Music and the moderni, 1300-1350

Karen Desmond is Assistant Professor of Music at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, and in 2018 was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Harvard University. She has published her research on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century music, theory, and notation in the leading journals of her field. Desmond was awarded an NEH Research Fellowship and an SSHRC Banting Fellowship for this book project.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Subtilitas and the ars nova; 3. Jean des Murs, Quadrivial Scientist; 4. Arts old and new; 5. From trees to degrees; 6. Notational dots and the line of musical time; Epilogue; Appendix 1: list of transitional ars nova motets and concordances; Appendix 2: key dates in the biography of Jean des Murs; Appendix 3: key dates in the biography of Philippe de Vitry; Appendix 4: sources of Jean des Murs's notitia and conclusiones; Appendix 5: edition of Apta/Flos; Appendix 6: works list for Jean des Murs.

'Karen Desmond's book places early fourteenth-century music and musical thought persuasively within their intellectual contexts. Equally at home in music theory, the history of musical style, palaeography, prosopography, astronomy, philosophy and a whole host of other fields of knowledge, she rises to the challenge of saying something substantially 'new' about the ars nova. Drawing all these intellectual threads masterfully together, Desmond's breath taking study will be the defining work on the subject for many years to come.' Christian Thomas Leitmeir, University of Oxford