Authentic performance of troubadour melodies

Troubadours

Ancient Rome is remembered as one of the greatest military powers in history, its fame derived from the fearsome reputation of the empire’s legionnaires. Lost in the telling, however, is the important role that espionage played in Rome’s ascent to empire

Guillaume de Machaut’s “Messe de Nostre Dame” in the context of fourteenth-century polyphonic music for the Mass Ordinary

Messe de Nostre Dame

It is a contention of this thesis that, among these sources of fragmentary or whole (that is, five- or six- movement), Mass cyles, a historical context may be found for the Messe de Nostre Dame, a work which has traditionally been approached as though is possessed no such context.

The Libro de la Regla Vieja of the Cathedral of Seville as a Musicological Source

Cathedral of Seville, Seville, Spain

The significance of this regla de coro to Seville’s pre-Tridentine use prompted me to seek here a deeper understanding of the book, and especially the textual transmission of its contents, confusion over which has led, hitherto, to most of the difficulties and errors concerning its dating.

A historiographical and artistic survey of confraternities from the later Middle Ages to the early Renaissance

Confraternities Good Friday procession

Overall, the analysis will allow for a closer examination of not just the culture of a particular confraternity, but also the cultural values, ideals, and practices of an entire community in one period of time. Furthermore, the examination of confraternal artwork will prove important, as it will demonstrate the unique power of confraternities.

Social alienation and political subversion: Anti-Judaism in medieval Spanish music

Music - Spain

In this thesis, the prevalence of anti-Judaism in the music of Christian Spain from the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century is explored.

The Byzantine communion chant for Easter in 14th-century manuscripts

A musical manuscript of 1433 (Pantokratoros monastery).

It is only recently that the attention of musicologists has been directed to the study of Eastern church music as transmitted in 14th and 15th-century Byzantine manuscripts.

First Performance in 400 Years for Medieval Passover Music

TanenbaumCHAT

Toronto Jewish High School Choir Revives Lost Tunes

Whose Music is it Anyway? How we Came to View Musical Expression as a Form of Property

Medieval music

By analyzing the economic and legal structures governing music making in Western Europe from the classical period in Greece through the Renaissance, the article shows that the law first granted some exclusive rights in the Middle Ages, when musicians’ guilds enjoyed the exclusive right to perform music in medieval cities, but that the concept of music as a form of property was not established until

Troubadours and their heritage in the edges of Europe – Singing and rapping experiences of being in a minority in Southern France and in Sámiland

Troubadours

What is common to these artists is the way how they define and express their belonging to their own ethnic group. The characteristics of their ethnic identity 2 are above all else language, home territory, and history.

Gregorian Chant, the Greatest Unison Music

Gregorian Chant - The Introit Gaudeamus omnes, scripted in square notation in the 14th—15th century Graduale Aboense, honors Henry, patron saint of Finland.

I speak simply as a teacher of a choir that has labored for many years and as an ardent though humble student of the great musical literature of Georgian Chant.

Medieval Mummers are this year’s holiday hit – so says The Onion

medieval mummers

The must-see hit of the holidays is a group of medieval mummers, who are going door-to-door singing old-fashioned ballads and acting out jovial plays in return for mugs of ale and gold pieces.

Medieval Christmas Celebrations

Medieval Christmas 4

Richard and Anne’s first Christmas as king and queen in 1483 was happy, even though they were in London and their only son Edward had to remain at Middleham, too sickly to travel.

‘Synge we now alle and sum’: Three Fifteenth-Century Collections of Communal Song

Medieval musical notes

The manuscripts British Library, Sloane MS 2593, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 are compact collections of song lyrics written during the fifteenth century, largely without notation.

Words and music in communion: an analysis of Guillaume de Machaut’s “Le Lay de la Fonteinne” in cultural context

Guillaume de Machaut - music

In this thesis, I shall attempt to define and then analyze the multiple elements present in Guillaume de Machaut’s “Le Lay de la fonteinne,”especially those elements that encapusulate the medieval myth of secular divinity.

Regency Medievalism and the Early-Romantic Guitar

Guitar - image courtesy University of Bristol

Professor Christopher Page, a celebrated musician and musicologist, will be coming to the University of Bristol on Thursday to give a lecture, entitled ‘Regency Medievalism and the Early-Romantic Guitar’, which will consider how the guitar, so favoured by amateur musicians among the nobility and gentry by 1830, came to be involved with a developing interest in the Middle Ages during the Regency period.

Postmodern Middle Ages: Medieval Music at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

8svR

The reduction of the Middle Ages to a decorative function has nothing to do with the Middle Ages and everything to do with our era: the Middle Ages have become part of the vocabulary of our time—they have become present in the twentieth century. Why is this so?

Stanford scholar finds the origins of Western poetry in troubadours’ songs

Medieval singer-songwriters tended to write songs about chivalrous, illicit love. Image courtesy Marisa Galvez / Stanford University

Stanford Assistant Professor Marisa Galvez has written a book about medieval songbooks, pointing to troubadours as the models for modern poets. The poem can seem like a timeless art form. When we talk about the poetry of nature or dance, we’re referring to a primeval form of language – it’s as if verse existed before […]

Evidence and Intuition: Making Medieval Instruments

Evidence and Intuition: Making Medieval Instruments Adelman, Beth Early Music America (Fall 2005) Abstract The Atlakvida (The Lay of Attila), an 8th-or early 9th-century story from the Old Icelandic Edda, contains a description of music performed under the most difficult circumstances: “The living prince they placed in the pit – a crowd of men did it […]

Medieval Music Literature

Medieval Music Literature Christensen, Thomas (University of Chicago) THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL MUSIC, March (2011) Abstract Literature on music in the Middle Ages poses special challenges to the historian. There is first of all the obvious fact that there is a great deal of it. (The number of extant medieval music theory texts alone exceeds […]

New Relationships in Old Music: Is there a Connection Between the Music of Medieval Spain and the Music of the French Troubadours?

Troubadours

New Relationships in Old Music: Is there a Connection Between the Music of Medieval Spain and the Music of the French Troubadours? Dirks, Christine A. Research Paper, DePaul University, May 1 (2009) Abstract This inquiry into the Medieval and Renaissance music of Spain is rooted not only in a love of music, but in an enduring curiosity […]

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Her Music Drama Ordo virtutum: A critical review of the scholarship and some new suggestions

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Her Music Drama Ordo virtutum: A critical review of the scholarship and some new suggestions By Eckehard Simon Published Online Introduction: During the last three decades, Hildegard of Bingen – visionary, prophetess, abbess, correspondent, preacher, composer, and scientist – has become an icon of modern culture, outshining any other medieval […]

Madonna Bellina, ‘astounding’ Jewish musician in mid-sixteenth-century Venice

Renaissance woman musician

Madonna Bellina, ‘astounding’ Jewish musician in mid-sixteenth-century Venice Harran, Don Renaissance Studies Vol. 22 No. 1(2007) Abstract Around 1550, the Venetian playwright and satirist Andrea Calmo (d. 1571) wrote a love letter to a certain Madonna Bellina, a Jewess, commending her for her skills as singer and instrumentalist. There were doubtless other Jewish women who […]

The origin of the Town Waits, and the myth of the watchman-turned-musician

waits

The origin of the Town Waits, and the myth of the watchman-turned-musician By Richard Rastall Paper given to International Guild of Town Pipers (2006) Introduction: We all know about the origin of the town waits. The waits go back into the mists of history, and they provide an interesting story of how one kind of […]

A concordance for an early fourteenth-century motet: Exaudi melodiam/Alme Deus/TENOR revisited

A concordance for an early fourteenth-century motet: Exaudi melodiam/Alme Deus/TENOR revisited By Elizabeth Eva Leach Published Online (2011) Introduction: In 1970, Jürg Stenzl published an account of an unusual polyphonic motet copied in a manuscript of chant from a the Abbey of Saint-Maurice in the Valais, Switzerland, together with a transcription of the motet and […]

A Gregorian manuscript in the Ian Potter Museum of Art

Pope Gregory I

A Gregorian manuscript in the Ian Potter Museum of Art Martyn, John R.C. University of Melbourne Collections, Issue 6, June (2010) Abstract In about 1000 a very interesting illuminated manuscript that probably held copies of all of the letters of Pope Gregory the Great was created. Five centuries later, 41 of these letters, from books two, […]

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