Throughout history, music for both popular and specialized audiences has come from cultural and social contexts that are foreign to modern listeners. William Prizer describes Italian court music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the distinct social function of music in Italian Renaissance court society. Prizer remarks on the social and cultural contexts of music in the 1980s, and how modern interpretations may influence in the writing of music history.
At the time of this interview, Prizer, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1984-85), was professor of musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
