Music in French Theatre of the Late Sixteenth Century

1994 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 85-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Dobbins
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Music ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Spoken Text ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
French Theatre

In his first major published monograph, Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA, 1963), Howard Mayer Brown skilfully plotted the development of musical practices in the traditions of farces, sotties, moralities and monologues until the middle of the sixteenth century, by which time the ‘influence of works from the ancient world and from Italy’ had turned the ‘current of educated opinion … against the older French forms’. Thus he chose to terminate his study just as the new forms of neo-classical comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy and pastorale were emerging, although he did allude fleetingly to the Protestant dramas of Louis des Masures in citing one of three cantiques from the Bergerie spirituelle (Geneva, 1566) as one of his two examples of ‘new music for the stage’. Des Masures's play is only one of a number of dramatic or quasi-dramatic pieces published with music as well as spoken text during the period 1550–1600, reflecting a fashion for new music specifically composed for the theatre. In the present paper I propose to examine this considerable repertory, which has largely escaped the attention of modern scholars.

Vamping the Stage

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Women Performers ◽  
New Music ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The Many ◽  
Late Modern

Vamping the Stage is the first book-length historical and comparative examination of women, modernity, and popular music in Asia. This book documents the many ways that women performers have supported, challenged, and undermined representations of existing gendered norms in the entertainment industries of China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The case studies in this volume address colonial, post-colonial, as well as late modern conditions of culture as they relate to women’s musical practices and their changing social and cultural identities throughout Asia. Female entertainers were artistic pioneers of new music, new cinema, new forms of dance and theater, and new behavior and morals. Their voices, mediated through new technologies of film, radio, and the phonograph, changed the soundscape of global popular music and resonate today in all spheres of modern life. These female performers were not merely symbols of times that were rapidly changing. They were active agents in the creation of local performance cultures and the rise of a region-wide and globally oriented entertainment industry. Placing women’s voices in social and historical contexts, the authors critically analyze salient discourses, representations, meanings, and politics of “voice” in Asian popular music of the 20th century to the present day.

scholarly journals To Sing Upon the Book: Oral and Written Counterpoint in Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-105
Author(s):  
Ronald Broude
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New Music ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Music Printing ◽  
Musical Tradition ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Textual Form ◽  
The Relationship

During the fifteenth century, many musici thought of counterpoint as an improvisational practice in which certain procedures were employed to produce a musical texture in which interest lay in the interplay of two or more melodic lines. The improvisational practice was called singing upon the book (cantare super librum): it required one singer to realize a pre-existing melody (called a cantus firmus) inscribed in a text while one or more other singers (called concentors), reading from that same text, devised, ex tempore, a countermelody or melodies that obeyed the rules of counterpoint with respect to the cantus firmus. Similar procedures, applied in writing, produced res facta, contrapuntal texture in textual form. Counterpoint and res facta were alternative means of providing music for occasions both sacred and secular. During the sixteenth century, several factors combined to alter the relationship between improvised and written counterpoint, and by the end of the century the importance of the former was greatly diminished. The growth of music printing provided an abundance of music for a growing community of amateurs who could read music but were not interested singing upon the book. The composers responsible for this new music embraced emerging ideas that stressed the advantages of written music, which enjoyed permanence that improvised counterpoint lacked, which was usually more observant of the rules than improvised counterpoint could be, and which enhanced the reputations of the composers who created it. As a result of these developments, emphasis shifted from improvised to written counterpoint, from the procedures that produced a contrapuntal texture to the texture itself, and singing upon the book came to be seen by many not as an end in itself but as a way to sharpen composers’ skills. Marginalized by print, improvised counterpoint survived in a much reduced community, largely in Catholic France and Iberia, and eventually, for want of a musical community large enough to sustain it, ceased to be a living musical tradition.

Comparative Law Before the Code Napoléon

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Donahue
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
International Congress ◽  
High Middle Ages

Modern comparative lawyers tend to date the foundation of their discipline to the nineteenth century and to the promulgation of the great European codes. This article claims that one could make an argument that comparative law is to be found in the ancient world, with some suggestion of it in the early writings of Aristotle’s Politics; that despite the multiplicity of legal sources it is not often found in the early or high middle ages; that there are hints of it in the commentators of the later middle ages; that in a very real sense it can be found in the ideas of the French legal thinkers of the sixteenth century; and that one can trace a relatively clean line of sources from the sixteenth century to whatever nineteenth-century authors one chooses to focus on as the founders of the discipline that produced the First International Congress of Comparative Law in 1900.

Italy, the Ancient World and the French Musical Inheritance in the Sixteenth Century: Arcadelt and Clereau in the Service of the Guises

1996 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-190
Author(s):  
Jeanice Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Italian Language ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Alps ◽  
Firsthand Experience

Throughout the sixteenth century France looked towards Italy with an intensity rarely matched before or since. Generations of French kings pursued dreams of conquest on the peninsula; during their Italian campaigns French noblemen and their retinues spent extensive periods south of the Alps, gaining firsthand experience of Italian language and culture. Dynastic marriages linked leading French families with different Italian states: the Retz with the Florentine Gondi, the Nevers with the Mantuan Gonzaga and the Guise with the Este of Ferrara, among many others.

A newly discovered keyboard source (Gonzalo de Baena's Arte nouamente inuentada pera aprender a tanger, Lisbon, 1540): a preliminary report

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tess Knighton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
New Music ◽  
Rhetorical Style ◽  
Keyboard Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Music

The discovery of a musical source is always something of an event. This volume of keyboard music dated 1540 and printed in Lisbon was discovered – appropriately for an Iberian source – in 1992 by Alejandro Iglesias who announced his find at a conference held at the Institution ‘Fernando el Católico’ in Zaragoza in the autumn of that year. It was heralded in the Castilian rhetorical style as the ‘discovery of the century’, and it provided a moment of high drama, especially when it became clear from Iglesias's brief description of the source that it included works by Franco-Netherlandish composers such as Josquin, Ockeghem, Compère, Agricola, Caron and Obrecht. The volume is indeed of considerable interest, not only because it offers keyboard intabulations of previously unknown works by both Franco-Netherlandish and Spanish composers, but also because it is the earliest surviving source of keyboard music from the Iberian peninsula and a rare example of printed instrumental music from the first half of the sixteenth century. Manuel Carlos de Brito, making an assessment of Renaissance Portuguese music in 1989, was perfectly justified in thinking that new music sources were unlikely to appear, and that lack of musical texts to confirm or refute the historical context suggested by documents would limit the history of Portuguese music to the realms of speculation. This discovery, surprising though it is, rescues something from that shadowy kingdom.

scholarly journals The Changing Landscape of the Malay Gamelan and its Implications on Music Education in Malaysia

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (SI5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahanum Mohd Shah ◽  
Janette Jannah Poheng
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
New Music ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
International Publishing ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Open Access Article

Globalisation and information technology have posed challenges to cultural systems whereby new ways are taking over old ways that are indigenous to a particular culture. Traditional modes of cultural expression are being restructured where changes in musical practices and sound systems are affecting composers to remain vital. New music for the Malay gamelan using new modes of expression require schools to act as agents for change and innovation to occur. This study examines the direction gamelan music is taking in Malaysia and its implications on music education in Malaysia in order for the gamelan to remain relevant. Keywords: Malay gamelan; teaching; learning; approaches eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2021.. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6iSI5.2939

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Jakelski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
New Music ◽  
Background Information ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Art World ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cultural Mobility

The introduction presents the book’s primary themes and concepts: music and the Cold War, the roles institutions and networks have played in shaping musical practices, Stephen Greenblatt’s model of cultural mobility, and Howard Becker’s model of the art world. It gives relevant background information on the history of new music institutions in the twentieth century, as well as a concise account of the development of state socialism in postwar Poland. It also provides an overview of the book’s structure as well as brief summaries of the chapters. The introduction explains that book’s first half examines the festival’s organization and reception in Poland, whereas the latter half explores the Warsaw Autumn’s worldwide ramifications.

Comparative Law before the Code Napoléon

2006 ◽  
pp. 2-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Donahue
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
International Congress ◽  
High Middle Ages

Modern comparative lawyers tend to date the foundation of their discipline to the nineteenth century and to the promulgation of the great European codes. This article claims that one could make an argument that comparative law is to be found in the ancient world, that despite the multiplicity of legal sources it is not often found in the early or high middle ages, that there are hints of it in the commentators of the later middle ages, that in a very real sense it can be found in the ideas of the French legal thinkers of the sixteenth century, and that one can trace a relatively clean line from the sixteenth century to whatever nineteenth-century authors one chooses to focus on as the founders of the discipline that produced the First International Congress of Comparative Law in 1900.

Exercises in Composing

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-173
Author(s):  
Bruce Adolphe
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Music Composition ◽  
New Music ◽  
Composition Class ◽  
Spoken Text ◽  
Private Lesson ◽  
Musical Creativity ◽  
Concept Of Beauty

This part is designed primarily with composers in mind, yet while experience writing music would be helpful here, it is not absolutely required to enjoy doing these exercises. The exercises may be done by an individual alone, and they are also useable in a composition class, private lesson, theory seminar, or improvisation workshop. Part V opens with an essay about creativity in general that also explores ideas of truth and beauty in music. Beauty is not discussed in a mundane sense—not in the sense of prettiness or loveliness—but rather the concept of Beauty within music composition as it is embodied in the relation of the parts to the whole, a sense of proportion, and the aptness of technique to the idea expressed. This is followed by a series of exercises designed to inspire musical creativity. These involve a range of approaches, including: imitating models; channeling composers; creating alternatives to existing music; using spoken text as subtext for composition; stylistic juxtapositions and confrontations; altering parameters such as meter; rewriting pre-existing music; using structural analysis to create new music; cutting and pasting; group composing games; versions and variations of a phrase; deceptive endings, detours, and interruptions; and music based on physical manifestations of emotion discovered through acting.

The psalms as a mark of Protestantism: the introduction of liturgical psalm-singing in Geneva

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Trocmé-Latter
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Congregational Singing ◽  
Musical Practices

ABSTRACTIt is widely believed that musical creativity suffered under the control of many sixteenth-century Protestant church leaders, especially in the Reformed (as opposed to Lutheran) branch of Protestantism. Such views are generalisations, and it is more accurate to say that music in Geneva and other Reformed strongholds developed in a very different way from the music of the Lutheran Church. The very specific beliefs about the role of music in the liturgy of Jean Calvin, Genevan church leader, led to the creation and publication of the Book of Psalms in French, in metre, and set to music. The Genevan or Huguenot Psalter, completed in 1562, formed the basis for Reformed worship in Europe and throughout the world, and its impact is still felt today. Despite the importance of the Psalter, relatively little is known about the precise liturgical musical practices in Geneva at the time of the Reformation, and little research has been carried out into the aspirations of either reformers or church musicians in relation to the Psalter. This article explores the significance of Calvin's interest in the Psalms as theological material, observing how this interest manifested itself, and outlines Calvin's views on music and the ways in which his plans for psalm-singing were implemented in Geneva from the 1540s onwards. After giving a brief explanation of the process through which the psalm melodies were taught and learnt, it also asks whether Calvin's vision for congregational singing would, or could, have been fully realised, and to what extent the quality of music-making was important to him. This article suggests that in the Genevan psalm-singing of the sixteenth century, matters of spiritual significance were most important.

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