I was an associate professor of music at Univ. of New Hampshire, director of Capella Alamire, and am a scholar of Franco-Flemish music, canon, and musica ficta c. 1500. I also have interests in solmization, pitch organization, other performance practice issues, shape-note repertory, music by Charles Ives, and other 20th c. composers. Supervisors: Teachers were Richard Sherr, Joseph Maneri (& Co.), Joseph Flummerfelt, Lewis Lockwood, among others. Address: Portsmouth, NH
My 2021 book "Sound and Sense in Franco-Flemish Music of the Renaissance: Sharps, Flats, and the ... more My 2021 book "Sound and Sense in Franco-Flemish Music of the Renaissance: Sharps, Flats, and the Problem of ‘Musica ficta’" is accompanied by a website of sound examples with scores. The urls are included in this pdf of excerpts, and will provide an idea of the issues that the book addresses.
Only the table of contents, abstract, and index are provided here. See UMI for the full disserta... more Only the table of contents, abstract, and index are provided here. See UMI for the full dissertation.
The article began as a talk aiming to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. Three po... more The article began as a talk aiming to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. Three positions are portrayed through problematic examples. With difficult passages from Franco-Flemish repe...
Creating a new edition of the Missa Tempore paschali forces one to confront the extensive paralle... more Creating a new edition of the Missa Tempore paschali forces one to confront the extensive parallelisms found in the collected works edition and to consider a set of questions that are comparable to those raised by musica ficta in Gombert’s music: is an aggressive editorial stance justifiable when stylistic norms are exceeded, or might the composer have intended these unusual patterns? Answers emerge from the dense eight-voice Credo and twelve-voice Agnus dei II that both maintain our preconceptions about the style, and challenge them deeply. A new source for the Agnus dei II enriches our understanding of the editorial issues, the connection with Brumel's “Earthquake” mass, and our appreciation of the mass as a whole.
Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1993
Despite decades of work on the subject of editorial accidentals for Renaissance music, many famil... more Despite decades of work on the subject of editorial accidentals for Renaissance music, many familiar problems remain unresolved. Karol Berger's recent book, Musica ficta (1987), has provided a sense of closure by bringing together all the available theoretical evidence ...
The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current... more The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current effort to reassign its authorship to Pierre de la Rue, fueled largely by an interest in removing it from Josquin's canon, relies paradoxically upon aspects of the work that were celebrated as evidence of Josquin's genius by earlier scholars. These aspects, however, depend solely on our acceptance of a peculiar reading in an early manuscript version of the piece, a version that is indeed radical and unprecedented in its notation but is also internally inconsistent and marked by signs of scribal intervention. The author speculates on a mechanism by which such a flawed version of the motet could have arisen. If correct, this mechanism points to an original notated version of the motet that was clefless, while the much celebrated "incomparable modulation" of the end turns out to be neither a modulation nor incomparable. In themselves, these observations do not support either side of the authorship debate; however, they do suggest that some of the arguments levied against Josquin's authorship have little meaning if the pitch level and signatures present in the early manuscript source resulted from scribal decisions and not the composer's thought.
Tijdschrift Van De Koninklijke Vereniging Voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1997
Critical appreciation of Ockeghem's works, although continuous since his time, has varie... more Critical appreciation of Ockeghem's works, although continuous since his time, has varied widely in content through the intervening five centuries. Works that had been singled out for praise and study in the 16th century-the canon Prenez sur moy, the Missae Prolationum ...
C37 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 81 (1974) C37--C39 O Elsevier Sequoia SA, Lausanne - Pri... more C37 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 81 (1974) C37--C39 O Elsevier Sequoia SA, Lausanne - Printed in The Netherlands Preliminary communication THE MECHANISM OF 3-HYDRIDE ELIMINATION FROM TRANSITION METAL ALKYLS (d8): KINETIC DEUTERIUM ...
In this bold and engaging book, adorned with a portrait of the composer, Rob Wegman has created w... more In this bold and engaging book, adorned with a portrait of the composer, Rob Wegman has created what appears to be a solid and reliable'life and works' for Jacob Obrecht, the sort of book that was common some 30 years ago. It is striking that this old-fashioned format, in ...
Submitted to the Journal of the Alamire Foundation
The basis of the article was a talk that aimed... more Submitted to the Journal of the Alamire Foundation The basis of the article was a talk that aimed to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. The author avoids use of the term "musica ficta" when possible, because of the mismatch between the old and the modern meanings. The modern meaning can result in very different performances of 15th and 16th c. works following opposing interpretations. There are essentially three—a linear view, a vertical or harmonic view, and the most common one—the viewpoint that "this is too treacherous an area to be sure of anything, and maybe it didn't matter." The author does not present his own viewpoint, other than to indicate that the relativism of the last one requires disproving one of the other two, too large a job for ten minutes.
My 2021 book "Sound and Sense in Franco-Flemish Music of the Renaissance: Sharps, Flats, and the ... more My 2021 book "Sound and Sense in Franco-Flemish Music of the Renaissance: Sharps, Flats, and the Problem of ‘Musica ficta’" is accompanied by a website of sound examples with scores. The urls are included in this pdf of excerpts, and will provide an idea of the issues that the book addresses.
Only the table of contents, abstract, and index are provided here. See UMI for the full disserta... more Only the table of contents, abstract, and index are provided here. See UMI for the full dissertation.
The article began as a talk aiming to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. Three po... more The article began as a talk aiming to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. Three positions are portrayed through problematic examples. With difficult passages from Franco-Flemish repe...
Creating a new edition of the Missa Tempore paschali forces one to confront the extensive paralle... more Creating a new edition of the Missa Tempore paschali forces one to confront the extensive parallelisms found in the collected works edition and to consider a set of questions that are comparable to those raised by musica ficta in Gombert’s music: is an aggressive editorial stance justifiable when stylistic norms are exceeded, or might the composer have intended these unusual patterns? Answers emerge from the dense eight-voice Credo and twelve-voice Agnus dei II that both maintain our preconceptions about the style, and challenge them deeply. A new source for the Agnus dei II enriches our understanding of the editorial issues, the connection with Brumel's “Earthquake” mass, and our appreciation of the mass as a whole.
Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1993
Despite decades of work on the subject of editorial accidentals for Renaissance music, many famil... more Despite decades of work on the subject of editorial accidentals for Renaissance music, many familiar problems remain unresolved. Karol Berger's recent book, Musica ficta (1987), has provided a sense of closure by bringing together all the available theoretical evidence ...
The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current... more The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current effort to reassign its authorship to Pierre de la Rue, fueled largely by an interest in removing it from Josquin's canon, relies paradoxically upon aspects of the work that were celebrated as evidence of Josquin's genius by earlier scholars. These aspects, however, depend solely on our acceptance of a peculiar reading in an early manuscript version of the piece, a version that is indeed radical and unprecedented in its notation but is also internally inconsistent and marked by signs of scribal intervention. The author speculates on a mechanism by which such a flawed version of the motet could have arisen. If correct, this mechanism points to an original notated version of the motet that was clefless, while the much celebrated "incomparable modulation" of the end turns out to be neither a modulation nor incomparable. In themselves, these observations do not support either side of the authorship debate; however, they do suggest that some of the arguments levied against Josquin's authorship have little meaning if the pitch level and signatures present in the early manuscript source resulted from scribal decisions and not the composer's thought.
Tijdschrift Van De Koninklijke Vereniging Voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1997
Critical appreciation of Ockeghem's works, although continuous since his time, has varie... more Critical appreciation of Ockeghem's works, although continuous since his time, has varied widely in content through the intervening five centuries. Works that had been singled out for praise and study in the 16th century-the canon Prenez sur moy, the Missae Prolationum ...
C37 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 81 (1974) C37--C39 O Elsevier Sequoia SA, Lausanne - Pri... more C37 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 81 (1974) C37--C39 O Elsevier Sequoia SA, Lausanne - Printed in The Netherlands Preliminary communication THE MECHANISM OF 3-HYDRIDE ELIMINATION FROM TRANSITION METAL ALKYLS (d8): KINETIC DEUTERIUM ...
In this bold and engaging book, adorned with a portrait of the composer, Rob Wegman has created w... more In this bold and engaging book, adorned with a portrait of the composer, Rob Wegman has created what appears to be a solid and reliable'life and works' for Jacob Obrecht, the sort of book that was common some 30 years ago. It is striking that this old-fashioned format, in ...
Submitted to the Journal of the Alamire Foundation
The basis of the article was a talk that aimed... more Submitted to the Journal of the Alamire Foundation The basis of the article was a talk that aimed to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. The author avoids use of the term "musica ficta" when possible, because of the mismatch between the old and the modern meanings. The modern meaning can result in very different performances of 15th and 16th c. works following opposing interpretations. There are essentially three—a linear view, a vertical or harmonic view, and the most common one—the viewpoint that "this is too treacherous an area to be sure of anything, and maybe it didn't matter." The author does not present his own viewpoint, other than to indicate that the relativism of the last one requires disproving one of the other two, too large a job for ten minutes.
Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis , 2015
The 2014 publication of the secular music by Mouton, edited by Thomas MacCracken, brought up some... more The 2014 publication of the secular music by Mouton, edited by Thomas MacCracken, brought up some old questions for this author, and a few new discoveries, collected together here under three headings. The first is an explanation of the 4-ex-1 canon En venant de Lyon, which is related to Ockeghem's Prenez sur moy, described by Glarean as a "katholikon," which became a contrapuntal and pedagogical model for later composers. Issues of musica ficta arise, of course. The second topic centers on the five-voice chanson Du bon du coeur, and the mass composed upon it, probably by Noel Bauldeweyn; a puzzling new identification is presented. Lastly, the 4-ex-2 canon Qui ne regrettroit le gentil Févin and some related canons are considered, together with eight-voice elaborations of the four-voice models. Issues of musica ficta arise again, but answers are suggested by the constraints imposed by the operation of the canons, and by the thickness of the resulting textures.
Creating a new edition of the Missa Tempore paschali forces one to confront the extensive paralle... more Creating a new edition of the Missa Tempore paschali forces one to confront the extensive parallelisms found in the collected works edition, and to consider a set of questions that are comparable to those raised by musica ficta in Gombert’s music: is an aggressive editorial stance justifiable when stylistic norms are exceeded, or might the composer have intended these unusual patterns? Answers emerge from the dense eight-voice Credo and twelve-voice Agnus dei II that both maintain our preconceptions about the style, and challenge them deeply. A new source for the Agnus dei II enriches our understanding of the editorial issues, the connection with Brumel's "Earthquake" mass, and our appreciation of the mass as a whole.
Thomas Brothers' book focuses on the analysis of late medieval chansons that use chromaticism in ... more Thomas Brothers' book focuses on the analysis of late medieval chansons that use chromaticism in provocative ways, covering the period of the trouveres through the mid-fifteenth century. Thomas Brothers examines the way in which accidentals function as an expressive tool.
A Review of Rob C. Wegman's _Born for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht_ (Oxford, C... more A Review of Rob C. Wegman's _Born for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht_ (Oxford, Clarendon, 1994)
Review of Karol Berger, _Musica Ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from... more Review of Karol Berger, _Musica Ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from Marchetto da Padova to Gioseffo Zarlino_ (Cambridge, 1987)
Given the manner in which recordings are distributed these days, liner notes are rarely seen. Th... more Given the manner in which recordings are distributed these days, liner notes are rarely seen. This CD recording contains information in the notes that does not appear elsewhere, and may be pertinent to performers and scholars of music of this period.
Given the manner in which recordings are distributed these days, liner notes are rarely seen. Th... more Given the manner in which recordings are distributed these days, liner notes are rarely seen. This CD recording contains information in the notes that does not appear elsewhere, and may be pertinent to performers and scholars of music of this period.
The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current... more The 16th-century motet Absalon, fili mi has long been scrutinized by modern scholars. The current effort to reassign its authorship to Pierre de la Rue, fueled largely by an interest in removing it from Josquin's canon, relies paradoxically upon aspects of the work that were celebrated as evidence of Josquin's genius by earlier scholars. These aspects, however, depend solely on our acceptance of a peculiar reading in an early manuscript version of the piece, a version that is indeed radical and unprecedented in its notation but is also internally inconsistent and marked by signs of scribal intervention. The author speculates on a mechanism by which such a flawed version of the motet could have arisen. If correct, this mechanism points to an original notated version of the motet that was clefless, while the much celebrated "incomparable modulation" of the end turns out to be neither a modulation nor incomparable. In themselves, these observations do not support either side of the authorship debate; however, they do suggest that some of the arguments levied against Josquin's authorship have little meaning if the pitch level and signatures present in the early manuscript source resulted from scribal decisions and not the composer's thought.
C37 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 81 (1974) C37--C39 O Elsevier Sequoia SA, Lausanne - Pri... more C37 Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 81 (1974) C37--C39 O Elsevier Sequoia SA, Lausanne - Printed in The Netherlands Preliminary communication THE MECHANISM OF 3-HYDRIDE ELIMINATION FROM TRANSITION METAL ALKYLS (d8): KINETIC DEUTERIUM ...
Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1993
Despite decades of work on the subject of editorial accidentals for Renaissance music, many famil... more Despite decades of work on the subject of editorial accidentals for Renaissance music, many familiar problems remain unresolved. Karol Berger's recent book, Musica ficta (1987), has provided a sense of closure by bringing together all the available theoretical evidence ...
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Books by Peter Urquhart
Papers by Peter Urquhart
The basis of the article was a talk that aimed to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. The author avoids use of the term "musica ficta" when possible, because of the mismatch between the old and the modern meanings. The modern meaning can result in very different performances of 15th and 16th c. works following opposing interpretations. There are essentially three—a linear view, a vertical or harmonic view, and the most common one—the viewpoint that "this is too treacherous an area to be sure of anything, and maybe it didn't matter." The author does not present his own viewpoint, other than to indicate that the relativism of the last one requires disproving one of the other two, too large a job for ten minutes.
The basis of the article was a talk that aimed to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. The author avoids use of the term "musica ficta" when possible, because of the mismatch between the old and the modern meanings. The modern meaning can result in very different performances of 15th and 16th c. works following opposing interpretations. There are essentially three—a linear view, a vertical or harmonic view, and the most common one—the viewpoint that "this is too treacherous an area to be sure of anything, and maybe it didn't matter." The author does not present his own viewpoint, other than to indicate that the relativism of the last one requires disproving one of the other two, too large a job for ten minutes.