Recomposing the Past: Representations of Early Music on Stage and Screen

<p><em>Recomposing the Past</em> is a book concerned with the complex but important ways in which we engage with the past in modern times. Contributors examine how media on stage and screen uses music and in particular early music to evoke and recompose a distant past. Culture popular and otherwise is awash with a stylise - sometimes contradictory - musical history. And yet for all its complexities these representations of the past through music are integral to how our contemporary and collective imaginations understand history. More importantly they offer a valuable insight into how we understand our musical present. Such representative strategies the book argues cross generic boundaries and as such it brings together a range of multimedia discussion on the subjects of film (<i>Lord of the Rings Dangerous Liasions</i>) television (<i>Game of Thrones</i> <i>The Borgias</i>) videogame (<i>Dragon Warrior</i> <i>Gauntlet</i>) and opera (<i>Written on Skin</i> <i>Taverner</i> English ‘dramatick opera’). This collection constitutes a significant and interdisciplinary contribution to a growing literature which is unpacking our ongoing creative dialogue with the past. Divided into three complementary sections grouped not by genre or media but by theme it considers: ‘Authenticity Appropriateness and Recomposing the Past’ ‘Music Space and Place: Geography as History’ and ‘Presentness and the Past: Dialogues between Old and New’. Like the musical collage that is our shared multimedia historical soundscape it is hoped that this collection is in its eclecticism more than the sum of its parts. </p>