Download or read book The Heaven Singing written by Richard Rastall and published by University of Rochester Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where should there be music in an anonymous English religious play of the fifteenth or sixteenth century? What sort of music should it be, and by what forces should it be performed? This volume shows how music was used at the time of the plays' production, both through a close examination of individual texts, and of the place of music in the intellectual and artistic life of the middle ages. Dr Rastall begins by discussing the internal literary evidence of the play texts, the surviving notated music in the plays, and the documentary evidence of the productions before turning to the wider cultural context in which the plays were composed and performed. He considers the representational and dynamic functions of music in the plays, the relationship between music, drama and liturgy, and the performers themselves - who they were, and what they might be expected to do. Related factors necessary to the discovery of how music was used in late medieval drama are also considered, from medieval cosmology and the numerical construction of plays to the age and size of boy actors. -- A discussion of the use of music in late medieval religious plays through examination of individual texts and the wider cultural context of the age.