Medieval Music

The American musicologist Richard Hallowell Hoppin (1913 – 1991), graduate of the Harvard University (1952), was professor of music history at the Ohio State University. This book is the product of his life-long study of medieval music; thanks to its clear insight into the subject it enjoys the status of a reference work covering the development of music from the earliest Christian chant to polyphony of the early 15th century. An introductory chapter provides the historical background; the author then considers the development of Western liturgies, secular song in both Latin and vernacular languages, and the growth of sacred and secular polyphony in the 13th and 14th centuries. The book concludes with a discussion of the new Renaissance style as exemplified in the works of Dunstable, Dufay, and Binchois.