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Music and Culture in Late Renaissance Italy.

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By Iain Fenlon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. [xvi, 265 p. ISBN 0-19-816444-0. 30 [pounds sterling].] Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Philip Larkin said of literary journalism that he found reading the books hard, thinking of something to say about them hard, and saying it hardest of all. Collections of essays pose special challenges, since they may lack the organicism characteristic of books conceived along other lines. Fortunately, few reviewers, if any, would find lain Fenlon's book hard to read, since his arguments are expressed in a graceful prose that renders his subject matter entirely accessible to readers. Nor is it hard to think of something to say, principally because Fenlon has established himself, over two decades, as one of the ablest practitioners in historical musicology and multidisciplinary studies. The musical developments that are his primary concern are placed within the broadest historical, political, ecclesiastical, artistic, and literary contexts, and this produces rich, provocatire results for readers. In Fenlon's book, that multidisciplinary nature is most obviously exemplified in the aptly chosen figures with which the book is illustrated; in most instances, these illustrations document in other areas--principally the visual arts--those same historical developments reflected in the musical phenomena he discusses. Fenlon's purpose in collecting and rewriting these ten essays was to increase their accessibility "to colleagues, from whatever discipline, with an interest in the cultural history of the period" (p. viii). That rewriting consisted partly in the removal of "technical discussions of musical language," and although Fenlon does not always succeed in making his text fully comprehensible to nomnusicologists (for example, the reference on page 57 to "falsobordone settings performed alternatim"), colleagues from other disciplines interested in the place of music in early modern Italian society could hardly do better than consult Fenlon's stimulating and evocative essays.

Any potential lack of organicism is overcome by the principle of selection; there is a relatively small number of global themes that explain the inclusion of the essays reprinted. The following taxonomy is mine: (l) what has been described elsewhere under the rubric...

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