Instrumental music in the urban centres of Renaissance Germany

1987 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 159-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Polk
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Italian Study ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Early Phases ◽  
German Contribution ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Modern scholarship about Renaissance instrumental music has suffered from a scarcity of musical sources. Consequently current research efforts often seem to operate in the manner of archaeological excavations; at times it is only as one layer is painstakingly uncovered that the configurations of another are revealed. This was certainly the experience of this contribution, which began as an investigation into late fifteenth-century Italian instrumental practices. The early phases of the Italian study involved sifting through many archival documents, and one initial miscellaneous impression was that German players frequently appeared in Italian ensembles. Pursuit of this almost casual observation led first to an awareness that German presence in Italy was substantial, then, further, to the fact that the oltramontani dominated aspects of instrumental music. This knowledge of the German contribution led, in turn, to a substantial reappraisal of the formative stages of ensemble performance practices.

RETHINKING THE SIENA CHOIRBOOK: A NEW DATE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ITS MUSICAL CONTENTS

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Dickey
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Early Date ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Late Fifteenth

A 1481 date for the manuscript Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, MS K. 1. 2 (hereafter Si), which contains almost ninety pieces of late fifteenth-century liturgical polyphony including works of Obrecht, Isaac and Mouton, has rested uneasily upon an argument from Sienese copying records. A fresh codicological analysis of this important source, including evidence of matching ‘twin’ watermark pairs in datable Tuscan archival documents, has yielded a new date and a new narrative for its compilation. The main corpus, in fact, is decades later than the fragmentary appendix containing works of Dufay and Josquin. The redating presented here has manifold implications for some of the most important composers of the late fifteenth century, and for peninsular patterns of musical transmission. A secure early date for the appendix copy of Josquin's Missa L'ami baudichon, for instance, enables a reassessment of that piece's transmission to sources as far away as Poland and Bohemia in the light of recent discoveries in Josquin's biography. My new date for Josquin's mass also confirms a case of Josquin emulation within another, anonymous mass in Si. The new dating further enables a reassessment of ModE M.1.13's authority as a source for one of Johannes Martini's masses, and the identification of a heretofore unknown local Sienese composer. Finally, the new narrative for the Siena choirbook may reveal Florence as a link in the transmission of repertory from Milan and Ferrara to Siena.

Contextualizing Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-240
Author(s):  
Clare Bokulich
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Moment

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.

Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Rodrigo Jimenez De Rada ◽  
The Way

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).

Mamluk Painting in the Late Fifteenth Century

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Esin Atil
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Fifteenth

The Medieval Sea

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rose
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
English Channel ◽  
Naval Warfare ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Late Fifteenth

This book provides an accessible study of how peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects. This book surveys how the peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects between approximately 1000-1500 A.D.How was the sea represented in poems and other writings? What kinds of boats were used and how were they built? How easy was it to navigate on short or long passages? Was seaborne trade crucial to the economy of this area? Did naval warfare loom large in the minds of medieval rulers? What can be said more generally about the lives of those who went to sea or who lived by its shores? These are the major questions which are addressed in this book, which is based on extensive research in both maritime archives and also in secondary literature. It concludes by pointing out how the relatively enclosed maritime world of Western Europe was radically changed by the voyages of the late fifteenth century across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and round Africa to India.

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