This thesis sets out to examine the disposition of the tritone in Gregorian Chant, both as a 'filled-in' and as a disjunct interval, or 'leap'. By comparison with other periods of music history, the tritone's place in early medieval music has hitherto received scant attention; one noteworthy text even claims that it was shunned altogether. But, in general, it has been assumed that the tritone was considered undesirable only as a harmonic device. Intervallic perception is partially determined by the prevailing culture and context. (In respect of the tritone, this is no more demonstrable than in jazz. ) And since the melodic tritone contravenes ancient principles concerning harmonious proportion, the tritone's disposition in the chant may therefore be deemed significant. The primacy of liturgy is affirmed, and the early neume notations accorded an important role in the analyses. The tritone 'leap' seems only to appear in the Great Responsories of the night Office - particularly those of Passiontide - and may owe its existence partly to medieval superstition. Furthermore, modern scholarship has failed to acknowledge the gulf between contemporary theory and practice by adopting a 'theory-dominated view' (as proposed by Rankin in connection with organum at Winchester). Later attempts to edit the tritone from the Benedictine MSS were inconsistent, as illustrated through a comparative study with the Cistercian sources.

No description available.

This study investigates a repertoire of eighteen madrigals whose texts refer to heraldry, all of which were composed in trecento Italy. The hereditary and personal arms cited in the song texts are those of the Visconti, Della Scala and Carrara families of northern Italy. Though these madrigals have been used in the past as a means for dating manuscripts and reconstructing composer biographies, they have never been studied as a discrete repertoire. This study applies musicological, heraldic and art historical approaches to the repertoire in order to investigate the heraldic madrigal as a manifestation of political authority in trecento Italy. Part One offers background information necessary to the understanding of the heraldic madrigal repertoire. Chapter 1 presents a glossary of heraldic terminology, and an overview of the role of heraldry in late medieval life, art and literature, focusing on heraldry as a means of representing ideas of authority and identity in the late Middle Ages. Chapter 2 defines the heraldic madrigal and discusses the stylistic features unique to this repertoire. This chapter also considers the heraldic madrigal in the context of contemporary musical repertoires such as the Italian motet and the songs of the French ars subtilior. Chapter 3 presents a critical edition of heraldic madrigal texts with translations. Part Two consists of case studies. Chapter 4 explores the link between Jacopo da Bologna’s madrigal Aquila altera and the references to the Holy Trinity in the heraldry of its dedicatees, Giangaleazzo Visconti and Isabelle de Valois. Chapter 5 offers a re-evaluation of the poem La fiera testa, challenging the common opinion that the text is condemnatory. Chapter 6 considers non-musical models for the the madrigal texts Inperiale sedendo and Per quella strada, based on manuscripts owned by and dedicated to the Carrara family. The Conclusion of this study touches briefly on the legacy of the heraldic madrigal, giving a summary of later Italian songs containing references to the heraldry of noble families, such as the Malatesta and Medici.

This dissertation attempts to re-contextualise the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century musical phenomenon now referred to as the Ars subtilior, in terms of our modern understanding of it, as well as its relationship to wider late medieval culture. In order to do so I re-examine the processes used to formulate existing retrospective definitions, identify a few compelling reasons why their re-evaluation is needed, and propose an alternative approach towards this goal. My research has led me to analyse the modern preoccupation with this repertoire, both in musicology and performance, and to explore external influences impinging on our attitudes towards it. Having outlined current attitudes and the problems of their crystallisation, I seek to re-contextualise them within medieval culture through a survey of the surviving physical evidence. The resulting observations highlight the difficulties we face when looking at the material. Above all, they point at the problems created by using narrow definitions of this style, whether these are technical, geographic, temporal or intellectual. My observations shed some light on the scale, complexity and relevance of the Ars subtilior phenomenon. The next step is to look at the music itself by analysing the use and function of stylistic features that distinguish the style. As my goal is to conceptualise the style as a whole, and not merely isolate interesting events within it, the variety of stylistic features examined is wider than those traditionally defined as characteristic of Ars subtilior. A series of case-studies examine the validity and usefulness of my conceptualisations, and attempt to couple modern inquiry into technique with an understanding of its place within medieval culture and society. In my conclusion, I attempt to bring the different strands together by proposing a new conceptualisation of the Ars subtilior which takes our understanding of medieval history and thought-patterns as a starting point, and proves useful also in a modern context. My proposal revolves around the concept of ‘exceptionality’ within a culture that seeks legitimacy. I have formulated it to make sense of the apparent appeal of this music to medieval performers, audiences, patrons, composers, compilers and collectors. Status and meaning was created by attracting attention to a work as a whole, or specific locations within its music or text, through the deviation from older or newly created norms. At the heart of my conceptualisation though, are its modern implications. My goal in this work is to transcend the technicalities of the Ars subtilior and supply scholars and performers with the tools to interpret and perform its music expressively, finding meaning in this unique musical phenomenon.

This study investigates a repertoire of eighteen madrigals whose texts refer to heraldry, all of which were composed in trecento Italy. The hereditary and personal arms cited in the song texts are those of the Visconti, Della Scala and Carrara families of northern Italy. Though these madrigals have been used in the past as a means for dating manuscripts and reconstructing composer biographies, they have never been studied as a discrete repertoire. This study applies musicological, heraldic and art historical approaches to the repertoire in order to investigate the heraldic madrigal as a manifestation of political authority in trecento Italy. Part One offers background information necessary to the understanding of the heraldic madrigal repertoire. Chapter 1 presents a glossary of heraldic terminology, and an overview of the role of heraldry in late medieval life, art and literature, focusing on heraldry as a means of representing ideas of authority and identity in the late Middle Ages. Chapter 2 defines the heraldic madrigal and discusses the stylistic features unique to this repertoire. This chapter also considers the heraldic madrigal in the context of contemporary musical repertoires such as the Italian motet and the songs of the French ars subtilior. Chapter 3 presents a critical edition of heraldic madrigal texts with translations. Part Two consists of case studies. Chapter 4 explores the link between Jacopo da Bologna’s madrigal Aquila altera and the references to the Holy Trinity in the heraldry of its dedicatees, Giangaleazzo Visconti and Isabelle de Valois. Chapter 5 offers a re-evaluation of the poem La fiera testa, challenging the common opinion that the text is condemnatory. Chapter 6 considers non-musical models for the the madrigal texts Inperiale sedendo and Per quella strada, based on manuscripts owned by and dedicated to the Carrara family. The Conclusion of this study touches briefly on the legacy of the heraldic madrigal, giving a summary of later Italian songs containing references to the heraldry of noble families, such as the Malatesta and Medici.

No description available.

Gagaku, ancient Japanese court music and dance, known today as a traditional performing art, has over a thousand years of history since its introduction from the East Asian mainland. Despite the fact that the study of Japanese musicology, history and classical literature has attracted scholarly attention for many years, much fundamental research in the historical records and documents still remains to be done. In fact, the most important primary source used in this study, the Kyōkunshō, composed in 1233 by Koma no Chikazane (1177–1242) is known as the oldest Japanese synthetic treatise on music and one of the three major treatises that relate to Japanese court music. Although the Kyōkunshō is such a valuable resource, detailed research has commenced recently, but it has produced noteworthy achievements in the field of Japanese traditional music and its history. Nevertheless, the study of gagaku in the Insei period (from the late eleventh to the late twelfth century CE) has not yet fully succeeded in clarifying the nature of Japanese medieval music, and the lack of analysis of its role in the body politic needs to be addressed. Against this background, this study aims at answering the relations between gagaku and politics from the late Heian to the early Kamakura era. Building on existing studies, this thesis adopts a quantitative method of textual analysis combined with a close reading of the Kyōkunshō and pertinent texts. The methods used for this research entail abstracting data pertaining to historical performances that are described in the Kyōkunshō and analysing this corpus both quantitatively and in the context of contemporary textual and other sources. This reading of the Kyōkunshō reveals that gagaku had an important ritual function as shōgon 荘厳 (“adornment, embellishment, spectacle”) of the nation; that is, throughout the period in question performances of music and dance in gagaku are an integral part of the body politic, both its political activity and its understanding of itself as a metaphysical entity. The study further indicates that the significance of gagaku developed from the political sphere to the social and popular spheres. Study of the pertinent textual corpus has shown that Kyōkunshō was composed during a transitional period when two further understandings of gagaku developed. Firstly, a concept known a posteriori as ‘ongaku ōjōshisō 音楽往生思想, the concept of attaining heaven by playing music’ (Minamitani, 2001). Here, gagaku functioned as a medium for bonding the person who has mastered the music, to the Buddhist Pure Land (jōdo, understood as a kind of paradise); popular belief in the power of music played an important role. Secondly, there evolved the (similarly a posteriori) concept of ‘geidōshisō 芸道思想, the philosophy of the way of performance’ (Ogi, 1977). In this understanding, music was regarded as independent of any political or religious influence and mastered for its own sake. Certainly, a critical reading of key episodes in the Kyōkunshō furnishes evidence that it had been performed as musical amusement since the middle of the Heian period at the latest. Thus the thesis demonstrates that gagaku retained a strong connection to politics during the period in question but surely fulfilled other functions outside the political framework, and that these non-political functions also had their roots prior to the medieval period. The thesis’s critical apparatus includes a transcription of the whole text, rendering the mainly classical Chinese (kanbun) original into modern Japanese readings (kakikudashibun 書き下 し文), an exercise which requires crucial interpretations of Chinese syntax. An English translation of the first scroll of the Kyōkunshō is also provided.

This study engages a network of music, myth, and metaphysics within late-ancient and twelfth-century music theory and cosmology. It traces the development, expansion, and demise of a (natural-)philosophical harmonic speculation that stems largely from an a priori commitment to a harmonic cosmology with its deepest roots in Plato’s Timaeus. It argues that music theory not only allowed twelfth-century thinkers to conceptualize the fabric of the universe, but it also provided a hermeneutic tool for interpreting the ancient and late-ancient texts that offered detailed theories of the world’s construction. The twin goals of this study are thus philosophical and musicological: firstly and philosophically, to analyze and re-assert the importance of musical speculation in the writings of the self-styled physici, who probed the physical world and its metaphysical foundations during the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’; secondly and musicologically, to document the sources and scope of this musical speculation and to situate it within the larger tradition of ‘speculative music theory.’ The first part of the thesis (chapters one and two) disentangles the knotty question of sources for and connections between the late-ancient texts (by Calcidius, Macrobius, and Boethius) that form the background of twelfth-century thought, and it sketches the proper domain of musical thought by tracing the expansion of music’s role in quadrivial and natural-philosophical contexts from late-ancient encyclopedism though various twelfth-century divisiones scientiae. The second part of the thesis (chapters three through five) assembles and analyzes the direct evidence for twelfth-century harmonic theory. These chapters, heuristically organized around the Boethian tripartition of music, present an anagogic ascent per aspera ad astra. Chapter three (musica instrumentalis) highlights the occasional and perhaps surprising employ of practical, technical music theory in cosmological contexts, and focuses on the epistemological foundations of hearing and the ontological status granted to the sonorous ‘objects’ of hearing. Chapter four (musica humana) targets the anthropological, psychological, and ethical implications of musical relations in and between body and soul. Finally, chapter five (musica mundana) outlines the cosmological framework, the anima mundi in particular, that underpins the concordant machinations of the machina mundi in all its manifestations.

This study engages a network of music, myth, and metaphysics within late-ancient and twelfth-century music theory and cosmology. It traces the development, expansion, and demise of a (natural-)philosophical harmonic speculation that stems largely from an a priori commitment to a harmonic cosmology with its deepest roots in Plato’s Timaeus. It argues that music theory not only allowed twelfth-century thinkers to conceptualize the fabric of the universe, but it also provided a hermeneutic tool for interpreting the ancient and late-ancient texts that offered detailed theories of the world’s construction. The twin goals of this study are thus philosophical and musicological: firstly and philosophically, to analyze and re-assert the importance of musical speculation in the writings of the self-styled physici, who probed the physical world and its metaphysical foundations during the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’; secondly and musicologically, to document the sources and scope of this musical speculation and to situate it within the larger tradition of ‘speculative music theory.’ The first part of the thesis (chapters one and two) disentangles the knotty question of sources for and connections between the late-ancient texts (by Calcidius, Macrobius, and Boethius) that form the background of twelfth-century thought, and it sketches the proper domain of musical thought by tracing the expansion of music’s role in quadrivial and natural-philosophical contexts from late-ancient encyclopedism though various twelfth-century divisiones scientiae. The second part of the thesis (chapters three through five) assembles and analyzes the direct evidence for twelfth-century harmonic theory. These chapters, heuristically organized around the Boethian tripartition of music, present an anagogic ascent per aspera ad astra. Chapter three (musica instrumentalis) highlights the occasional and perhaps surprising employ of practical, technical music theory in cosmological contexts, and focuses on the epistemological foundations of hearing and the ontological status granted to the sonorous ‘objects’ of hearing. Chapter four (musica humana) targets the anthropological, psychological, and ethical implications of musical relations in and between body and soul. Finally, chapter five (musica mundana) outlines the cosmological framework, the anima mundi in particular, that underpins the concordant machinations of the machina mundi in all its manifestations.

This dissertation provides the first full-scale musicological study of Stuttgart 95, a thirteenth-century song book, formerly thought to be from the abbey of Weingarten. Upon further examination, it is clear that rather than a single unified corpus of Latin songs, the musical portions are composed of three separate layers. Furthermore, I argue that these layers were best understood as separate entities. This delineation between writing campaigns indicates that the original musical project likely constitutes a mostly intact collection, with only one or two folios missing from the beginning of the codex. Moreover, the song repertoire in the first layer is partially comprised of addenda entered into other Engelberg liturgical manuscripts, mainly at the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, shortly before the manufacture of Stuttgart 95. I focus, in particular, on the first layer of its musical corpora, arguing that the earliest stratum in this composite manuscript points to the double cloister of Engelberg as a likely provenance. As a collection of addenda, it demonstrates that musicians in Engelberg actively collected pieces that addressed Mary, the community’s patrona. I first discuss the consistent use of majuscule and rubrication to visually highlight the name of Mary amidst its surrounding text. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Mary along with each of these additional saints had liturgical ties to the double house of Engelberg; Mary was the monastery’s patrona, and the additional figures were either especially venerated at Engelberg or were the namesakes for dedicated altars or chapels in joint community’s churches.