Scattered knives and dismembered song: cutlery, music and the rituals of dining (original) (raw)
Related papers
We oft en know quite a bit about music composed today. We typically know who wrote a piece because the composer's name appears with the title. We may know the purpose of the work from its designation, from the collection in which it exists, or from information provided by the composer. Music from the fourteenth century, on the other hand, rarely included this type of information. Medieval culture downplayed the idea that individuals should take credit for the music and other artifacts that they created. Indeed, the notion of "composer" or "artist" was hardly even viable before the end of the Middle Ages. Similarly, the means of preserving music in manuscripts, frequently organized by genre (all motets copied together, for instance), privileged the question "what kind of piece is this" over "how should this work be used. " Th e function of a musical composition was oft en obvious to those in the know because they understood the cyphers in the work, that is, the musical and textual symbols that pointed to the meaning of a piece and how it was used. Examining these symbols in individual works reveals fascinating diff erences between the culture of the Middle Ages and that of our own time. 1 Th e piece discussed here is found in the poem known as the Roman de Fauvel , a satire of political and ecclesiastical life from fourteenth-century France. Th is work exists in several copies, but the luxurious version found in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, français 146 (hereaft er Paris fr. 146) is a true cornucopia. Not only does the manuscript encompass poetry and decoration, but also music, including new as well as older musical styles and genres. 2 Th rough verse, illustration, and song, Paris fr. 146 speaks truth 1 For a discussion of symbolism in music, see Wright , Th e Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture
The sight of sound : resonances between music and painting in seventeenth-century Italy
2009
The seventeenth century was a period of significant innovations and developments in music theory, vocal music, and instrumental music. It also was a period of innovation in paintings that depict musicians and musical instruments. Art historians and musicologists have tended to interpret music-themed paintings as pictorial records of contemporary musical performance practices in either domestic or sacred settings. Such an approach, however, overlooks the subtleties and complexities of the individual paintings and fails to consider possible relationships between the paintings and broader social, political, and religious contexts of Italian Seicento painting. This study dismantles the idea of paintings of musical subj ects as a homogenous group and demonstrates that these works are more visually and intellectually complex than previously thought. This thesis presents five case studies that analyze music-themed paintings produced between 1590 and 1677 from different perspectives: Chapter One presents a reassessment of Caravaggio's The Lute Player, created for Vincenzo Giustiniani, that challenges existing interpretations rooted in performance practices and offers, instead, a reading in light of the madrigaVmonody debate. Chapter Two focuses on the many paintings of St. Cecilia produced after 1600 to explore both the implications of a female saint increasingly depicted with stringed instruments and the effects, pictorially and spiritually, of her rapt engagement with music-making. Chapter Three analyzes critically for the frrst time the relationship between Bernardo Strozzi's rustic peasant musicians and his patrons' desires to fashion themselves as part of the new nobility in Genoa and Venice. Chapter Four explores how Pietro Paolini's three images of luthiers comment on the artisanship of instrument making; on the relative merits of the senses; and on the enduring virtues of knowledge, skill, and physical labor. Chapter Five enlarges upon existing scholarship on Evaristo Baschenis' musical instrument still-lifes by investigating overlooked religious undercurrents beyond merely vanitas, and by exploring the social and spiritual dimensions of silence.
Disciplining Song in Sixteenth-Century Geneva, Journal of Musicology 32, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 1–39.
Song was frequently disciplined in the sixteenth-century Consistory of Geneva as part of the broad program of social Reform led by Calvin. Between 1542 and 1552¬¬¬, more than one hundred cases involving illicit singing came before the Consistory court. These cases reveal the Consistory’s persistent attempt to control the singing of all members of Genevan society regardless of social status or situation. They also offer a new field of evidence for exploring the boundaries between proper (honnête) and improper (deshonnête) singing in Reformed communities. The bulk of the cases surveyed from this period involved charges of illicit singing alongside other immoral behaviors, such as gambling and fornication. These cases directly linked indecent singing to other forbidden acts—a connection that worked out a neo-Platonic view of music in juridical process and provided the rationalization for the entire project of disciplining song in the courts. Concerns over improper song leading to illicit behavior and ultimately to social disorder were dramatically illustrated in a cluster of Consistory cases related to the famous Bolsec affair that exploded in Geneva near the end of the year 1551. Bolsec’s contrafactum on the tune of Psalm 23 from the Geneva Psalter—written during Bolsec’s lengthy stay in prison—spread his dissenting theology to his supporters and enacted the dangerous potential of song to disrupt the unity of the Reformed city.
Using iconography as evidence for societal practice faces a common problem across the world, that pictorial art of typically created by social or religious elites, and so typically reflects their taste and practices. As with other categories of representation, musical instruments played by the elite, both secular and religious, are over-represented in the art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Only with Praetorius’ Syntagma Musicum (De Organographia 1618) do we get an overview of instruments at all levels of society (and the first acknowledgment of the music of other cultures). Nonetheless, insights into popular instruments can be gained from unexpected or marginal representations. For example, in a more egalitarian society such as Sweden, the paintings of Albertus Pictor (1440-1507) show a wide range of popular instruments. Archaeology has begun to make an important contribution; a recent survey of finds of Jews’ harps in Medieval Europe suggests it may have been the single most popular instrument of the period, despite being hardly depicted in painting. Another source is surviving folk traditions; instruments such as the shawm remain widely played in folk contexts, despite having disappeared from the classical repertoire. The paper aims to establish a popular instrumentarium for Europe, through an assessment of the available sources, and to suggest directions for future research.
ROUND TABLE Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference 2015 organized by David Burn & Marie-Alexis Colin Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels Music, Dance and Literary Memory: Repertoire and Innovation in the Decoration of the Painted Ceilings in the Middle Age organized by Angela Bellia and Licia Buttà Musical iconography is a very privileged field of study which helps provide an understanding of the function of music in the cultural context of its production. Musical scenes are evidence of aspects of performances, and they provide a view into what and how music and the making of music are in a precise context. Although the musical performances in the scenes must not always be considered reproductions of realistic musical events, they allow for an understanding of the form and use of the musical instruments, the role of the musicians in the representation, and the “message” of the musical scenes in a precise historical context. Therefore the multidisciplinary study of musical images will be achieved through a continued dialogue between the written and figurative sources and the cultural and social context of music. This paper argues that this approach is indispensable in understanding the musical iconography in the Painted Ceiling of the Sala Magna of the Palazzo Chiaromonte at Palermo, known as Steri (XIV c.). The musical representations are depicted in scenes, belonging to both the sacred and the profane worlds, linked to written and figurative sources from the Medieval Age.