Broken Harmony

Music was a much-debated subject in the Renaissance. Many people believed it could carry a meaning that could be read, yet the evidence showed music often worked in ways that were hard to pin down and that could be applied to almost anything. Writing of the period, the author argues, often tries to hold back music's unreadability rather than engage with what music actually did to listeners.

Joseph M. Ortiz re-examines this tension and revises the way historians understand Renaissance views of music. The book suits readers of early modern cultural history, musicology and the history of ideas, as well as music students who want to understand the intellectual setting of Renaissance theory.

Published by Cornell University Press. ISBN-13: 9780801449314.