Through a comprehensive analysis of literary and documentary material from 1270–1500, this study offers insights into the history and significance of the late medieval string instrument known as the gittern in Western Europe. Source criticism and hermeneutics form the basis of the critical reading of the nearly hundred sources. Through these, a more refined history of the instrument is suggested, focusing on social, symbolic and musical change throughout the period. The gittern is shown to have been an instrument predominately used in noble and royal milieus for half a century before being more widely played among all ranks of society. When its popularity faded in the 15th century, it became a symbol of nostalgia. The sound and playing techniques of the gittern were well suited for the music of the late 14th century, and the decline in use was simultaneous to the developments of new genres and compositional techniques where other sounds were sought.

O tratado Speculum Musicae do Magister Jacobus de Ispania (ou Jacobus Leodiensis) não recebeu a devida visibilidade nas instituições de ensino e de investigação intelectual tanto de sua época quanto posteriormente. A partir da segunda metade do século XX o tratado foi gradualmente ganhando maior visibilidade e nos últimos anos tem recebido por parte de diversos estudiosos um maior esforço de investigação. A presente dissertação visa expor o contexto filosófico e teológico desse tratado, investigando os seus principais conceitos norteadores a partir de uma leitura dos primeiros capítulos do seu primeiro livro. A partir da exposição dessas concepções fundamentais, buscamos então esclarecer algumas das questões mais fundamentais a respeito da musica speculativa, a saber, sua função no programa das artes liberais, sua concepção enquanto ciência e sua relação com a teologia sagrada. / Magister Jacobus de Ispania\'s treatise, Speculum Musicae, did not receive the due visibility in the educational and scholarly institutions of its time as well as later. From the second half of the twentieth century the treatise gradually gained more visibility and in recent years has received from several scholars a greater research effort. The present dissertation aims at exposing the philosophical and theological context of this treatise and investigating its main guiding concepts through a reading of the first chapters of its first book. Through the exposition of these fundamental conceptions, we seek to clarify some of the most fundamental questions regarding speculative music, namely, its function in the liberal arts program, its conception as a science and its relation to sacred theology.

While the study of complete sources is very valuable, and has contributed greatly to what is understood of music history, the perspective they contribute is limited because they cannot reveal information about how music and music sources were most often used. The study of functional sources, more probably created for use, allows for more insight into how music was performed and understood, and how such sources were created, used and valued. This study examines twelve fragmentary early sixteenth-century English sources from the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) database, constituting a sample of functional music sources in this period. The study of this sampling reveals information about how functional manuscripts were created, used and valued in England during this time period. Some of the fragments contain works with concordances. These concordances are compared using variant comparison, where differences in the versions of the work are considered and weighed. The comparative study of concordances provides insight into the transmission of the versions, scribal and performance culture, as well as into music culture in general. Overall, the study of this sampling of early sixteenth-century functional English sources provides a clearer understanding of the use of accidentals, scribes and scribal culture, performers, performance practice and music culture in England at this time, contributing to the understanding of music history.

While the study of complete sources is very valuable, and has contributed greatly to what is understood of music history, the perspective they contribute is limited because they cannot reveal information about how music and music sources were most often used. The study of functional sources, more probably created for use, allows for more insight into how music was performed and understood, and how such sources were created, used and valued. This study examines twelve fragmentary early sixteenth-century English sources from the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) database, constituting a sample of functional music sources in this period. The study of this sampling reveals information about how functional manuscripts were created, used and valued in England during this time period. Some of the fragments contain works with concordances. These concordances are compared using variant comparison, where differences in the versions of the work are considered and weighed. The comparative study of concordances provides insight into the transmission of the versions, scribal and performance culture, as well as into music culture in general. Overall, the study of this sampling of early sixteenth-century functional English sources provides a clearer understanding of the use of accidentals, scribes and scribal culture, performers, performance practice and music culture in England at this time, contributing to the understanding of music history.

While the study of complete sources is very valuable, and has contributed greatly to what is understood of music history, the perspective they contribute is limited because they cannot reveal information about how music and music sources were most often used. The study of functional sources, more probably created for use, allows for more insight into how music was performed and understood, and how such sources were created, used and valued. This study examines twelve fragmentary early sixteenth-century English sources from the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) database, constituting a sample of functional music sources in this period. The study of this sampling reveals information about how functional manuscripts were created, used and valued in England during this time period. Some of the fragments contain works with concordances. These concordances are compared using variant comparison, where differences in the versions of the work are considered and weighed. The comparative study of concordances provides insight into the transmission of the versions, scribal and performance culture, as well as into music culture in general. Overall, the study of this sampling of early sixteenth-century functional English sources provides a clearer understanding of the use of accidentals, scribes and scribal culture, performers, performance practice and music culture in England at this time, contributing to the understanding of music history.

O tratado Speculum Musicae do Magister Jacobus de Ispania (ou Jacobus Leodiensis) não recebeu a devida visibilidade nas instituições de ensino e de investigação intelectual tanto de sua época quanto posteriormente. A partir da segunda metade do século XX o tratado foi gradualmente ganhando maior visibilidade e nos últimos anos tem recebido por parte de diversos estudiosos um maior esforço de investigação. A presente dissertação visa expor o contexto filosófico e teológico desse tratado, investigando os seus principais conceitos norteadores a partir de uma leitura dos primeiros capítulos do seu primeiro livro. A partir da exposição dessas concepções fundamentais, buscamos então esclarecer algumas das questões mais fundamentais a respeito da musica speculativa, a saber, sua função no programa das artes liberais, sua concepção enquanto ciência e sua relação com a teologia sagrada. / Magister Jacobus de Ispania\'s treatise, Speculum Musicae, did not receive the due visibility in the educational and scholarly institutions of its time as well as later. From the second half of the twentieth century the treatise gradually gained more visibility and in recent years has received from several scholars a greater research effort. The present dissertation aims at exposing the philosophical and theological context of this treatise and investigating its main guiding concepts through a reading of the first chapters of its first book. Through the exposition of these fundamental conceptions, we seek to clarify some of the most fundamental questions regarding speculative music, namely, its function in the liberal arts program, its conception as a science and its relation to sacred theology.

While the study of complete sources is very valuable, and has contributed greatly to what is understood of music history, the perspective they contribute is limited because they cannot reveal information about how music and music sources were most often used. The study of functional sources, more probably created for use, allows for more insight into how music was performed and understood, and how such sources were created, used and valued. This study examines twelve fragmentary early sixteenth-century English sources from the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) database, constituting a sample of functional music sources in this period. The study of this sampling reveals information about how functional manuscripts were created, used and valued in England during this time period. Some of the fragments contain works with concordances. These concordances are compared using variant comparison, where differences in the versions of the work are considered and weighed. The comparative study of concordances provides insight into the transmission of the versions, scribal and performance culture, as well as into music culture in general. Overall, the study of this sampling of early sixteenth-century functional English sources provides a clearer understanding of the use of accidentals, scribes and scribal culture, performers, performance practice and music culture in England at this time, contributing to the understanding of music history.

The aim of this musical anthropology thesis focuses on "medieval music" as practiced by fans of historical fencing in the form of living history on the example of two Czech bands - Subulcus and Medieval Open Band as part of project Prácheňská manství. In my thesis I focus not only on sound and musical instruments, but also on the behavior of actors and their conceptualization of the Middle Ages, according to the concepts of music as culture of Allan Merriam, resp. of music as social life of Thomas Turino. I combine here the basic ideas of ethnomusicology with the ideas of musical memory in connection with the contemporary concepts of social memory and, last but not least, with the concepts of "golden age", nostalgia, staged authenticity and invented traditions. The point of this work is to bring about the origin and form of music that the actors understand as medieval, although not always comes the repertoire from the Middle Ages.

This thesis places Chaucer within the tradition of philosophical poetry that begins in Plato and extends through classical and medieval Latin culture. In this Platonic tradition, poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general. As such, poetry as metapoetics takes itself as its own object of inquiry in order to reinforce and generate its own definitions without regard to extrinsic considerations. It attempts to create a poetic-knowledge proper instead of one that is dependant on other modes for meaning. The particular manner in which this is expressed is according to the idea of the loss of the Golden Age. In the Augustinian context of Chaucer’s poetry, language, in its literal and historical signifying functions is an effect of the noetic fall and a deformation of an earlier symbolism. The Chaucerian poems this thesis considers concern themselves with the solution to a historical literary lament for language’s fall, a solution that suggests that the instability in language can be overcome with reference to what has been lost in language. The chapters are organized to reflect the medieval Neoplatonic ascensus. The first chapter concerns the Pardoner’s Old Man and his relationship to the literary history of Tithonus in which the renewing of youth is ironically promoted in order to perpetually delay eternity and make the current world co-eternal to the coming world. In the Miller’s Tale, more aggressive narrative strategies deploy the machinery of atheism in order to make a god-less universe the sufficient grounds for the transformation of a fallen and contingent world into the only world whatsoever. The Manciple’s Tale’s opposite strategy leaves the world intact in its current state and instead makes divine beings human. Phoebus expatriates to earth and attempts to co-mingle it with heaven in order to unify art and history into a single monistic experience. Finally, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale acts as ars poetica for the entire Chaucerian Performance and undercuts the naturalistic strategies of the first three poems by a long experiment in the philosophical conflict between art and history. By imagining art and history as epistemologically antagonistic it attempts to subdue in a definitive manner poetic strategies that would imagine human history as the necessary knowledge-condition for poetic language.