12 Spanish Treatises on Musica Practica c. 1480–1525: Reflections from a Cultural Perspective (original) (raw)
Related papers
Portuguese Journal of Musicology, new series, 2019
In the late fifteenth century and the early decades of the sixteenth century, opportunities for musical exchange between Portugal and the Spanish kingdoms were multifarious. As with musicians, repertories of polyphonic music also travelled across the border. Our common understanding is that manuscripts made a one-way route from Spain to Portugal, and that Portuguese sources contain versions far removed from the Spanish exemplars, resulting from unique and often late transmissions. The case studies offered in this article show a different and more complex picture: that in some cases music arrived quite early; that versions in Portuguese sources are sometimes closer to their archetypes than those in most of the surviving Spanish manuscripts; and that the patterns of transmission were not different from those found elsewhere in Europe. Additionally, a new dating for the original layer of manuscript P-Ln CIC 60 is proposed.
2019
Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, London in collaboration with “The Renaissance Musical Work: Foundations, Repertories and Practices” funded by the Ministery of Innovation, Science and Universities [HAR2015-70181-P] based at the University of Valladolid IP: Soterraña Aguirre Rincón Thursday 27 June 2019 Keynote Speaker Kate van Orden, Harvard University Directors Manuel del Sol, University of Valladolid David Lee, University of Glasgow Stephen Rose, Royal Holloway, University of London Lydia Goehr’s The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992) prompted heated discussions about how far the term and concept of the ‘musical work’ is appropriate for musical cultures of the 16th and 17th centuries. Whereas earlier discussions had focused on ontological issues and on theoretical treatises of the period, Goehr sought to provide what she termed a ‘historical’ approach, yet she was much criticised for her relatively unnuanced account of music history prior to 1750. Now, some twenty-six years on, the notion of ‘work’ is ripe for exploration from a much broader range of disciplinary perspectives including book history, performance studies, the study of historical improvisation, and economic ethnomusicology. Attributes usually associated with a musical work (such as notational fixity or durability in the repertory) need to be revised, in light of the increasing awareness of the importance of oral and memory-based cultures in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as an increasingly nuanced understanding of the symbolic and practical functions of notated sources. Rather than traditional 20-minute papers, the convenors invite contributions to plenary sessions and round-table discussions relating to several key themes, including the various meanings of the terms ‘composition’, ‘improvisation’ and ‘work’ in the 16th and 17th centuries. We invite participation from perspectives that may include: ● Perspectives from book history on the musical work as notated opus ● Perspectives from economic ethnomusicology on the ‘work’ as a form of labour ● Perspectives from performance studies on ‘work’ within an oral culture of memorisation and improvisation ● Musical works and early modern notions of the musical author ● The relationship between the ephemeral and the durable, and its implications for the work as a form of social capital ● The implications for modern editorial practices Travel bursaries for postgraduate students will be available. The study day is supported by the Institute of Musical Research (Royal Holloway, University of London). RDI Project “The Renaissance Musical Work” http://contrapunto.uva.es
Music and Musicians at the Portuguese Royal Court and Chapel, c. 1470-c. 1500 (2017)
Published in: Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs, ed. Tess Knighton (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 205-241. || ABSTRACT: In contrast to music and musicians at the Spanish courts of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel, musical life at the courts of the Portuguese kings Afonso V, João II, through to the early reign of Manuel I has to date received only relatively little attention in music histories. This is largely owing to the dearth of musical sources from or connected to this period, and the lack of information about singers and composers at the Portuguese court and chapel at that time. This chapter aims to reddress this by drawing together information from a range of historical and other source material, including musical and literary sources, contemporary chronicles and other types of documentation (some emanating from northern European courts), all helping to paint a picture of music, musicians, ceremonial and other cultural activities at the Portuguese court, and to delineate numerous close musical connections between the Iberian courts. It draws attention to liturgical celebrations in the chapel and other religious festivities, to the role of singers, heraldic and chamber musicians and dancing at important occasions, including marriage between the daughters of the Catholic Monarchs and Portuguese royalty, and other significant historical events that have been overlooked, at least from the musical point of view. It also lists names of chapel singers, including a few who also appear on the rosters of the Spanish chapels, and other musicians who travelled to Portugal, thus setting the stage for the markedly international court of Manuel I when singers and players from Spain, northern Europe and elsewhere joined the ranks of musicians there.
De notación hispánica a notación aquitana: escribir música en la Iberia medieval
Anuario de Estudios Medievales
Este artículo se centra en las peculiaridades de las principales muestras de notación musical hispana y aquitana conservadas en los manuscritos litúrgicos peninsulares de los siglos X a mediados del XVI, proponiendo reconsiderar el estado de la cuestión desde el campo de la paleografía musical peninsular. Específicamente, esta aproximación paleográfica se orienta alrededor de los dos cambios principales que marcaron la escritura de música en la Península en el período bajo consideración: la substitución de la notación hispánica tradicional por la notación aquitana a finales del siglo XI, y el cambio gráfico que muestra la notación aquitana por influencia de la escritura gótica. La forma en la que ambos cambios se desarrollaron fue considerablemente desigual; precipitada y rápida en el primer caso, lenta y gradual en el segundo. En esta visión de conjunto, se presentan como ejemplos ilustrativos de notación aquitana fuentes que habían pasado desapercibidas hasta hace poco y que están...
Soloists, Spaces and Performance in Sixteenth-Century Spain
Historical Resonances: Space, Senses and Early Music / Resonancias históricas: espacio, sentidos y música antigua, 2024
Investigating the spaces in which music was performed in Spain during the sixteenth century sometimes requires an even deeper investigation into the nature of musical performance itself. Unlike, for example, music performed as part of religious ritual in buildings that have survived to the present day, the times and places where solo instruments were used are much more difficult to define and trace. Research becomes more than a study of music and architecture, because it also requires consideration of a range of other factors, including social settings (courtly, ecclesiastical, urban, civic, domestic), different physical environments (including indoor and outdoor performances), the socio-economic situations of performers and listeners, the social activities into which musical participation was integrated, the number of listeners, or the time of day. All too often, these questions are not asked, and our knowledge is almost non-existent. Moreover, whether unconsciously or not, modern scholars, commentators and performers tend with a presumed nature to evaluate the music of other eras on the basis of their contemporary notions of what constitutes a performance, especially the modern concert or recital, a social phenomenon of nineteenth-century invention. This paper, which brings together the combined themes of this conference-architectural spaces and new technologies-investigates some of these issues through a computerised exploration of documentary and iconographic sources.
Pure Gold: Golden Age Sacred Music in the Iberian World. A Homage to Bruno Turner, ed. Tess Knighton / Bernadette Nelson. Series De musica 15, Kassel: Reichenberger, 2011. || ABSTRACT: This collection of essays was conceived as an homage to Bruno Turner who has done so much to promote knowledge of sacred music of the Golden Age Iberian world. As choral director, editor and broadcaster, Turner brought this music to the attention of the wider musical public and made it available to choirs all over the world through his specialized publishing firm, Mapa Mundi. Scholars of Iberian sacred music are equally indebted to him for his research, especially on sources, plainchant and liturgy of the Iberian Peninsula and the New World; indeed, he can be considered the eminence grise of musicology in this field. The essays by seventeen scholars, all of whom have been influenced by and are indebted to his life’s work, bring together the latest research and thinking on wide-ranging aspects of sacred music by Iberian and Hispanic American composers in three main areas: sources and repertories; music and liturgy; motets and musical tributes. These contributions, which enrich and deepen current knowledge of Iberian music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are framed by a Prelude by the composer Ivan Moody and a Postlude that takes the form of an interview between Turner and the writer, critic and translator Luis Gago. || CONTENTS: • A heart of pure gold / Tess Knighton • Ayo visto lo Mappamundi : working with Bruno Turner / Ivan Moody • A sixteenth-century manuscript choirbook of polyphony for vespers at Toledo Cathedral by Andrés de Torrentes / Michael Noone • Manuscripts Oporto, Biblioteca Pública Municipal, MM 40 and MM 76-79 : their origin, date, repertories and context / João Pedro D'Alvarenga • The unica in MS 975 of the Manuel de Falla Library : a musical book for wind band / Juan Ruiz Jiménez • A tale of two queens, their music books and the village of Lerma / Douglas Kirk • The vicissitudes of some printed fragments of polyphony / Juan Carlos Asensio • Music prints by Cristóbal de Morales and Tomás Luis de Victoria in surviving Roman inventories and archival records / Noel O'Regan • Two post-Tridentine lamentation chants in Eastern Spain / Greta Olson • Juan de Esquivel's "Ave Maris Stella" (a 4) : observations on the Spanish polyphonic hymn repertory / Michael B. O'Connor • A polyphonic hymn cycle in Coimbra / Bernadette Nelson • Performance contexts for the Magnificat in the Iberian Peninsula in the sixteenth century / Eva Esteve • "Jesu Redemptor" : polyphonic funerary litanies in Portugal / Owen Rees • Music for the dead : an early sixteenth-century anonymous requiem mass / Tess Knighton • Unedited motets by a little known composer : Alonso Ordóñez / Cristina Diego Pacheco • A sixteenth-century ostinato motet for Barcelona's patroness saint Eulalia / Emilio Ros-Fábregas • Musical tributes to an attributed apparition of the Virgin in Spain and in Mexico / Robert Stevenson Pure passion : a conversation with Bruno Turner / Luis Gago.