This book describes instrumental music and its context in German society
of the late middle ages - from about 1350 to 1520. Players at that time
improvised, much like jazz musicians of our day, but because they did
not use notated music, only scant remnants of their activity have
survived in written sources, and much has been left obscure. This book
attempts to reconstruct an image of their music, discussing the
instruments, ensembles, and performance practices of the time. What
emerges from this study is a fundamental reappraisal of late medieval
culture. A musical life is reconstructed which was not only
extraordinary in its own time, but which also laid the foundations of an
artistic culture that later produced such giants as Schütz, Bach, Mozart
and Beethoven.