Thomas Neal
Thomas Neal is a teacher, musicologist, and conductor based in Oxford (UK). Thomas took his BA and MPhil degrees in musicology from Clare College, Cambridge, where he was the John Stewart of Rannoch Scholar in Sacred Music. He has researched and written widely on music and culture in early modern Italy, with a particular focus on the life and works of Giovanni Pierluigi 'da Palestrina' (c.1525-1594), and the printed sources and patronage of sacred music in sixteenth-century Rome. Recent publications have explored the sources of Palestrina's masses, madrigals, hymns, and litanies; early modern performance practices; music and the Tridentine liturgical reform; and the literary sources of 17th-century spiritual madrigals. He has spoken at numerous national and international conferences, on topics ranging from Machaut to Monteverdi. Thomas is currently preparing a monograph on the chronology of Palestrina's masses and, in the long term, a new 'life and works' study of the same composer.
Since graduating, Thomas has developed a career in education and in 2018 he was appointed Director of Music at New College School, Oxford, one of the UK’s leading preparatory schools and home of the world-renowned choristers of New College. He also holds a master's degree in educational leadership and management.
Alongside teaching and research, Thomas is also active as a choral conductor and church musician, specialising in music for the traditional Latin liturgy. He lives in Oxford with his wife and their three children.
Supervisors: Prof. Iain Fenlon and Dr. David Skinner
Since graduating, Thomas has developed a career in education and in 2018 he was appointed Director of Music at New College School, Oxford, one of the UK’s leading preparatory schools and home of the world-renowned choristers of New College. He also holds a master's degree in educational leadership and management.
Alongside teaching and research, Thomas is also active as a choral conductor and church musician, specialising in music for the traditional Latin liturgy. He lives in Oxford with his wife and their three children.
Supervisors: Prof. Iain Fenlon and Dr. David Skinner
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Book chapters by Thomas Neal
During the Renaissance and throughout the Baroque and Classical periods, musical production is linked to patronage. There are essentially two types of patronage. The first relates to political institutions, to public life, and aims to promote musical events that highlight the wealth and power of the patron in the eyes of rival courts and subjects – hence the birth of the court chapels.
The second type belongs to the private sphere, in which the patron, of noble birth and as such in possession of high moral and intellectual virtues, possesses a discriminating artistic sensibility — hence the promotion of chamber music activities, the collecting of rare and valuable musical instruments, and the compilation and collection of musical manuscripts, possibly in deluxe or personalized copies. This musical production system, as described, lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the advent of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeois class caused the decline of patronage. This book focuses on the various aspects of music patronage in Italy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.
The papers collected here deal with musical patronage and its relations with contemporary society from different points of view, offering new reserch perspectives.
Conference papers by Thomas Neal
ABSTRACT:
The two sets of four-voice Marian Litanies composed by Giovanni Pierluigi ‘da Palestrina’ (c.1525–1594) have long presented problems to his biographers, with apparently no surviving sources from the composer’s lifetime; the choice of obscure texts in an already complex and unstable genre of paraliturgia; and with no obvious stimulus or context for their initial composition and performance. The recent discovery in the CRAI Biblioteca de Reserva (Universitat de Barcelona) of the Altus partbook from a previously unknown edition, published at Venice by Angelo Gardano in 1582, now enables us to locate the Litanies within Palestrina’s lifetime. In this paper, I will argue that this new terminus ante quem provides several important clues concerning the composition and commissioning of the Marian Litanies, the source of their distinctive texts, and their original performance context. I will present further new evidence that suggests that Palestrina composed the Litanies for the Compagnia della SS. Rosario at the Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, most likely in 1580 or shortly thereafter. I will situate Palestrina’s compositions in the context of the confraternity’s internal reforms of the late 1570s and early 1580s, its programme of artistic patronage, and its local and wider devotional exercises.
organized by Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini
and Societat Catalana de Musicologia
Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 10-12 May 2023
Abstract:
Any attempt to explore the interconnections between music and the figurative arts in the baroque era must consider not only newly created compositions and works of art, but the ways in which works of the past were used, understood, and repurposed. Such examples can serve as cultural indicators, revealing the values of the cultural environment in which the works were received and read. This is especially the case in early modern Rome, the centre of the Catholic world and the site of the papal court, where the legitimacy and credibility of both religious authority and political power were premised on the unbroken continuum of Christian and Roman tradition. This ancient inheritance was founded upon and expressed not just in the unchanging doctrine and dogmas of the Faith, renewed and freshly articulated at the Council of Trent, but in the materiality of the city of Rome itself: ancient buildings, obelisks, and sculptures that had witnessed historic events; the burial sites, bodies, and relics of the saints, especially the early Roman martyrs; and artworks and architecture that depicted or were closely tied to the city’s Christian history. In «Tempio Armonico» (Rome: Nicolò Mutii, 1599), Blessed Giovanni Giovenale Ancina (1545-1604) brought together 125 Italian-texted laude by assorted composers from the latter half of the sixteenth century, edited and re-texted, to form a collection of music in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A large proportion of the compositions reference, or even directly address, specific devotional images of the Madonna from around the Italian peninsula, with a particular concentration on Marian cults local to Rome and Naples. In this paper, I will focus on the twenty-four laude connected to medieval Roman devotional images of the Madonna. I will identify the artworks, tracing both their place in the physical fabric of the city’s churches and their use and meaning in popular Marian piety in counter-reformation Rome; and I will suggest ways in which Ancina’s chosen musical and poetic texts relate to the history, titles, and iconography of the images.
voice-leading of the inner parts. This highly idiosyncratic feature, coupled with other in-text performance directions pertaining to «musica ficta», transposition, and the realisation of multi-voiced canons, raise numerous questions about Nuvoloni’s intentions, the musical text, and its realisation in performance. Through a close reading and analysis of Nuvoloni’s edition and a side-by-side comparison with Palestrina’s original text, in this paper I would like to examine three areas. First: what style of accompaniment did Nuvoloni envision, and how is this evidenced in the source? Secondly: what were the preconditions for
performing from this edition? And finally: to what extent did Nuvoloni’s
approach make allowances for the rhetoric of Palestrina’s melodic writing, or changes in texture, voicing, and timbre? The answers to these and other related questions cast Nuvoloni’s one-off edition as an important witness to the historical development of the instrumental accompaniment of polyphony in early seventeenth-century Italy.
In this paper I explore the textual aspects of the motets of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525–94). Which texts did Palestrina set? What types of text did he favour? What factors might have determined his choice of text? Palestrina makes for a good case study because he was among the most prominent and prolific composers of motets in the early decades of the Catholic reformation. His 300 or so motets, issued in nine printed editions between 1563 and 1593, were widely disseminated, performed, and emulated well into the mid-seventeenth century. They are especially representative of the Tridentine repertory, and therefore can be used to illustrate the ways taste developed with regard to choice of text during the first decades of the post-conciliar liturgical reforms.
Dissertations by Thomas Neal
Editions by Thomas Neal
Art.-Nr.: 4733
Kategorie: Streichorchester
Schlüsselwort: Mai 2023
During the Renaissance and throughout the Baroque and Classical periods, musical production is linked to patronage. There are essentially two types of patronage. The first relates to political institutions, to public life, and aims to promote musical events that highlight the wealth and power of the patron in the eyes of rival courts and subjects – hence the birth of the court chapels.
The second type belongs to the private sphere, in which the patron, of noble birth and as such in possession of high moral and intellectual virtues, possesses a discriminating artistic sensibility — hence the promotion of chamber music activities, the collecting of rare and valuable musical instruments, and the compilation and collection of musical manuscripts, possibly in deluxe or personalized copies. This musical production system, as described, lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the advent of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeois class caused the decline of patronage. This book focuses on the various aspects of music patronage in Italy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.
The papers collected here deal with musical patronage and its relations with contemporary society from different points of view, offering new reserch perspectives.
ABSTRACT:
The two sets of four-voice Marian Litanies composed by Giovanni Pierluigi ‘da Palestrina’ (c.1525–1594) have long presented problems to his biographers, with apparently no surviving sources from the composer’s lifetime; the choice of obscure texts in an already complex and unstable genre of paraliturgia; and with no obvious stimulus or context for their initial composition and performance. The recent discovery in the CRAI Biblioteca de Reserva (Universitat de Barcelona) of the Altus partbook from a previously unknown edition, published at Venice by Angelo Gardano in 1582, now enables us to locate the Litanies within Palestrina’s lifetime. In this paper, I will argue that this new terminus ante quem provides several important clues concerning the composition and commissioning of the Marian Litanies, the source of their distinctive texts, and their original performance context. I will present further new evidence that suggests that Palestrina composed the Litanies for the Compagnia della SS. Rosario at the Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, most likely in 1580 or shortly thereafter. I will situate Palestrina’s compositions in the context of the confraternity’s internal reforms of the late 1570s and early 1580s, its programme of artistic patronage, and its local and wider devotional exercises.
organized by Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini
and Societat Catalana de Musicologia
Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 10-12 May 2023
Abstract:
Any attempt to explore the interconnections between music and the figurative arts in the baroque era must consider not only newly created compositions and works of art, but the ways in which works of the past were used, understood, and repurposed. Such examples can serve as cultural indicators, revealing the values of the cultural environment in which the works were received and read. This is especially the case in early modern Rome, the centre of the Catholic world and the site of the papal court, where the legitimacy and credibility of both religious authority and political power were premised on the unbroken continuum of Christian and Roman tradition. This ancient inheritance was founded upon and expressed not just in the unchanging doctrine and dogmas of the Faith, renewed and freshly articulated at the Council of Trent, but in the materiality of the city of Rome itself: ancient buildings, obelisks, and sculptures that had witnessed historic events; the burial sites, bodies, and relics of the saints, especially the early Roman martyrs; and artworks and architecture that depicted or were closely tied to the city’s Christian history. In «Tempio Armonico» (Rome: Nicolò Mutii, 1599), Blessed Giovanni Giovenale Ancina (1545-1604) brought together 125 Italian-texted laude by assorted composers from the latter half of the sixteenth century, edited and re-texted, to form a collection of music in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A large proportion of the compositions reference, or even directly address, specific devotional images of the Madonna from around the Italian peninsula, with a particular concentration on Marian cults local to Rome and Naples. In this paper, I will focus on the twenty-four laude connected to medieval Roman devotional images of the Madonna. I will identify the artworks, tracing both their place in the physical fabric of the city’s churches and their use and meaning in popular Marian piety in counter-reformation Rome; and I will suggest ways in which Ancina’s chosen musical and poetic texts relate to the history, titles, and iconography of the images.
voice-leading of the inner parts. This highly idiosyncratic feature, coupled with other in-text performance directions pertaining to «musica ficta», transposition, and the realisation of multi-voiced canons, raise numerous questions about Nuvoloni’s intentions, the musical text, and its realisation in performance. Through a close reading and analysis of Nuvoloni’s edition and a side-by-side comparison with Palestrina’s original text, in this paper I would like to examine three areas. First: what style of accompaniment did Nuvoloni envision, and how is this evidenced in the source? Secondly: what were the preconditions for
performing from this edition? And finally: to what extent did Nuvoloni’s
approach make allowances for the rhetoric of Palestrina’s melodic writing, or changes in texture, voicing, and timbre? The answers to these and other related questions cast Nuvoloni’s one-off edition as an important witness to the historical development of the instrumental accompaniment of polyphony in early seventeenth-century Italy.
In this paper I explore the textual aspects of the motets of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525–94). Which texts did Palestrina set? What types of text did he favour? What factors might have determined his choice of text? Palestrina makes for a good case study because he was among the most prominent and prolific composers of motets in the early decades of the Catholic reformation. His 300 or so motets, issued in nine printed editions between 1563 and 1593, were widely disseminated, performed, and emulated well into the mid-seventeenth century. They are especially representative of the Tridentine repertory, and therefore can be used to illustrate the ways taste developed with regard to choice of text during the first decades of the post-conciliar liturgical reforms.
Art.-Nr.: 4733
Kategorie: Streichorchester
Schlüsselwort: Mai 2023