Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism

<em>The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism</em> provides a snapshot of the diverse ways in which medievalism--the retrospective immersion in the images sounds narratives and ideologies of the European Middle Ages--powerfully transforms many of the varied musical traditions of the last two centuries. Thirty-three chapters from an international group of scholars explore topics ranging from the representation of the Middle Ages in nineteenth-century opera to medievalism in contemporary video game music thereby connecting disparate musical forms across typical musicological boundaries of chronology and geography. While some chapters focus on key medievalist works such as Orff's <em>Carmina Burana</em> or Peter Jackson's <em>Lord of the Rings</em> films others explore medievalism in the oeuvre of a single composer (e.g. Richard Wagner or Arvo P�rt) or musical group (e.g. Led Zeppelin). The topics of the individual chapters include both well-known works such as John Boorman's film <em>Excalibur</em> and also less familiar examples such as Eduard Lalo's<em> Le Roi d'Ys</em>. The authors of the chapters approach their material from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives including historical musicology popular music studies music theory and film studies examining the intersections of medievalism with nationalism romanticism ideology nature feminism or spiritualism. Taken together the contents of the <em>Handbook</em> develop new critical insights that venture outside traditional methodological constraints and provide a capstone and point of departure for future scholarship on music and medievalism.<br>