 (Berkeley, 1995).

Reynolds' book is listed in Sherr's final bibliography, but we learn nothing else about that work. Wilson mentioned this matter in his review, but it is now to be noted that Reynolds' book goes unmentioned in Music and Musicians. His book is an important supplement to the two books under consideration here. Sherr's two collections of anthologies offer specialized snapshots of Roman music during these several centuries; Reynolds' monograph, while treating a more circumscribed topic, provides a cohesive narrative, sometimes with rewarding forays into related arts and letters.

Several symposium participants recognize that dissonance exists between the music they discuss and the music most valued at the papal court. Sherr's preface states that "the masses and motets over which we enthuse were precisely the pieces that were considered expendable, constantly to be replaced. And overshadowing all these in terms of the sheer amount of time devoted to its performance was Gregorian chant" (xi, emphasis mine). Somewhat similarly, Roth's "Liturgical (and Paraliturgical) Music" concludes, "polyphony was always an exception, reserved for special occasions. Plainchant was, so to speak, the daily musical bread that even Josquin had to eat. And it was, I fear, plainchant to which Sixtus IV was referring..." (137, emphases mine). So, Gregorian chant is important because some people spent a lot of time at it, we envision some brutes stuffing chant down Josquin's unwilling gullet, and evidently we are to fear dealing with it.

No articles in these two books present scholarship on chant or chant sources, even though numerous magnificent chant manuscripts survive in Rome. Prized chant manuscripts were more lavishly made than were most sources containing polyphony, and this was a common distinction throughout Europe. How can we continue to ignore such sources? Only one contributor, Alejandro Planchart, demonstrates that a mastery of chant sources can shed significant insights into polyphonic compositions. Sherr's Preface states that "the study of the music and performance traditions of chant in this period has only now begun" (xi). Those beginnings are not revealed in either of the books under review here, and nobody advises us about where else to look for them. I have lavished space on this matter because it is the biggest issue these two books raise. It must be said that the near neglect of chant reflects fairly well the broader state of Renaissance musicology. For example, scholarship on chant fared similarly in Reynolds' book, and in Grafton's volume commemorating the exhibit in Washington, facsimiles of polyphonic manuscripts outnumbered chant manuscripts eleven to four.

But it would be unfair to close on this disappointing note, one intended to stimulate future research. Time after time the articles in Papal Music contribute significantly to our understanding of that subject. All authors are established musicological stars; they know their subject matter and dispatch their work responsibly. Given our general belief that Roman sacred music often reflected conservative ideals, the studies by Jeffrey Dean and Mitchell Brauner take on an importance that goes well beyond the boundaries of their individual articles. This is an important book, and anyone who cares about Renaissance music should read it.