Music historian and pianist. Research focuses on European music, 14th to 16th centuries. Address: New England Conservatory 290 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 U.S.A.
Johannes Regis. Collection "Épitome musicale". Brepols; Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 2010
The abundance of new information that has emerged since the mid 1980s concerning Ockeghem, Busnoy... more The abundance of new information that has emerged since the mid 1980s concerning Ockeghem, Busnoys, Binchois, Du Fay and others has in many ways reshaped the landscape of mid fifteenth-century music. Meanwhile there have been major upheavals in our understanding of the works and careers of Josquin, Obrecht and other composers of the generation active during the last decades of the century. Regis’s music and biography spans these two periods and two groups of composers in significant ways. He is the only one among his contemporaries for whom extended personal contact with both Binchois and Du Fay, the two leading figures of the first half of the century, can be proposed with confidence. On the other hand, Regis is the only composer of his generation to have several of his Latin-texted works published in Petrucci’s prints of the early sixteenth century. Given this unusual profile, it now seems especially important to gain a clearer sense of Regis’s career and to situate his works within the new historical picture that has begun to form of musical developments in the second half of the fifteenth century. In bringing together and adding to what is known of Regis’s biography Chapter 1 focuses on his connections to three institutions: the collegiate church of Saint-Vincent in Soignies, Cambrai Cathedral, and the Burgundian court. Chapters 2 and 3 look closely at a group of works, including his two surviving mass settings, most of which employ novel combinative techniques of one sort or another. A "missa sus lome arme" by Regis copied at Cambrai in 1462 is the earliest reference to any work based on the famous "L’homme armé" melody. The material presented here allows us to establish for the first time the specific historical context in which a "L‘homme armé" mass was composed. The final chapter is devoted to Regis’s tenor motets, works that have by now received a good deal of scholarly attention. In focusing on aspects of these motets that have gone unnoticed (such as Regis’s use of four distinct ranges) or that in my view merit more detailed study, my aim has been to highlight the distinctive nature of each of the pieces. As examples of a particular motet-type they have an unquestionable importance in the historical development of the genre. But they are also among the grandest musical gestures of the fifteenth century, each inflected in its own way, as The Clerks so splendidly reveal in the recordings that accompany the volume.
Secular Renaissance Music: Forms and Functions, ed. Sean Gallagher. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2013
Secular music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encompasses an extraordinarily wide range ... more Secular music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encompasses an extraordinarily wide range of works and practices: courtly love songs, music for civic festivities, instrumental music, entertainments provided by minstrels, the unwritten traditions of solo singing, and much else. This collection of essays addresses many of these practices, with a focus on polyphonic settings of vernacular texts, examining their historical and stylistic contexts, their transmission in written and printed sources, questions of performance, and composers’ approaches to text setting. Essays have been selected to reflect the wide range of topics that have occupied scholars in recent decades. Taken together they point to the more general significance of secular music within a broad complex of cultural practices and institutions.
Table of Contents Contents: Introduction; Part I Sources and Transmission: The Vatican manuscript Urb. Lat. 1411: an undervalued source?, James Haar; Embellishment and urtext in the 15th-century song repertories, David Fallows; Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Joshua Rifkin; Petrucci's Canti volumes: scope and repertory, David Fallows; Composition - copying: performance - recreation: the matrix of stemmatic problems for early music, Stanley Boorman; The salon as marketplace in the 1550s: patrons and collectors of Lasso's secular music, Donna G. Cardamone. Part II Genres: The constitution of the 15th-century German tenor lied: drafting the history of a musical genre, Martin Staehelin; Ockeghem and the motet-chanson in 15th-century France, Honey Meconi; Josquin's chansons as generic paradigms, Lawrence F. Bernstein; The frottola and the unwritten tradition, William F. Prizer; The early madrigal: a re-appraisal of its sources and its character, James Haar; Chanson and air, Kate van Orden; Lied and madrigal, 1580-1600, Ludwig Finscher. Part III Composers and Contexts: 'Trained and immersed in all musical delights': towards a new picture of Busnoys, David Fallows; Seigneur Leon's papal sword: Ferrara, Du Fay, and his songs of the 1440s, Sean Gallagher; Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines, Blake Wilson; Willaert and the canzone villanesca, Nino Pirrotta; Monteverdi, Marenzio, and Battista Guarini's 'cruda amarilli', Massimo Ossi. Part IV Performers and Performance Issues: The a capella heresy in Spain: an inquisition into the performance of the cancionero repertory, Tess Knighton; Psyche's Lament: some music for the Medici wedding in 1565, Howard Mayer Brown; From minstrel to courtier - the royal musique de chambre and courtly ideals in 16th-century France, Jeanice Brooks; Courtesans, muses, or musicians? Professional women musicians in 16th-century Italy, Anthony Newcomb. Part V Instrumental Music: The use of borrowed material in 16th-century instrumental music, John Ward; Innovation in instrumental music 1450-1510: the role of German performers within European culture, Keith Polk; Songs without words by Josquin and his contemporaries, Warwick Edwards. Part VI Music and Poetry: Ricercare and variations on O Rosa Bella, Nino Pirrotta; The composer as exegete: interpretations of Petrarchan syntax in the Venetian madrigal, Martha Feldman
City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music. Edited by Michael Scott Cuthbert, Sean Gallagher, and Christoph Wolff. Harvard University Press,, 2013
Cultural landscape and geography have affected the history of Western music from its earliest man... more Cultural landscape and geography have affected the history of Western music from its earliest manifestations to the present day. This volume brings together thirteen essays by leading scholars that explore ways that space, urban life, landscape, and time transformed plainchant and other musical forms. In addressing a broad array of topics—ranging from Beneventan chant in Italy and Dalmatia, to music theory in medieval France, to later transformations of chant in Iceland and Spain—these essays honor and build upon Thomas Forrest Kelly's work in keeping cultural, geographic, and political factors close to the heart of the musicology of chant, early music, and beyond. Two essays complement Kelly's scholarly and pedagogical interests by investigating the role of the city in the premieres of works composed long after the end of the Middle Ages.
Western Plainchant in the First Millennium: Studies in the Medieval Liturgy and its Music. Sean Gallagher, James Haar, John Nadas, and Timothy Striplin, eds., 2003
Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of th... more Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of the topics raised in James McKinnon's The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass, the last book before his untimely death in February 1999. A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying CD), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old Roman chant.
The Century of Bach and Mozart: Perspectives on Historiography, Composition, Theory, and Performance. Sean Gallagher and Thomas Forrest Kelly, eds., 2008
Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as towering representatives of European m... more Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as towering representatives of European music of the eighteenth century, composers whose works reflect intellectual, religious, and aesthetic trends of the period. Research on their compositions continues in many ways to shape our broader understanding of eighteenth-century musical thought and its contexts. This collection of essays by leading authorities in the field offers a variety of new perspectives on the two composers, as well as some of their important contemporaries, Haydn in particular. The essays address topics as diverse as the historiography of eighteenth-century music, concepts of time and musical form, the idea of the musical work and its relation to publishing practices, compositional process, and performance practice.
Owing to the loss of most 15th-century music manuscripts from France and Burgundy, chansonniers o... more Owing to the loss of most 15th-century music manuscripts from France and Burgundy, chansonniers of Italian origin are of special significance for our knowledge of the French song repertory and its dissemination during the second half of the century. Florence appears to have been a particularly important center of collecting, judging from a group of nine chansonniers copied there between the 1440s and the early 1490s. In recent decades the Berlin Chansonnier (Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.C.28) has held a special place among these Florentine sources, partly because it is the only one from before the 1490s for which there is external evidence that seemed to provide a precise dating, and partly because that evidence indicated that it was our only surviving Florentine music manuscript from the 1460s. More than 30 years ago Peter Reidemeister identified the two Florentine families whose impaled arms decorate the first chanson in the collection. These arms led him to propose that the manuscript was made in connection with a wedding involving these two families, which he claimed took place in 1465 or 1466, a dating that has been accepted as a terminus ad quem in subsequent scholarship. The manuscript thus appeared to pre-date by 15 or more years the next earliest sources in the Florentine group, and the significant repertorial differences between the Berlin manuscript and those of the early 1480s seemed to confirm this time gap. Documents in the Archivio di Stato in Florence change this picture considerably. New evidence calls for a series of crucial adjustments to the theories proposed by Reidemeister that together force a reassessment of the dating of the Berlin Chansonnier. This reassessment affects in turn its relation to several other manuscripts, both from Florence and elsewhere in Italy, and provides new insight into the repertory of songs (in particular those of Busnoys) that was circulating in Florence between the 1460s and the early 1480s.
Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn, ed. M. Jennifer Bloxam, Gioia Filocamo, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Brepols), 2009
Johannes Ockeghem: Actes du XLe Colloque international d'études humanistes: (Tours, 1997), ed. Philippe Vendrix (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), 1998
Outlines the constitutive elements of a rhythmic lingua franca for continental polyphony from the... more Outlines the constitutive elements of a rhythmic lingua franca for continental polyphony from the third quarter of the 15th c., based on a systematic study of rhythmic patterns, including the patterned interplay among voices, in all music in tempus perfectum by Ockeghem, Johannes Regis, Antoine Busnois, and others. Ockeghem's preference for certain rhythmic patterns (distinctive either in themselves, or made so through their context) helps establish a rhythmic profile of the composer, one that can assist in editorial decisions and attributive research. Rhythmic features of the anonymously preserved motet-chanson "Permanent vierge–Pulchra es–Santa Dei genitrix" strongly suggest Ockeghem's authorship.
Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries/Modalitaet in der Musik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ursula Guenther, Ludwig Finscher, and Jeffrey Dean, Musicological Studies and Documents 49 (American Inst. of Musicology/Haenssler-Verlag), 1996
The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Words and Pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 2002
‘Recevez ce mien petit labeur’: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Ignace Bossuyt, ed. M. Delaere and P. Bergé (Leuven: Leuven University Press), 2008
Qui musicam in se habet: Studies in Honor of Alejandro Enrique Planchart. Edited by A. Zayaruznaya, B. J. Blackburn, & S. Boorman (Middleton: American Institute of Musicology), 2015
Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, vol. 57, 2007
Presents a new interpretation and dating of Du Fay’s rondeau "Seigneur Leon/Benedictus qui venit"... more Presents a new interpretation and dating of Du Fay’s rondeau "Seigneur Leon/Benedictus qui venit" based on the wording of its text and a document from the court of Leonello d’Este. It is argued that its text refers to Leonello having been given a papal sword by Nicholas V, most likely in 1447. Recently revised datings of various manuscripts, along with an analysis of Du Fay’s handling of certain rhythmic details, serve as the basis for dating a number of chansons to the 1440s, thereby significantly revising the currently accepted chronology of his songs.
Efforts to uncover biographical data in the text of Jacob Obrecht's motet Mille quingentis have l... more Efforts to uncover biographical data in the text of Jacob Obrecht's motet Mille quingentis have led scholars to minimize the significance of the poem’s figurative language. Written in response to the death of the composer’s father, the text is a hybrid of different poetic styles, a reflection of the rich web of literary and cultural practices that lies behind it. Allusions to the poetry of Vergil figure more prominently in the motet than has been previously recognized. Other examples of the kinds of allusions found in Mille quingentis, drawn from a wide range of works, demonstrate that Obrecht was here participating in a more general commemorative practice, wherein the assimilation of well-known classical texts served to express private sentiments using a “public” language newly charged with meaning. A consideration of texts that possibly mediated his use of Vergilian language and themes (among them a treatise of Johannes Tinctoris) suggests that the motet’s biographical significance lies principally in what it can tell us about Obrecht’s intellectual background and tendencies, as well as his engagement with the humanistic literary environment he would have encountered during his first stay at the Ferrarese court.
Johannes Regis. Collection "Épitome musicale". Brepols; Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 2010
The abundance of new information that has emerged since the mid 1980s concerning Ockeghem, Busnoy... more The abundance of new information that has emerged since the mid 1980s concerning Ockeghem, Busnoys, Binchois, Du Fay and others has in many ways reshaped the landscape of mid fifteenth-century music. Meanwhile there have been major upheavals in our understanding of the works and careers of Josquin, Obrecht and other composers of the generation active during the last decades of the century. Regis’s music and biography spans these two periods and two groups of composers in significant ways. He is the only one among his contemporaries for whom extended personal contact with both Binchois and Du Fay, the two leading figures of the first half of the century, can be proposed with confidence. On the other hand, Regis is the only composer of his generation to have several of his Latin-texted works published in Petrucci’s prints of the early sixteenth century. Given this unusual profile, it now seems especially important to gain a clearer sense of Regis’s career and to situate his works within the new historical picture that has begun to form of musical developments in the second half of the fifteenth century. In bringing together and adding to what is known of Regis’s biography Chapter 1 focuses on his connections to three institutions: the collegiate church of Saint-Vincent in Soignies, Cambrai Cathedral, and the Burgundian court. Chapters 2 and 3 look closely at a group of works, including his two surviving mass settings, most of which employ novel combinative techniques of one sort or another. A "missa sus lome arme" by Regis copied at Cambrai in 1462 is the earliest reference to any work based on the famous "L’homme armé" melody. The material presented here allows us to establish for the first time the specific historical context in which a "L‘homme armé" mass was composed. The final chapter is devoted to Regis’s tenor motets, works that have by now received a good deal of scholarly attention. In focusing on aspects of these motets that have gone unnoticed (such as Regis’s use of four distinct ranges) or that in my view merit more detailed study, my aim has been to highlight the distinctive nature of each of the pieces. As examples of a particular motet-type they have an unquestionable importance in the historical development of the genre. But they are also among the grandest musical gestures of the fifteenth century, each inflected in its own way, as The Clerks so splendidly reveal in the recordings that accompany the volume.
Secular Renaissance Music: Forms and Functions, ed. Sean Gallagher. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2013
Secular music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encompasses an extraordinarily wide range ... more Secular music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encompasses an extraordinarily wide range of works and practices: courtly love songs, music for civic festivities, instrumental music, entertainments provided by minstrels, the unwritten traditions of solo singing, and much else. This collection of essays addresses many of these practices, with a focus on polyphonic settings of vernacular texts, examining their historical and stylistic contexts, their transmission in written and printed sources, questions of performance, and composers’ approaches to text setting. Essays have been selected to reflect the wide range of topics that have occupied scholars in recent decades. Taken together they point to the more general significance of secular music within a broad complex of cultural practices and institutions.
Table of Contents Contents: Introduction; Part I Sources and Transmission: The Vatican manuscript Urb. Lat. 1411: an undervalued source?, James Haar; Embellishment and urtext in the 15th-century song repertories, David Fallows; Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Joshua Rifkin; Petrucci's Canti volumes: scope and repertory, David Fallows; Composition - copying: performance - recreation: the matrix of stemmatic problems for early music, Stanley Boorman; The salon as marketplace in the 1550s: patrons and collectors of Lasso's secular music, Donna G. Cardamone. Part II Genres: The constitution of the 15th-century German tenor lied: drafting the history of a musical genre, Martin Staehelin; Ockeghem and the motet-chanson in 15th-century France, Honey Meconi; Josquin's chansons as generic paradigms, Lawrence F. Bernstein; The frottola and the unwritten tradition, William F. Prizer; The early madrigal: a re-appraisal of its sources and its character, James Haar; Chanson and air, Kate van Orden; Lied and madrigal, 1580-1600, Ludwig Finscher. Part III Composers and Contexts: 'Trained and immersed in all musical delights': towards a new picture of Busnoys, David Fallows; Seigneur Leon's papal sword: Ferrara, Du Fay, and his songs of the 1440s, Sean Gallagher; Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines, Blake Wilson; Willaert and the canzone villanesca, Nino Pirrotta; Monteverdi, Marenzio, and Battista Guarini's 'cruda amarilli', Massimo Ossi. Part IV Performers and Performance Issues: The a capella heresy in Spain: an inquisition into the performance of the cancionero repertory, Tess Knighton; Psyche's Lament: some music for the Medici wedding in 1565, Howard Mayer Brown; From minstrel to courtier - the royal musique de chambre and courtly ideals in 16th-century France, Jeanice Brooks; Courtesans, muses, or musicians? Professional women musicians in 16th-century Italy, Anthony Newcomb. Part V Instrumental Music: The use of borrowed material in 16th-century instrumental music, John Ward; Innovation in instrumental music 1450-1510: the role of German performers within European culture, Keith Polk; Songs without words by Josquin and his contemporaries, Warwick Edwards. Part VI Music and Poetry: Ricercare and variations on O Rosa Bella, Nino Pirrotta; The composer as exegete: interpretations of Petrarchan syntax in the Venetian madrigal, Martha Feldman
City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music. Edited by Michael Scott Cuthbert, Sean Gallagher, and Christoph Wolff. Harvard University Press,, 2013
Cultural landscape and geography have affected the history of Western music from its earliest man... more Cultural landscape and geography have affected the history of Western music from its earliest manifestations to the present day. This volume brings together thirteen essays by leading scholars that explore ways that space, urban life, landscape, and time transformed plainchant and other musical forms. In addressing a broad array of topics—ranging from Beneventan chant in Italy and Dalmatia, to music theory in medieval France, to later transformations of chant in Iceland and Spain—these essays honor and build upon Thomas Forrest Kelly's work in keeping cultural, geographic, and political factors close to the heart of the musicology of chant, early music, and beyond. Two essays complement Kelly's scholarly and pedagogical interests by investigating the role of the city in the premieres of works composed long after the end of the Middle Ages.
Western Plainchant in the First Millennium: Studies in the Medieval Liturgy and its Music. Sean Gallagher, James Haar, John Nadas, and Timothy Striplin, eds., 2003
Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of th... more Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of the topics raised in James McKinnon's The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass, the last book before his untimely death in February 1999. A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying CD), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old Roman chant.
The Century of Bach and Mozart: Perspectives on Historiography, Composition, Theory, and Performance. Sean Gallagher and Thomas Forrest Kelly, eds., 2008
Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as towering representatives of European m... more Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as towering representatives of European music of the eighteenth century, composers whose works reflect intellectual, religious, and aesthetic trends of the period. Research on their compositions continues in many ways to shape our broader understanding of eighteenth-century musical thought and its contexts. This collection of essays by leading authorities in the field offers a variety of new perspectives on the two composers, as well as some of their important contemporaries, Haydn in particular. The essays address topics as diverse as the historiography of eighteenth-century music, concepts of time and musical form, the idea of the musical work and its relation to publishing practices, compositional process, and performance practice.
Owing to the loss of most 15th-century music manuscripts from France and Burgundy, chansonniers o... more Owing to the loss of most 15th-century music manuscripts from France and Burgundy, chansonniers of Italian origin are of special significance for our knowledge of the French song repertory and its dissemination during the second half of the century. Florence appears to have been a particularly important center of collecting, judging from a group of nine chansonniers copied there between the 1440s and the early 1490s. In recent decades the Berlin Chansonnier (Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.C.28) has held a special place among these Florentine sources, partly because it is the only one from before the 1490s for which there is external evidence that seemed to provide a precise dating, and partly because that evidence indicated that it was our only surviving Florentine music manuscript from the 1460s. More than 30 years ago Peter Reidemeister identified the two Florentine families whose impaled arms decorate the first chanson in the collection. These arms led him to propose that the manuscript was made in connection with a wedding involving these two families, which he claimed took place in 1465 or 1466, a dating that has been accepted as a terminus ad quem in subsequent scholarship. The manuscript thus appeared to pre-date by 15 or more years the next earliest sources in the Florentine group, and the significant repertorial differences between the Berlin manuscript and those of the early 1480s seemed to confirm this time gap. Documents in the Archivio di Stato in Florence change this picture considerably. New evidence calls for a series of crucial adjustments to the theories proposed by Reidemeister that together force a reassessment of the dating of the Berlin Chansonnier. This reassessment affects in turn its relation to several other manuscripts, both from Florence and elsewhere in Italy, and provides new insight into the repertory of songs (in particular those of Busnoys) that was circulating in Florence between the 1460s and the early 1480s.
Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn, ed. M. Jennifer Bloxam, Gioia Filocamo, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Brepols), 2009
Johannes Ockeghem: Actes du XLe Colloque international d'études humanistes: (Tours, 1997), ed. Philippe Vendrix (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), 1998
Outlines the constitutive elements of a rhythmic lingua franca for continental polyphony from the... more Outlines the constitutive elements of a rhythmic lingua franca for continental polyphony from the third quarter of the 15th c., based on a systematic study of rhythmic patterns, including the patterned interplay among voices, in all music in tempus perfectum by Ockeghem, Johannes Regis, Antoine Busnois, and others. Ockeghem's preference for certain rhythmic patterns (distinctive either in themselves, or made so through their context) helps establish a rhythmic profile of the composer, one that can assist in editorial decisions and attributive research. Rhythmic features of the anonymously preserved motet-chanson "Permanent vierge–Pulchra es–Santa Dei genitrix" strongly suggest Ockeghem's authorship.
Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries/Modalitaet in der Musik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ursula Guenther, Ludwig Finscher, and Jeffrey Dean, Musicological Studies and Documents 49 (American Inst. of Musicology/Haenssler-Verlag), 1996
The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Words and Pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 2002
‘Recevez ce mien petit labeur’: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Ignace Bossuyt, ed. M. Delaere and P. Bergé (Leuven: Leuven University Press), 2008
Qui musicam in se habet: Studies in Honor of Alejandro Enrique Planchart. Edited by A. Zayaruznaya, B. J. Blackburn, & S. Boorman (Middleton: American Institute of Musicology), 2015
Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, vol. 57, 2007
Presents a new interpretation and dating of Du Fay’s rondeau "Seigneur Leon/Benedictus qui venit"... more Presents a new interpretation and dating of Du Fay’s rondeau "Seigneur Leon/Benedictus qui venit" based on the wording of its text and a document from the court of Leonello d’Este. It is argued that its text refers to Leonello having been given a papal sword by Nicholas V, most likely in 1447. Recently revised datings of various manuscripts, along with an analysis of Du Fay’s handling of certain rhythmic details, serve as the basis for dating a number of chansons to the 1440s, thereby significantly revising the currently accepted chronology of his songs.
Efforts to uncover biographical data in the text of Jacob Obrecht's motet Mille quingentis have l... more Efforts to uncover biographical data in the text of Jacob Obrecht's motet Mille quingentis have led scholars to minimize the significance of the poem’s figurative language. Written in response to the death of the composer’s father, the text is a hybrid of different poetic styles, a reflection of the rich web of literary and cultural practices that lies behind it. Allusions to the poetry of Vergil figure more prominently in the motet than has been previously recognized. Other examples of the kinds of allusions found in Mille quingentis, drawn from a wide range of works, demonstrate that Obrecht was here participating in a more general commemorative practice, wherein the assimilation of well-known classical texts served to express private sentiments using a “public” language newly charged with meaning. A consideration of texts that possibly mediated his use of Vergilian language and themes (among them a treatise of Johannes Tinctoris) suggests that the motet’s biographical significance lies principally in what it can tell us about Obrecht’s intellectual background and tendencies, as well as his engagement with the humanistic literary environment he would have encountered during his first stay at the Ferrarese court.
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Table of Contents
Contents: Introduction; Part I Sources and Transmission: The Vatican manuscript Urb. Lat. 1411: an undervalued source?, James Haar; Embellishment and urtext in the 15th-century song repertories, David Fallows; Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Joshua Rifkin; Petrucci's Canti volumes: scope and repertory, David Fallows; Composition - copying: performance - recreation: the matrix of stemmatic problems for early music, Stanley Boorman; The salon as marketplace in the 1550s: patrons and collectors of Lasso's secular music, Donna G. Cardamone. Part II Genres: The constitution of the 15th-century German tenor lied: drafting the history of a musical genre, Martin Staehelin; Ockeghem and the motet-chanson in 15th-century France, Honey Meconi; Josquin's chansons as generic paradigms, Lawrence F. Bernstein; The frottola and the unwritten tradition, William F. Prizer; The early madrigal: a re-appraisal of its sources and its character, James Haar; Chanson and air, Kate van Orden; Lied and madrigal, 1580-1600, Ludwig Finscher. Part III Composers and Contexts: 'Trained and immersed in all musical delights': towards a new picture of Busnoys, David Fallows; Seigneur Leon's papal sword: Ferrara, Du Fay, and his songs of the 1440s, Sean Gallagher; Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines, Blake Wilson; Willaert and the canzone villanesca, Nino Pirrotta; Monteverdi, Marenzio, and Battista Guarini's 'cruda amarilli', Massimo Ossi. Part IV Performers and Performance Issues: The a capella heresy in Spain: an inquisition into the performance of the cancionero repertory, Tess Knighton; Psyche's Lament: some music for the Medici wedding in 1565, Howard Mayer Brown; From minstrel to courtier - the royal musique de chambre and courtly ideals in 16th-century France, Jeanice Brooks; Courtesans, muses, or musicians? Professional women musicians in 16th-century Italy, Anthony Newcomb. Part V Instrumental Music: The use of borrowed material in 16th-century instrumental music, John Ward; Innovation in instrumental music 1450-1510: the role of German performers within European culture, Keith Polk; Songs without words by Josquin and his contemporaries, Warwick Edwards. Part VI Music and Poetry: Ricercare and variations on O Rosa Bella, Nino Pirrotta; The composer as exegete: interpretations of Petrarchan syntax in the Venetian madrigal, Martha Feldman
A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying CD), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old Roman chant.
Documents in the Archivio di Stato in Florence change this picture considerably. New evidence calls for a series of crucial adjustments to the theories proposed by Reidemeister that together force a reassessment of the dating of the Berlin Chansonnier. This reassessment affects in turn its relation to several other manuscripts, both from Florence and elsewhere in Italy, and provides new insight into the repertory of songs (in particular those of Busnoys) that was circulating in Florence between the 1460s and the early 1480s.
Table of Contents
Contents: Introduction; Part I Sources and Transmission: The Vatican manuscript Urb. Lat. 1411: an undervalued source?, James Haar; Embellishment and urtext in the 15th-century song repertories, David Fallows; Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Joshua Rifkin; Petrucci's Canti volumes: scope and repertory, David Fallows; Composition - copying: performance - recreation: the matrix of stemmatic problems for early music, Stanley Boorman; The salon as marketplace in the 1550s: patrons and collectors of Lasso's secular music, Donna G. Cardamone. Part II Genres: The constitution of the 15th-century German tenor lied: drafting the history of a musical genre, Martin Staehelin; Ockeghem and the motet-chanson in 15th-century France, Honey Meconi; Josquin's chansons as generic paradigms, Lawrence F. Bernstein; The frottola and the unwritten tradition, William F. Prizer; The early madrigal: a re-appraisal of its sources and its character, James Haar; Chanson and air, Kate van Orden; Lied and madrigal, 1580-1600, Ludwig Finscher. Part III Composers and Contexts: 'Trained and immersed in all musical delights': towards a new picture of Busnoys, David Fallows; Seigneur Leon's papal sword: Ferrara, Du Fay, and his songs of the 1440s, Sean Gallagher; Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines, Blake Wilson; Willaert and the canzone villanesca, Nino Pirrotta; Monteverdi, Marenzio, and Battista Guarini's 'cruda amarilli', Massimo Ossi. Part IV Performers and Performance Issues: The a capella heresy in Spain: an inquisition into the performance of the cancionero repertory, Tess Knighton; Psyche's Lament: some music for the Medici wedding in 1565, Howard Mayer Brown; From minstrel to courtier - the royal musique de chambre and courtly ideals in 16th-century France, Jeanice Brooks; Courtesans, muses, or musicians? Professional women musicians in 16th-century Italy, Anthony Newcomb. Part V Instrumental Music: The use of borrowed material in 16th-century instrumental music, John Ward; Innovation in instrumental music 1450-1510: the role of German performers within European culture, Keith Polk; Songs without words by Josquin and his contemporaries, Warwick Edwards. Part VI Music and Poetry: Ricercare and variations on O Rosa Bella, Nino Pirrotta; The composer as exegete: interpretations of Petrarchan syntax in the Venetian madrigal, Martha Feldman
A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying CD), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old Roman chant.
Documents in the Archivio di Stato in Florence change this picture considerably. New evidence calls for a series of crucial adjustments to the theories proposed by Reidemeister that together force a reassessment of the dating of the Berlin Chansonnier. This reassessment affects in turn its relation to several other manuscripts, both from Florence and elsewhere in Italy, and provides new insight into the repertory of songs (in particular those of Busnoys) that was circulating in Florence between the 1460s and the early 1480s.