Music at Court

This illustrated historical essay surveys how European courts used music as patronage and display from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century. Hogwood follows princes who were trained to judge composers, the household posts of chapel and chamber, and the strained relation between a monarch's need for spectacle and a musician's need for pay and independence. English royal examples sit beside continental ones; architecture and painting appear as rival forms of princely advertisement, with music as the most public sound. Facsimiles of scores and portraits support the account. The book is a short history of court musical life, not a concert programme or a composer's life.

87 illustrations (paintings, documents, stage scenery, portraits and prints), 49 in colour, illustrating the history of royal and noble patronage of music. Glassine dust-jacket. The Presentation Volume for 1978.