The Buxheim Organ Book, the largest fifteenth-century manuscript of keyboard tablature, has never before been examined as a whole in light of musica ficta issues, although it contains far more accidentals than any contemporaneous source in mensural notation. Although tablature has been used by various scholars to examine accidentals in sixteenth-century music, studies of fifteenth-century accidentals have focussed on theoretical evidence and small groups of pieces from mensural sources. The author uses the Buxheim Organ Book to extend the investigations of accidentals in tablature back into the fifteenth century, combining the large data set provided by this manuscript with a statistical approach modelled on that of Thomas Brothers's smaller-scale study of the chansons of Binchois. Specialised computer programs are introduced, which detect musical structures relevant to the analysis of Renaissance music such as different types of cadential voice leading. These programs function as extensions to David Huron's Humdrum Toolkit. With these tools, signing practises in the intabulations are statistically compared with all of the concordances of the models. Conclusions are suggested pertaining to issues of signature accidental transmission, partial signatures, mode, and musica ficta, which can be used as a contextual backdrop for the analysis of individual pieces. The evidence provided by the accidentals in Buxheim and its concordances draws a clear picture of how a group of fifteenth-century musicians added accidentals to polyphonic music. For the first time, this study provides us with principles and guidelines for musica ficta -decisions based on actual practice.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85921 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Jürgensen, Frauke |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Faculty of Music.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002293696, proquestno: AAINR21658, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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