Renaissance News: Volume 7 -

The Editing of Monteverdi
Hans F. Redlich
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

20 November 2018, pp. 50-52
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That decisions of this sort must have caused some headache even to contemporary conductors may be guessed from Michael Praetorius’ practical editing of another item of the Monteverdi Vespers, ‘Ave maris Stella.’ These choral variations ‘a 8’ on a plain-chant melody are written for eight-part double choir, Basso continuo, with intersticial ritornelli, scored for an unspecified orchestra ‘a5’. There are variations for semi-chorus and for soloists. In the very end (‘Sit laus’) the composer unites both semi-choirs (without the usually preceding ritornelli).

Jonson's Antimasques
W. Todd Furniss
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

20 November 2018, pp. 21-22
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In the introduction to his Masque of Queens (1609) Ben Jonson says that the Queen commanded him to ‘thinke on some Daunce, or shew, that might praecede hers, and have the place of a foyle, or false-Masque.’ In complying, he presents twelve witches, ‘not as a Masque, but as a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicitie of Gesture, and not vnaptly sorting with the current, and whole fall of the Deuise,’ and he refers to his earlier ‘foyle’ in the Haddington Masque (1608) as an 'Anti-Masque of Boyes.’ Over a period of twenty-six years Jonson gave his royal masters many such spectacles of strangeness. The differences among the several kinds of antimasque which Jonson produced in his career have often been pointed out but the similarities have never been satisfactorily explained.

Renaissance Quarterly