Copyright

Tim Shephard; Chenxi Xiao;

Published On

2026-07-27

Language

  • English

Print Length

10 pages

THEMA

  • AVM
  • NHDL
  • NHF
  • JBCC

BISAC

  • MUS020000
  • MUS015000
  • HIS037020
  • HIS020000
  • SOC002010

Keywords

  • Renaissance
  • Italy
  • Asia
  • music
  • sound
  • travel
  • knowledge

0. Introduction

Chapter of: The Khan’s Pifferi: Reading about the Musics of Asia in Late Fifteenth-Century Italy

This section sets out clearly the scope, parameters and objectives of the book (as per the blurb above), introduces the ten printed books that furnish the principal case studies, and connects our research with the wider and expanding discourse on the global history of pre-modern music.

Contributors

Tim Shephard

(author)
Professor of Musicology at University of Sheffield
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4053-8916
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/music/people/academic-staff/tim-shephard

Tim Shephard is Professor of Musicology at the University of Sheffield. He has led two major research projects funded by The Leverhulme Trust, “Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy” (2014-17), and “Sounding the Bookshelf 1501: Music in a Year of Italian Printed Books” (2020-23). He is author of Echoing Helicon: Music, Art and Identity in the Este Studioli (OUP, 2014), co-author of Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy (Harvey Miller, 2020) and Sounding the Bookshelf 1501 (OBP, 2025), and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture (Routledge, 2014), The Museum of Renaissance Music: A History in 100 Exhibits (Brepols, 2023), and Music and Visual Culture in Renaissance Italy (Routledge, 2023), among many other publications. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/music/people/academic-staff/tim-shephard https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4053-8916

Chenxi Xiao

(author)
Graduate Student in Musicology at University of British Columbia

Chenxi Xiao is currently a graduate student in musicology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, following undergraduate study at the University of Sheffield. Her research focusses on music and warfare in early modern Europe, and the musical culture of early modern Italy.