Medieval ritual and early modern music

"The polyphonic lauda had its place of prominence in the lay devotional confraternities in Italian cities in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. A main theme of this volume is the influence of art music in devotional contexts dominated by ritual functionality, where a modern aesthetic perspective is rarely employed. The authors raise fundamental questions about the validity of such a distinction between functional simplicity and aesthetic sensibility, where the latter is usually reserved for advanced, secular genres such as opera and the madrigal."--Jacket.