Cover for DUMITRESCU: John Dygon's Proportiones practicabiles secundum Gaffurium. Click for larger image

John Dygon's Proportiones practicabiles secundum Gaffurium

A rare example of musical scholarship from the Tudor period, in translation and fully annotated

John Dygon was the prior of St. Augustine’s monastery in Canterbury when Henry VIII boldly dissolved the English Catholic Church during the 1530s and reorganized it under royal control. Only a single copy of Dygon’s treatises on music theory has survived, held by Trinity College, Cambridge. This volume is the first publication of the two treatises, providing both a scholarly transcription and English translation.

Dygon’s work provides a rare and important example of musical scholarship from the early Tudor period, demonstrating the status of music education at the time, the affiliations of English scholarship with music study in Europe, and the music that was actually performed in England. The treatises address questions of musical notation, especially regarding rhythmic proportions, as well as practical issues about performance. Theodor Dumitrescu’s introduction situates Dygon’s treatises within the larger history of European music, paying close attention to its borrowings from and adaptations of prior treatises.

"Theodor Dumitrescu's study, edition, and translation of Dygon's works is exemplary in every respect. . . . The book sheds light on aspects of English musical culture that go well beyond the specific topics covered in the treatises and provides valuable insights into musical relations between England and the continent in the early decades of the sixteenth century."--Renaissance Quarterly

Theodor Dumitrescu is a Le Stadium postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François Rabelais, Tours.

To order online:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/49ehb2qw9780252031823.html

To order by phone:
(800) 621-2736 (USA/Canada)
(773) 702-7000 (International)

Related Titles

previous book next book
Making the March King

John Philip Sousa's Washington Years, 1854-1893

Patrick Warfield

American Music

Edited by Neil Lerner

Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi's Plana musica and Musica speculativa

New Critical Texts, Translations, Annotations, and Indices by Jan Herlinger

Pretty Good for a Girl

Women in Bluegrass

Murphy Hicks Henry

Sweet Dreams

The World of Patsy Cline

Edited by Warren R. Hofstra

In Her Own Words

Conversations with Composers in the United States

Jennifer Kelly

Bird

The Life and Music of Charlie Parker

Chuck Haddix

World Flutelore

Folktales, Myths, and Other Stories of Magical Flute Power

Dale A. Olsen

The Creolization of American Culture

William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy

Christopher J. Smith