The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideology, Performance

Abstract

Medieval music has become hugely popular. But it is largely a modern invention. Scholars and performers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hoped to bring back to life music that could evoke the Middle Ages. Yet all the time they were inventing new sounds and new ways of understanding how the music worked. The story of the reinvention of medieval music is told here for the first time.--a story of individuals, the societies in which they worked, their tastes and beliefs, all interacting to remake a lost musical world