Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages. Reinhard Strohm , Bonnie J. Blackburn
manner. Cavalieri served not only as artistic director, planner, and manager, but also as a composer. His musical dramas were performed both there and in Rome, where he returned at the end of his life. Kirkendale discusses Cavalieri's surviving compositions — the Lamentations of Jeremiah, other responsories, and the Anima e corpo — in some detail, and examines closely the evidence for Cavalieri's lost pastorales, which he identifies as the earliest works that might bear the term opera. He is convincing in his argument that in order for Cavalieri's importance, creativity, and impact to be understood, he needs to be seen in all of these contexts at once: as humanist and man of letters, artistic patron and collector, creative director, manager, political actor, devoted Christian. This book provides scholars with the means to do so, and Kirkendale takes them a considerable way in such an enterprise. It should serve as an indispensable research tool for scholars examining any aspect of the era's court culture. ANN E. MOYER University of Pennsylvania