“Ioculator seu mimus”. Performing Music and Poetry in Medieval Iberia (original) (raw)
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Music, Poetry, and Lingua Franca in Medieval Iberia
Philological Encounters, 2017
This essay examines three different points of cultural contact between Muslims and Christians in medieval Iberia as documented in three different bodies of texts. In each example, the use of a lingua franca results in the exchange of cultural ideas and the re-presentation of one group in the language of another. The first point of contact is in the court of Córdoba in the early 9th century as recorded in an Arabic biography of a musician, which has survived only as excerpted in a later encyclopedia compiled across the Mediterranean in Syria in the 14th century. The second point of contact takes place only a few decades later, also in Córdoba, and is documented in a Latin epistle composed by a Christian during a period of increasing tension between Muslims and Christians. The third point of contact occurs in Aragon and Catalonia in the late 14th and early 15th century, where ‘Moorish’ and Jewish musicians and dancers were regularly hired to perform at the courts of the royal family a...
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...
The Library of the sanctuary of El Pueyo (13th century), located about 6 km from the episcopal see of Barbastro (Huesca-Aragon), holds three choirbooks hitherto practically unknown: a Gradual and two Antiphonaries copied at the end of the 15th century. Their Roman cursus strongly suggests that they were not brought by the Benedictine community that inhabited this place between the years 1890 and 1961; on the contrary, they give evidence of the liturgy observed by the Chapter settled there and dependent of the Cathedral of Barbastro. These manuscripts are relevant from both a liturgical and musicological perspective since they record a border tradition between Aragon and Catalonia; at the same time, they let us appreciate the characteristics of a “marginal” liturgy and the modus operandi that was followed when compiling and adapting the material for its liturgical books. Our comparative study of the responsory series reveals the place of these codices within the Iberian Roman rite’s liturgical geography prior to Trent. Likewise, our musicological analysis explores two phenomena of high interest: on the one hand, the adjustment of the musical uses —notation, typology and organization of the repertoire— to the characteristics of a small ecclesiastical community; and on the other hand, the peculiarities of the square notation employed in Spanish plainsong sources predating the 16th century.
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
Dissertation, 2021
This thesis focuses on the social and professional ties of musicians in a particular city over a particular period. Musicians, like any group of people who share the same profession or occupation, constitute a social collective in themselves. This group has its own professional network that involves institutions, agents, managers, music shops, instrument manufacturers, sound technicians, editors, and many other professionals, with whom musicians must continually negotiate the fees for performances (or salaries when there are permanent jobs), travel and accommodation expenses for the concerts, editing, and recording conditions, the purchase of instruments, scores, sound equipment, accessories, etc. As in other disciplines, arts, or crafts, musicians require specific training to learn to sing, play instruments, compose, improvise, read sheet music, etc., and therefore have their own schools and teaching methods. Such a network of people and businesses related to the profession of music, in which musicians are the central axis, is different in each city and changes over time, although as this thesis shows, it has been operating for a long time. Valladolid was one of the capitals of the Spanish Empire for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the headquarters of the court and royal residence, and one of the most important financial centers in northern Spain. Thanks to the documentary wealth of that time that is still held by archives of that city, it has been possible to reconstruct the social network of musicians in Valladolid over a period of one hundred years. Through the analysis of their work contracts, inventories, Wills, accounts, and other legal documents, we discover how musicians organized their companies and also negotiated working conditions in the service of the Cathedral, the University, the Royal House, the Council, the noblemen, and many confraternities and municipalities. Furthermore, we see how musicians moved between employers and combined different types of activity to make a living. Through their contracts of apprenticeship, we also learn about the social aspects of learning music at that time. Among the apprentices we find a variety of profiles, from boys learning the craft of music-making as a livelihood to girls searching to enter convents as nun-musicians and to adults combining music with other jobs. Furthermore, we learn the duties that both masters and apprentices had to fulfill, the duration and cost of apprenticeship, and the penalties that applied in the case of breach by one of the parties. Finally, we consider the large number of instrument makers and builders, printers, merchants, and booksellers living in Valladolid and Medina del Campo who were part of the network of musicians in the region. The study presented here through unpublished documents is itself a social history of musicians. It is focused on a given place and period, but the methods used to carry it out offer multiple possibilities for studying the particularities of a collective of musicians in any place and time.
The Medieval Fate of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Iberian Politics Meets Song
2016
This article reviews the evidence for the medieval performance of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM) and discusses King Alfonso's intentions for the work, including the intended audience. The CSM were conceived as an ambitious cultural enterprise with both religious and political objectives, but were doomed to failure by the steep political decline of their creator. The only surviving evidence for the CSM's presence in any court outside Alfonso's is the Barbieri MS, an eighteenth-century descendant of a lost original, plausibly transmitted to the Portuguese court before 1270. Other traces of performative use are rubrics and marginal notes in an appendix to manuscript To and their corresponding reworking in manuscript E, which point to short-lived ritual use. Internal iconographical, literary, and compositional evidence suggests that Alfonso did intend the CSM to circulate among a broad range of social classes. He manipulated poetic and metrical forms from the troubadour tradition to highlight the dignity of the Virgin Mary, but he privileged forms directly inspired by the Andalusian zajal familiar to popular audiences and among the minstrels, to encourage the penetration of his songs beyond his courtly circle. The CSM were meant to consolidate Christian restoration in the recently conquered southern territories, but also to serve as personal and dynastic propaganda, asserting their author's royal supremacy over Castilian lords, his preeminence among Iberian kings, and his status as the Christian monarch most worthy of the office of Holy Roman emperor.
Se trata de una novedosa aproximación al mundo del artista medieval, cuya obra se debatía entre la autoría divina y la firma individual. Temas como la formación del artista, su estatus laico o eclesiástico, el recurso a los modelos o la importancia de la itinerancia en su aprendizaje son abordados con rigor en esta publicación. Asimismo, los distintos roles profesionales desempeñados en los talleres medievales nos permiten conocer mejor cómo se construía y decoraba una catedral en la Edad Media. En esta visión sociológica de la obra de arte no puede faltar el papel omnipotente de los patronos medievales, personajes normalmente relacionados con la realeza y el estamento eclesiástico, que en muchos casos son los verdaderos “autores” de estas empresas, en la que las mujeres tuvieron también un destacable protagonismo. En el libro participan 20 autores procedentes de diversas universidades e instituciones museísticas de toda Europa. La publicación es el resultado del proyecto de investigación “Artistas, patronos y público. Catalunya y el Mediterráneo. Siglos XI-XV” (MICINN HAR2011-23015. Se trata de una novedosa aproximación al mundo del artista medieval, cuya obra se debatía entre la autoría divina y la firma individual. Temas como la formación del artista, su estatus laico o eclesiástico, el recurso a los modelos o la importancia de la itinerancia en su aprendizaje son abordados con rigor en esta publicación. Asimismo, los distintos roles profesionales desempeñados en los talleres medievales nos permiten conocer mejor cómo se construía y decoraba una catedral en la Edad Media. En esta visión sociológica de la obra de arte no puede faltar el papel omnipotente de los patronos medievales, personajes normalmente relacionados con la realeza y el estamento eclesiástico, que en muchos casos son los verdaderos “autores” de estas empresas, en la que las mujeres tuvieron también un destacable protagonismo. En el libro participan 17 autores procedentes de diversas universidades e instituciones museísticas de toda Europa. La publicación es el resultado de los proyectos de investigación “Artistas, patronos y público. Catalunya y el Mediterráneo. Siglos XI-XV”-Magistri Cataloniae (MICINN HAR2011-23015.) y "Movilidad y transferencia artística en el Mediterráneo Medieval (1187-1388). Artistas, objetos y modelos-Magistri Mediterranei (MICINN-HAR2015-63883-P) http://editorialcirculorojo.com/entre-la-letra-y-el-pincel-el-artista-medieval-leyenda-identidad-y-estatus/
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.