IT IS A rare occurrence to find a genre bender among the offerings of the academic press. Not a monograph, nor a textbook, nor exactly a collection of essays, Edward Nowacki's Greek and Latin Music Theory: Principles and Challenges originates in lecture notes amassed over twenty years of teaching the history of ancient and medieval music theory at the University of Cincinnati. The book-cum-archive contains materials ranging from general overviews, new translations, “how-tos” for music-theoretical procedures, line-by-line commentaries on treatises, to essays with new research—all addressing topics from ancient Greek and medieval Latin music-theoretical traditions, starting with Plato and ending with Zarlino. A reader expecting the comprehensiveness of a modern textbook, the through arguments of a monograph, or the rigorous bibliographical and disciplinary framing conventions for a set of new scholarly essays could easily find him- or herself confused as to how to read or make use of the book....
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October 1, 2022
Book Review|
October 01 2022
Greek and Latin Music Theory: Principles and Challenges
Edward Nowacki.
Greek and Latin Music Theory: Principles and Challenges
. University of Rochester Press
, 2020
: xi +225 pp. ($99.00 cloth, $24.99 e-book).
Elizabeth Lyon Hall
Elizabeth Lyon Hall is a scholar of ancient and medieval music history and theory and has been on the faculties of Cornell University and Ithaca College. She is currently the director of COLLIS Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture at Cornell University. Her scholarly writing can be found in Early Music, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, and Greek and Roman Musical Studies.
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Journal of Music Theory (2022) 66 (2): 255–261.
Citation
Elizabeth Lyon Hall; Greek and Latin Music Theory: Principles and Challenges. Journal of Music Theory 1 October 2022; 66 (2): 255–261. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9930913
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