2007Abstracts

Abstracts of Talks

Donna Altimari Adler (Loyola University Chicago), “The Generation of Musical Rhythm from its Elements in De musica 2-5 as Paradigm for the Issuance of Creation from God”

Further exploring themes first broached in a 2006 Kalamazoo conference paper on book one of Augustine’s De musica, this paper shows how books two through five of his text establish that, in his study of rhythm, meter, and verse, Augustine was attempting to identify both the “rhythmic alphabet” constituting the elemental patterns of perception of rhythm and the grammar governing the construction of harmonious sequences of motion in rhythm. Further, his interest in such matters was not external to his attempt to understand the Christian faith. Augustine believed that the way in which elemental patterns of perception, say of musical rhythm, arise within human consciousness is modeled on the pattern whereby creation itself issued from the triune dynamism of God; for the mind of man, particularly, is an image of God. Accordingly, if one could grasp the particulars of that issuance, one could gain insight into God’s process of creation. Augustine was interested in the grammar governing the construction of harmonious sequences of motion in rhythm because, on a cosmic plane, all is in rhythmic motion. The patterns of such motion, in fact, define created being. All levels of creation are self-similar, i.e., isomorphic, such that lower level realities reflect higher ones; so the rules in music governing harmonious sequences of motion in rhythm can be expected to yield insights into the rules governing harmonious sequences of motion in the cosmos at large.

Augustine discerned that the pattern of human perception follows the fourfold Platonic progression to judgment, symbolized in ancient thought by the decad. The decad stands for the idea that the monad (that which one attempts to perceive) generates a dyad, (one never perceives a naked monad; perception of the singular assumes a contrast); the dyad generates a triad (a pair in contrast is always tied together by a particular relation that must enter into perception for comprehension) and finally the triad generates a tetrad (the act of perception is incomplete until one understands the significance of the relation). Christianizing the pattern, Augustine recast it as referring, in its primary meaning to the mind’s effort to comprehend the ultimate singular reality of God. The mind cannot grasp the singularity of God. It achieves at most the idea of supersymmetry as the paradigm for unity; so it understands the Father as a monadic supersymmetrical identity relation regarding which the Son, a different perspective on the same reality and therefore a dyad, is functionally equivalent. The ever-abiding relationship between the two perspectives requires a triad for its articulation, bringing the idea of the Spirit to human awareness; and humans can understand the significance of the primal supersymmetrical dynamism only as creation. So the Trinity/creation relation encompasses the entire framework of reality within Augustine’s Christianized Platonic scheme.

Books II-V of De musica show how Augustine establishes for himself that the progression first of the rhythmic feet comprising the elements of musical rhythm and then rhythmic strings, meter, and verse, all on their own level, follow the paradigm of the fourfold progression to judgment in the pattern of the decad. Book VI posits a match or isomorphism between human perception and realities perceived, governed by the medium finally of the exemplary numbers comprising ideas in the mind of God, i.e., the “numbers” whereby reason judges the “judicial numbers.” Although he would not actually prove the transcendence of those numbers until book two of his later De libero arbitrio, he clearly intended in De musica, book six, to communicate the idea that the Christianized decad is in the end, the exemplar imitated and participated both by creation itself and human perception.

Jennifer Bain (Dalhousie University), “A Rediscovered Cistercian Antiphonal from Late-Medieval Namur”

The Salzinnes Antiphonal, a beautifully illuminated 16^th-century chant manuscript, was recently rediscovered in Halifax, Canada. Owned by the Patrick Power Library at St. Mary’s University, it is thought to have been brought to Halifax in the 19^th century. The antiphonal was created in the Abbey of Salzinnes, a Cistercian convent in Namur, at that time part of the diocese of Liège. Although covering the winter feasts only, the antiphonal seems to follow standard Cistercian liturgy. In fact, initial musical comparisons with a twelfth-century Cistercian antiphonal from the Abbey of Morimondo (F-Pn n.a.lat. 1411 and F-Pn n.a.lat. 1412) in the diocese of Milan reveals a remarkable level of consistency considering the 400 years and the geographical distance that separate the two. What stands out in the Salzinnes Antiphonal is the presence of five antiphons dedicated to the local Saint Hubertus (first Bishop of Liège) and Saint Roch (venerated widely for healing those with the Plague), whose feast days lie outside the temporal span of the manuscript.

Rebecca A. Baltzer (University of Texas), “A Gallican Remnant in the Paris Mass: Episcopal Benedictions” or “Ecclesiastical One-Upmanship in 13^th-Century Paris: Cathedral vs. Royal Chapel”

A Gallican Remnant in the Paris Mass: Episcopal Benedictions

Scholars have long acknowledged that sets of episcopal benedictions are a Gallican remnant in the medieval mass. The oldest extant Paris pontifical, from the early 13th century, opens with one hundred and ten sets of benedictions, and the first set, for the first Sunday of Advent, includes musical notation. Each set has five benedictions; the first three are proper to the day, and the last two are ordinary, written out only in the first set. In the mass they come after the Pater noster and Libera nos, just before the Peace and the Agnus dei. In this source the benedictions cover all the feasts and Sundays of the Temporale plus some ferias and the Common of saints, but there are less than two dozen sets proper to feasts of the Sanctorale.

Taking note of medieval commentators on the liturgy, I will compare this collection of benedictions with earlier and later ones from Paris (9th-16thcs) and with collections from other locales in terms of their coverage and their variant readings.

Ecclesiastical One-Upmanship in 13th-Century Paris: Cathedral vs. Royal Chapel

Each church has its own individual "message" that it presents to the public. Out of many of the same materials, two rival institutions in 13th-century Paris each created an individual synthesis of what was most important to its collective view of salvation. The Sainte-Chapelle, even though it was essentially a private, royal church, represented a major challenge--even a major threat--to the supremacy of the Cathedral as the leading ecclesiastical establishment in Paris.

Musically speaking, at Notre-Dame, the message was clearly articulated in the choice and position of chants and lessons in the liturgy, but it can be further confirmed through the texts of newly-composed conductus and motets by clerics associated with the cathedral, for these compositions offer an unfettered view directly contemporary with the construction of Notre-Dame. The Sainte-Chapelle, however, which did not invest in the resources for polyphony, focused its liturgical individualism instead upon the sequence and the rhymed office.

Interestingly enough, though the end results were quite different, both the builders of the Cathedral and the builders of the Sainte-Chapelle were profoundly influenced by 12th-century ideas that flourished at the Augustinian abbey of Saint-Victor on the Left Bank of the Seine, but each establishment made use of Victorine theology in ways that would support its own self-perceived mission. A handout will include selected texts, music, and translations.

James Borders (University of Michigan), “Chants for the Profession of Monks in a Late Twelfth-Century Pontifical”

Modern editions of medieval pontificals suggest that few chants were ever assigned to clerical ordinations or rites of monastic profession. Indeed in many such ceremonials the hymn, Te Deum laudamus, was the sole sung item. The general lack of chants for the induction of men into religious life contrasts with widespread practices of singing multiple antiphons and responds for virgin-martyrs in services for the consecration of nuns. It would appear that liturgical songs of sacrifice and devotion were appropriate only to medieval women’s rites of religious passage, not men’s.

The recent discovery of a variant service for the profession of monks, though exceptional, challenges this impression. This as yet unedited ordo, found in a Bavarian pontifical from the third quarter of the twelfth century (Munich, Staatsbibliothek MS Clm. 29838), contains some fifteen antiphons on themes of apostolic commitment and fraternity. The interpolation of so many chants suggests derivation from the consecration of virgins since the same phenomenon is encountered there. Other similarities confirm this impression. The opening ceremonial, for example, in which the bishop three times invited the oblates to approach, singing Venite, venite filii, to which the oblates responded with a series of versicles, is comparable to the opening of the nuns’ service. Two prayers offered by the bishop at key moments had traditional associations with the consecration of female virgins. Besides making these and other comparisons between the services, this presentation will seek to explain the unusual flow of influence from female to male ritual practices in the later twelfth century.

Mairi Cowan (University of Toronto), “Teaching the English Reformation to History Students through the Music of Thomas Tallis”

For this presentation, I propose to outline one of the pedagogical theories supporting the use of music in the history classroom, and then to highlight a specific way in which music can enhance students’ understanding of a historical period.

One educational theory frequently taught in North American faculties of education is the multiple intelligences theory, first put forward by Howard Gardner, a Harvard University professor of cognition and education, in 1983. One of the intelligences posited by Professor Gardner is musical intelligence. Since many pedagogues recommend that teachers try to address all of the multiple intelligences in teaching, regardless of subject matter, they also support, at least in principle, the use of music outside the music classroom.

Teachers of history should quickly recognize another potentially valuable contribution that music can make to their classes. Primary sources are the raw data of history, and obviously it is important that we train students to use them imaginatively and appropriately. Music is a wonderfully evocative primary source, yet it is rarely used in history classes. I would like to suggest that not only is the music of Thomas Tallis an emotionally engaging and aesthetically pleasing entry point into sixteenth-century England, but it is also an excellent source for how religion, the arts, and politics were negotiated during the Reformation period in Europe. Drawing upon my experiences using Tallis' music to teach the English Reformation to students at various levels, from secondary school through third year university, I will suggest ways in which teachers can present Tallis’ music to students and help their students analyze this music as a historical source, even if both teacher and students lack formal training in western classical music.

Linda Cummins (University of Alabama), “ ‘Dicitur hec pars musica extraordinaria’: New Light on the Fifteenth-Century Coniuncta”

Blackburn has cited two sources for a coniuncta treatise whose incipit reads “Dicitur hec pars musica extraordinaria”—Marciana, Lat. VIII.8.64 and VIII.8.82. I have found a third concordance, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Mus. theor. 1010. All are Italian and from the 15^th century, and this text becomes an important document in the history of the coniuncta.

Though Seay considered the coniuncta a doctrine of the 15^th century, Ellsworth showed that the Berkeley treatise (1375) described coniunctae on EE^b, FF, A, B^b, D, E^b, a, b^b, d, e^b, and aa; however, he did not dispute Seay’s claim that the treatise of Anonymous XI (mid-15^th century) represented the first complete statement of the doctrine in Italy. Musica extraordinaria, whose version in Marciana VIII.8.82 appears as part of the Compendium musicale of Nicolaus de Capua (1415), however, duplicates every one of Berkeley’s coniunctae and adds another, incomplete, on cc (extending only up to ff); it also specifies that three (those on EE^b, aa, and cc) are for use in musica figurata, while the others are used in plainchant. Musica extraordinaria also confirms some of the chants listed by Berkeley as requiring notes from coniunctae hexachords, and augments them with yet other examples.

Assuming that application of a sharp necessarily raised a note’s pitch and that application of a flat necessarily lowered it (an assumption questioned by Bent on the basis of practice in sources like Oxford 213 and Bologna Q15), Ellsworth believed that some of Berkeley’s coniunctae involved hexachords on two different pitches (e. g., a coniuncta signed with a sharp on C would be built on A; if signed with a flat on D it might be built on A^b). Musica extraordinaria omits the wording that leads to the ambiguity, resolving the disagreement.

Daniel DiCenso (Cambridge University), “Rome, Romanitas, and the ‘Romanization’ of the Frankish Liturgy: The Trouble with all Things ‘Roman’ in the Carolingian World”

Recent scholarship has cast doubt on the traditional understanding of the Carolingian liturgical reforms. Though various Carolingian sources claim that Pippin and Charlemagne imposed a unified, Roman liturgy onto the Frankish people, a growing number of scholars believe that the surviving liturgical manuscripts from that period tell a very different story: one of diverse Frankishness, rather than one of uniform Romanness.

The liturgical sources that stand at odds with the traditional understanding of the Carolingian liturgical reforms have received a good deal of attention in recent scholarship. To date, however, no scholar has made an attempt to revisit the Carolingian chronicles, histories, and biographies that cast Pippin and Charlemagne as successful liturgical Romanizers. Revisiting these sources is a critical step in determining how we might make sense of the discrepancy between the Carolingians' own understanding of (or rhetoric about) the reforms and the liturgical products that survive.

This paper aims to re-analyze Carolingian claims about the Romanization process in light of recent thinking about the surviving liturgical evidence. The Carolingians clearly believed (or wanted posterity to believe) that Pippin and Charlemagne sought after Rome, but can we (should we) take their claims at face value? If the Carolingians did not desire to emulate Rome in liturgy (as recent interpretation of the extant liturgical evidence has suggested), the next generation of scholars will have to deal with the chorus contemporaneous sources that put the emulation of Rome at the center of the Carolingian agenda. It is hoped that revisiting the Carolingian claims and their precise contexts will bring us one step closer to a better understanding of the liturgical reforms and the degree to which Roman practice was sought after, if at all.

Pascale Duhamel (University of Toronto), “A shift in the medieval epistemological approach to music”

It seems that Franco of Cologne is the first medieval theorist to use in its treatise – the Ars cantus mensurabilis – the antinomy “theory / practice” applied to music. A great part of the medieval musical treatises did distinguish between the cantor and the musician (musicus) who studied the science of music. It is the case right from the beginning with Boethius, and then with Guido d’Arezzo and John of Afflighem. However, the actual words “theory” and “practice” applied to music and Franco’s wording reveal a new emerging epistemological approach to music. This paper will propose in the first place to analyse the different wordings expressing difference between musical theory and musical practice through medieval music treatises up to the 13^th century. A second phase will compare the different ways the second half of the 13^th and the beginning of the 14^th century have expressed the difference between theory and practice, namely through the writings of Franco of Cologne, John Grocheo and Johannes de Muris. A third phase will draw attention on university texts in which this difference is also addressed in a scholastic context. The main objective of this paper is to show that university thought did influence the music theorist’s look on his discipline, as it did for other disciplines, like natural sciences and astronomy.

Daniel J. Grimminger (University of Pittsburgh), “Quintilian Redivivus?: Bach’s Use of Dispositio in the Sacred Cantatas”

J. S. Bach was part of an age that placed emphasis on rhetoric and persuasion. From the early years of his education in the Lateinschule at Lüneburg to the homiletic presentations he heard in the churches of Germany, Bach was baptized in rhetorical display rooted in the Medieval discipline. More specifically, he would have been accustomed to the arrangement of a persuasive speech (Dispositio), which came from the Institutio Oratoria, rediscovered in St. Gall Monastery in 1415. This treatise influenced Baroque music to such an extent that the nomenclature of figures and their arrangement found in Quintilian’s treatise were reproduced in hundreds of Baroque music treatises and manuscripts. It is not difficult then to entertain the thought that Bach wrote music that attempted to convince people of the message of the Church by using an accepted Dispositio (e.g. Exordium, Narratio, Propositio, Confirmatio, Confutatio, and Peroratio) passed down through the Middle Ages to the Baroque. But, surprisingly little has been written on Bach and rhetoric. With only a few controversial exceptions, musicologists have evaded examining Bach’s vocal music in the light of its medieval basis.

This study is an original investigation of three Bach Cantatas (BWV 37 Wer da gläubet und getauft wird, 109 Ich glaube, lieber Herr, and 126 Erhalt uns Herr, bei deinem Wort). In it I will employ a rhetorico-theological method, to expose the correlations between the teachings of Quintilian and the compositional praxis of Bach. When Bach coupled theological texts with musical figures and their proper ordering, like the text-tone relationship found in medieval Cantus, his intent was clearly to persuade the listener. Some cantatas were to convince the listener to have Faith in the Triune God (i.e. 37 and 109), while others attempted to convince God to have mercy upon the worshipers present (i.e. 126). The six movement ordering of these works along with the various musical figures and modi as well as shifting textual emphases from section to section, are clearly patterned after Quintilian’s six part Dispositio. In this way, the cantatas are Bach’s Ars Predicandi.

Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Sweet Briar College), “Singing Her Praises: French Queen and Capital in Gothic Ceremony”

The increasingly elaborate nature of ceremony in the late medieval world involved a variety of media to realize its message. The concrete forms of body, sculpture, and book were held together by the ephemeral bonds of choreography, speech, and music all contained within a theatrical backdrop of the city’s landscape. Foundations and celebrations were two of the arenas where queens were most visible, the ceremonies often perceived as most important in reaffirming or reinventing power and boundaries. That song was an essential element in stimulating these responses is attested to not just in the visual and textual chronicle record, but also in the often more detailed – and certainly more imaginative – world of romance. A series of case studies from the Late Capetian era will allow us to look at the French queen, the city of Paris, and the ceremony that made them visible to each other and to the citizens of the realm.

Jan Herlinger (Louisiana State University), “The Plana musica of Prosocimus de Beldemandis”

Of Prosdocimus' eight treatises on music theory only the Musica plana remains unpublished. This paper sketches the treatise's significance, based on the preparation of a critical edition to appear shortly.

Prosdocimus drew extensively on Marchetus' Lucidarium, constructing modes of pentachord and tetrachord species; classifying modes as perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, mixed, or intermixed; and incorporating Marchetus' doctrine of the cord—the note a third above the final, useful in ambiguous cases for determining whether a mode is authentic or plagal—but (uniquely among theorists, so far as I know) also discussing "secondary" cords above the modes' cofinals.

Prosdocimus' treatment of B flat in plainchant is not nearly so highly nuanced as Marchetus', however: he prescribed only the choice, in a given instance, of that inflection of B which incurs the fewer mutations between hexachords—an astonishing prescription in light of the profusion of accidentals in the well known musical examples from his counterpoint and monochord treatises: evidently contrapuntal considerations in those two-voice examples weighed heavily enough to contravene what he considered normal in monophony.

Prosdocimus railed against those "moderns" he called "not musicians but destroyers of music," who wrote melodies without clefs, used arithmetic symbols for clefs, or even wrote whole melodies with arithmetic symbols instead of notes—thus attesting to the existence of clefless compositions and numeric tablature in Italy long before there is documentary evidence for these practices.

Prosdocimus joins the ranks of the very few theorists of his time to state unequivocally that modal theory applies to polyphony. Considering work on the topic by Wiering and Strohm, I propose that it is time for scholars to reconsider how modality figures in 14th- and 15th-century polyphony.

The presentation includes digital photographs of the Musica plana manuscripts.

Patrick Kaufman (Louisiana State University), “Reconstructing the Lost Correspondence of Giovanni Spataro”

The pamphlet war between Franchino Gafurio and Giovanni Spataro is one of the more notable controversies in music history. The conflict, which pitted Gafurio as staunch defender of tradition against Spataro the progressive, occured in an atmosphere in which strict devotion to time honored musical tradition was increasingly being challenged by everyday practical application. This theoretical battle of words witnessed the publication of several polemic treatises: Gafurio’s Apologia adversus Ioannis Spatarii (1520) and his two “Epistule”; Spataro’s Errori de Franchino Gafurio (1521) and Dilucide et probatissime demonstratione (1521). Though the debate began over a copy of Ramis de Pareja’s Musica Practica that Gafurio had returned to Spataro with numerous corrections, much of the ensuing exchange resulted from eighteen letters (now lost) from Spataro to Gafurio pointing out problems in Gafurio’s De Harmonia Musicorum Instrumentorum Opus (1518); fortunately the majority of their contents were quoted and discussed in the subsequent treatises. This paper reconstructs the contents of the eighteen letters from these secondary sources, noting problems and also suggesting possible solutions. The result is an overall outline of the points of contention, essential to the comprehension of the ensuing works.

Stephen Lucey (College of Wooster), “Cantate Domino canticum ‘vetum’: The Function of Old Testament Imagery in Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome”

The early medieval church of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, despite its diminutive size, contains five frescoed narrative cycles as well as a number of isolated scenes derived from scriptural and hagiographic sources. Owing to their survival, the images at Santa Maria Antiqua are of vital interest to the study of early medieval wall decoration and its function.

The grouping of Old Testament scenes (7^th-8^th century) that form the core decoration of the so-called schola cantorum and chancel areas have rarely been addressed as a discrete programmatic element. While I have argued elsewhere that their placement may indicate a particular organization and theological conception of church space [“Palimpsest Reconsidered: Continuity and Change in the Decorative Programs at Santa Maria Antiqua.” In J. Osborne et al., eds. Santa Maria Antiqua al Foro Romano cento anni dopo. Rome: Campisano Editore, 2005, 92-3.] their potential role in the enactment of the Mass or other rituals has not been explored. In this paper, I will explore the possibility that the images could have functioned as performative “prompts” or visual focii for the recitation (musical?) of psalms and/or the Old Testament readings and prefigurations that punctuate the Eucharistic liturgy. For instance, a number of scenes (the Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace, David and Goliath, etc.) also appear in illuminated “aristocratic” psalters of the later Byzantine period. Also, Old Testament references are generally clustered at the beginning of the Mass – just as the biblical imagery in Santa Maria Antiqua decorates the entrance and processional route to the main altar. Included in my discussion will be a consideration of both clerical/lay and monastic audiences that the church likely supported.

I chose to submit this abstract to a session on musicology because I am interested in furthering the scope of my research on Santa Maria Antiqua to include all facets of ritual performance – the sights, sounds, and smells (!) of the medieval church. I look forward to feedback (sources, methodology, etc.) on these issues from an expert panel and audience.

Christopher Macklin (University of York), “Friends in High Places: The Function of Musical Votive Offerings in Times of Plague”

Across a wide spectrum of medieval society, the appearance of epidemic disease in a community indicated both a local corruption of the physical locale, and the more global problem of divine displeasure. It was therefore a matter of public health in times of illness that the community regain its physical and spiritual well-being through public displays of religious devotion, and in the public mind such measures were of equal or greater importance to the more mundane exercising of municipal health policy. The Church had a well-defined ‘intercessional hierarchy’ which the devout could call upon in times of crisis, by which prayers to the Trinity could be strengthened by enlisting the support of martyrs, saints, and the Virgin Mary. Thus, in times of trouble/crisis of all kinds, a great deal of time, effort, and money was spent to appeal to these figures of intercessionary help. These kinds of ‘medical votive offerings’ of visual art and music composed during times of plague comprise a fascinating and oft-neglected subset of the artistic legacy of Western Europe. However, to date the scholarly attention that the topic has attracted has focused largely on the visual component of such intercessionary art, leaving the music a largely unexplored terra incognita. This paper represents the beginning of an effort to understand these musical votive compositions, focusing on the composition of devotional works to St. Sebastian, St. Roche, and the Madonna of Mercy (especially through settings of the Stella coeli extirpavit prayer) and what their use implies about the relationship between science and art in the late medieval and early modern world.

William Peter Mahrt (Stanford University), “The Mass for Easter as Cyclic”

The various pieces of the Ordinary of the Mass have been musically independent of each other until late in the Middle Ages, when it seems that the influence of polyphonic cycles suggested the composition of more unified cycles of plainsong ordinaries. A notable exception to this, however, is the set of ordinary chants for the Easter season (Mass I of the Vatican Kyriale). Here modal and melodic connections between the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei make for a unified cycle, even though these movements belong to the earliest pieces of the ordinary. This paper will address the position of the pieces in the sources and speculate why this cycle among all the earliest ordinary cycles is unique in this.

A further ramification of this cyclic character can be seen if these movements are placed in the context of the proper compositions for Easter Sunday. Here the choir chants for the entire liturgy of the word, introit through alleluia, show a trajectory of a rising tessitura which suggests a reason for the very narrow range of the introit—the point of departure of the ascent—and a symbolic representation of resurrection itself.

Laura Marchiori (Queen’s University), “Image, text and experience in tenth- and eleventh-century Rome: envisioning the sanctorale calendar at S. Maria in Pallara”

A great quantity of painting and sculpture survives from early medieval Rome, our intimate understanding of which is often hampered by the incompleteness of contemporary liturgical evidence that might testify to its original use and meaning. A case where both visual and textual evidence do survive offering an opportunity for interdisciplinary research is the monastic church of S. Maria in Pallara on the Palatine Hill. Founded in the tenth century, the church and its attached monastery were granted to Montecassino in the eleventh century. S. Maria in Pallara’s original apse paintings remain in situ and include images of Mary, Saints Sebastian, Lawrence and Stephen, as well as a series of largely unidentified Virgin martyrs, all figures who must have been liturgically celebrated therein. An image of Saint Benedict was later inserted into the center of the apse, perhaps at the time of the property’s transfer to Montecassino, adding another level to the spiritual experience at this site. A martyrology that once belonged to S. Maria in Pallara, Vat. Lat. 378, survives offering the possibility of recovering the church’s sanctorale calendar. Variously dated to the tenth or eleventh centuries, however, the manuscript remains an enigma to palaeographers and has never been utilised in analyses of the church’s paintings. Can the martyrology be used to inform us about the original appearance of the paintings and what they signified liturgically? If so, can the paintings be used to inform us about the history of the martyrology and how it functioned at this site? This paper compares the visual and textual evidence in order to discuss the sanctorale calendar celebrated at S. Maria in Pallara and its evolution and experience during the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Luisa Nardini (University of Texas), “Old-Roman Melodies in Southern Italy”

A group of melodies transcribed in Old-Roman manuscripts are not found in the sources of the Gregorian tradition. While some of these melodies were probably composed after the transmission of the Old-Roman repertory to France, others were part of the Roman core repertory, but failed to be exported to France. Among these chants there are the communions Domine si tu es and Sint lumbi vestri (considered by James McKinnon as part of the core Roman repertory) and the offertory Beatus est Simon Petre (a piece probably composed in Rome at a later date). All these pieces are found in manuscripts copied in southern Italy between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries in the so-called Beneventan script and notation. After their transmission to southern Italy the pieces were musically reworked in a more or less substantial fashion. While the melody of Beatus est Simon Petre is profoundly modified, so that resemblance with the original is barely perceivable, Sint lumbi vestri remains closer to the Roman version, but still shows evident signs of stylistic re-elaboration especially in the ornamentational layers of the melody. Furthermore, the tradition of these pieces within manuscripts from southern Italy is fairly stable. These circumstances suggest that the chants might have been transmitted orally at an early date and transcribed in Roman and Beneventan manuscripts after the melodic diversification had already taken place. The analysis of musical variants allows to gain unexpected insights on an unparalleled phenomenon in plainchant history: the assimilation of Old-Roman chants in a territory other than France. The pieces, that never acquired the 'Gregorian' style of their companions exported to France before the end of the eight century, give us the opportunity to inquire issues of oral transmission and to speculate about modal arrangements in Italic liturgical repertories of chant.

Stanley C. Pelkey (Western Michigan University), “Illuminating Matters: Medieval Music and the Humanities in Dialogue” (I’m working with him on something more in keeping with the current focus of the session, probably linked to his experience teaching late-medieval English religious history)

For many contemporary college students, music majors or otherwise, medieval music is likely among the most unfamiliar of repertoires. Modal theory, rhythmic characteristics, notational practices, and formal designs, for example, are very different from what is experienced in core musical repertories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, the society that produced this music is also relatively unfamiliar--the state, the family, the Church, the languages used, and the general intellectual landscape all differed substantially from what most students know today. Music history professors who incorporate content from the humanities into their medieval music history survey courses may be able to provide students with a more direct and immediate experience of the broader medieval society and culture, which hopefully leads to a richer appreciation for medieval music.

This need not be framed as merely providing the social or cultural context of musical repertories through readings in primary sources. Rather, thematic units or mini-seminars can also be developed around themes--such as gender and violence, patrons, patronage, and taste, and religious devotion--that are common to medieval music and medieval literature, philosophy, and theology. The result is that several disciplines enter into dialogue together, medieval music illuminates the study of medieval history, literature, and religion, and these fields in turn help to contextualize music.

This presentation will draw upon my experience teaching interdisciplinary fine arts courses and medieval music history courses, my training as both a musicologist and a medieval historian, and my past collaboration with historians to bridge the gap between musicology and history. I will include some suggestions for texts to use, as well as sample “mini-seminars,” as described above. I will conclude with some thoughts regarding how this process might work in reverse by bringing music more fully into the humanities classroom.

Sebastián Salvadó (Stanford University), “Church Bells as a Stage for the Struggle Between Christians and Muslims in the 13^th-Century Catalan Crusades”

The first ringing of church bells in 1245 proved disastrous for the town of Segorbe. The clanging sounds of Mass being celebrated incited the newly conquered Muslim inhabitants into an anti-Christian riot. Events such as this repeated themselves throughout the realms of the conquered territories. Contemporary authors such as Al-Himyari decried the incessant clanging of bells that deafened the Muslim faithful. Concurrently, Christian clergy went out of their way to secure the continuous ringing of bells in their new parishes. The present study aims at exploring and making evident the different meanings and values placed on the sounding of church bells within the 13^th-century crusader states of Catalonia (Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia). Surviving accounts emerge to reveal a stark image of the importance the ringing of bells had in the Christian-Muslim frontiers. Through a study of the role bells played in the medieval Catalan liturgy in conjunction with Christian and Muslim period sources, I plan to demonstrate how this particular sound became an acute index and catalyst of the tensions between two opposing cultures and religions. The outcome of this study aims to flesh out how this culturally significant sound was used instrumentally in an orchestrated political program of colonization. Through the incessant sounding of bells, Christians manifested both their religious and physical presence in the conquered Muslim territories. Throughout the process of the crusades, the ringing of church bells transformed from a signal of liturgy into a staging ground for the larger struggle over religious and cultural dominance.

Kathleen Sewright (Rollins College), “ ‘Shadow Chansonniers’ in the Vérard Print Le Jardin de plaisance et fleur de rethoricque”

When the Parisian printer and bookseller Antoine Vérard published his collection of narrative and lyric poetry Le Jardin de plaisance et fleur de rethoricque c. 1501, he was hoping to tap into a ready-made market of lawyers, state bureaucrats, and court functionaries who thronged the French capital city, and who, because of their educational level and relatively high wages, had both sufficient disposable income and an interest in literature. Specifically, he hoped to profit from the middle-class interest in the poetry and music of the fifteenth-century nobility and royalty, including such genres as the débat, the lamentation, and the lyric forms of rondeau, virelai and ballade. In this he was successful; demand for the publication was strong enough that he subsequently published another edition of the compilation.

The interest of this early print for musicologists today rests upon the over 600 lyric poems preserved within its pages—the majority of them apparently at one time were accompanied by musical settings, making the print a potential gold mine of indirect information about the French secular chanson of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While an early sixteenth-century lawyer or notary may have thumbed its pages looking for just the right phrase to woo his beloved, we today can learn something about the exemplars from which Vérard copied the contents of his print, and, perhaps something about the music.

This paper will investigate how Vérard acquired his exemplars, mined them for useful material, and organized this material into a coherent narrative to frame the lyric poetry which occupies the center of the volume. Next, an outline of the discrete collections of lyric poetry contained within the print will be sketched, and finally, a representative collection or two will be discussed to give an idea of the ten or so “shadow chansonniers” that have since been lost to us.

Julia Wingo Shinnick (University of Louisville), “Further Explorations: Melodic Structure and the Mimetic Theory in the Pastourelle”

René Girard’s mimetic theory, including its concepts of mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, and the use of scapegoating violence as a means of maintaining social order, provides an obviously useful tool for analysis of trouvère and troubadour texts. Its usefulness in understanding the melodies of these songs is less readily apparent; nonetheless, close examination of the musical settings of sixty of the eighty-five trouvère pastourelles surviving with musical notation has revealed significant correlations between melodic structure and the presence or absence of explicit violence in the text. Further analysis of the remaining twenty-five pastourelles promises to confirm earlier findings. Additionally, a more detailed discussion of those pastourelles with considerably ambivalent or ironic texts in which violence is implied but not explicitly described articulates intriguing aspects of the way in which melodic structure interacts with text in these songs in light of the mimetic theory.

Murray Steib (Ball State University), “Herculean Labors: Johannes Martini's Reworking of Missa O rosa bella III”

The anonymous Missa O rosa bella III exists in three sources. The earliest two--Trent 89 and Prague 47, both dating from 14601480--transmit a version that is virtually the same except for a few minor details. The latest source--Modena M.1.13, dating from 1481--contains a number of significant changes: the range of the bass has been radically altered and that voice has been recomposed in places. The most dramatic change, however, occurs in the Agnus Dei. In the earliest sources, the Agnus Dei had two sections; in Modena M.1.13, however, the second section has been jettisoned and two new sections have been added, creating a three-section Agnus Dei. From the point of view of the cantus firmus, the Agnus Dei in Modena makes more sense: the Trent and Prague sources use only the first two of the three phrases of the cantus firmus, but Modena states the cantus firmus in its entirety.

In this paper, I will explore the alterations in Missa O rosa bella III and compare them with similar changes in other Masses from Modena M.1.13. I will argue that that the new sections--Agnus Dei 2 and 3--were newly composed for inclusion in Modena, and that they were composed by Johannes Martini, who almost certainly acted as the editor of this manuscript. Martini worked for Ercole I d¹Este, a very religious leader with a very hands-on style of patronage. I will also explore the possibility that the changes reflect Ercole¹s desire to have the music as liturgically orthodox as possible.

Jeffrey Wasson (DePaul University), “Melodic Formula in First Mode Graduals: Towards A Chronology”

During the twentieth century, several scholars have recognized that a good percentage of chant melodies contain melodic segments found in other chants. This has been a topic discussed by such scholars as Peter Wagner, Paolo Ferretti, and Willy Apel. This technique has often been termed “centonization.” While in some cases there is sharing of formulae among different chant genres, normally these melodic segments are contained within a modal designation of a particular chant genre. This paper will examine the melodic formulae as found among the sixteen authentic first mode Graduals. The goal is to determine if a filation or chronology may be discovered by comparing the number and types of formulae employed in and among the first mode Graduals.

Some Graduals are almost entirely made up of formula segments, for example, Gloriosus Deus, while other Graduals have relatively few and often short formulaic quotations, for example, Sciant gentes. The first question to be investigated is whether a chant with many melodic borrowings is an older “model” chant or one which is mainly derived from other melodies. The second question to be answered is can one chant be traced to a specific model?

While no analysis can be one hundred percent definitive, it is possible via this comparison of the use of standardized formulaic segments to hypothesize a filiation between certain of the sixteen first mode Graduals. For example, the responds of Posuisti Domine and Sacerdotes eius both begin with the same formula, and various inter-relationships continue throughout the first part of these chants, showing a direct dependence on one another.

While there is great disparity between and among the various Graduals concerning their use of formulae, the technique of borrowing is sufficiently prominent to raise questions regarding melodic analysis and compositional technique.

Mary E. Wolinski (Western Kentucky University), “Disappearing Scribes and Disappearing Rests: A New Look at a Thirteenth-Century Spanish Manuscript, Madrid, BNE Ms 20486”

The most important testimony to the spread of Notre-Dame polyphony to Spain is the well-known manuscript, Madrid, BNE, MS 20486. Since the Madrid manuscript probably dates from slightly after the mid-thirteenth century, it followed the continental sources of the Magnus liber organi that are preserved in W_I, W₂, and the Florence manuscript.

This paper will present a new analysis of its scribal hands and will consider the ramifications that this will have for our understanding of the chronology of rhythmic change. There have been several different analyses of the main scribes involved, ranging from three (Anglès, 1946) to five (Roesner, 1993) to six (Asensio Palacios, 1997). In this paper, I will demonstrate that there are only three scribes, although my classification differs from that of Anglès. Most importantly I will demonstrate that the main scribe of the conductus and motets also copied the hocket In seculum at the end of fascicle 5. Thus, a piece long considered to be a later addition by a different scribe was actually copied by the main compiler. While it cannot be ruled out that the main scribe copied it at a later time, it was not necessarily entered many years after the main part of the manuscript. If, indeed, the manuscript was copied just after the middle of the century, as is generally thought, then this would be the earliest known source of the hocket.

That the hocket could date from this time is not surprising, for it is regular enough to be legible in modal notation, yet so outstanding that it earned pride of place in the Montpellier and Bamberg codices, as well as citations in at least seven treatises. That it was written by a Spaniard, according to Anonymous IV, explains its early appearance in a Spanish manuscript. It was probably one of the first clausulae to feature long stretches of hocketing, and it is the only one to have two rhythmic versions with the tenor in the fifth and second modes, respectively. Of more general importance, however, is that it featured what I believe was a new technique, which the St. Emmeram Anonymous treatise of 1279 called resecatio. While the tenor of In seculum longum moves in a long (fifth) mode made up of perfect longs, the upper voices hocket in a short (second) mode made up of imperfect longs and breves. This hocketing technique is common in later sources such as Mo and Ba, but it is nowhere found in music of the first half of the century, including the organa, conductus, and motets of the Madrid manuscript itself.

Ironically, the Madrid manuscript seems to reflect conservative taste. Besides showing a marked preference for two-voice conductus (many of which were pared down from preexistent three-voice conductus and conductus motets), the manuscript presents In seculum with many of its hocketing rests erased. It appears that an attempt was made to transform it into a more normal composition.