Review
... Oxford University Press has produced a book both handsome and well presented ... This monumental volume appears likely to serve for a long time for many purposes: as an invaluable quarry for information on Italian sacred music composed for the office of Vespers in the period c.1580-1625; as a miscellaneous compendium of data concerning the realization in performance of this and much other sacred music of the period; and as a skilful analysis of the constituent movements of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. (
Music & Letters )
... concludes with useful appendices, a comprehensive discography, and magnificent bibliographies, including musical sources and theoretical writings of the period. (
Music & Letters )
Kurzmann's expertise and encyclopedic knowledge of seventeenth-century sacred music make the book indispensable reading for any performer or scholar of seventeenth-century music as well as for any conductor, producer, or performer of the Vespers. The author's experienced analysis of this complex and confusing period is especially valuable ... excellent and thorough scholarship gives this book an honored place in any music library (
Sixteenth Century Journal )
John Morehen, Early Music
"From a scholarly point of view, this edition is undoubtedly first class"