The Songs of Michel Beheim

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Michel Beheim (1420-ca. 1474), prolific and peripatetic composer of almost 500 song-poems, explored a very wide thematic and stylistic range, embracing almost every type of song accessible to the late medieval and early modern singer. He wrote lyrics on history and love, politics and travel, geography and aesthetics, morals and warfare, satire and diplomacy, polemics and religion, Dracula and ocean monsters - and more. Often his own scribe, Beheim, ever the self-important artist, carefully preserved his work for posterity. Sometimes housed at the highest courts of the Empire, but frequently without sustenance, Beheim led a life in constant search of literary patronage. In the end, he was forced into retirement because his monophonic singing fell out of favor, rivalled by the polyphonic music of the Renaissance courts. This new collection of annotated translations of his work offers an introduction to his vast oeuvre.

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(Professor William C. McDonald, University of Virginia)

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(Professor Sieglinde Hartmann, Universitaet Wuerzburg)