Politicas y practicas musicales en el mundo de Felipe II: Estudios sobre la musica en Espana, sus instituciones y sus territorios en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI.(Book review)

Politicas y practicas musicales en el mundo de Felipe II: Estudios sobre la musica en Espana, sus instituciones y sus territorios en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI. (Coleccion Musica Hispana. Textos. Estudios 8.) Edited by John Griffiths and Javier Suarez-Pajares. Madrid: Ediciones del ICCMU, 2004. [572 pp. ISBN: 84F-89457-33-6. $56.11.] Illustrations, index, bibliography.

Philip II was born in 1526 and ruled Spain from 1556 until his death in 1598; this book, then, is the largest and most comprehensive study of music in late-sixteenth-century Spain and its satellites to have come out in a very long time, and it deserves to be well known and frequently consulted outside the Spanish-speaking world. So perhaps the first useful service I can render is simply to translate its table of contents into English:

I. About Philip II and Music

1. Music at the court of Philip II (Luis Robledo)

2. Philip II and music at El Escorial (Michael Noone)

3. The music books of Philip II: the formation of a royal collection (Tess Knighton)

4. The "tempered vice" of Philip the Pious: Music and education for Philip III (Maria Sanhuesa Fonseca)