Cantus Firmus

Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Alan Anderson ◽  
Aaron James
Keyword(s):  
16Th Century ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Instrumental Ensemble ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Renaissance Music ◽  
Instrumental Works ◽  
And Inversion

A cantus firmus is a preexistent melody that forms the basis of a larger musical work. Source melodies in the cantus firmus tradition have generally been selected from the vast corpus of plainchant, but secular tunes also provide a supply of monophony for use. The term is synonymous with cantus prius factus, canto fermo, and fester Gesang. Polyphonic settings of a cantus firmus may augment appropriate liturgies or may be found in other contexts. The foundational melodies sometimes signal extramusical or allegorical meaning when cast alongside other texts. In pedagogical contexts, cantus firmi appear as a fund of fixed musical subjects for teaching oral or written counterpoint. The first exercises in counterpoint against a cantus firmus may be found as early as the 10th century, when a note-against-note style prevailed. By the 12th century, and certainly in polyphony emanating from Notre Dame in Paris, florid counterpoint over a plainchant cantus firmus may be witnessed. As discant voices were added above a fixed song, the preexisting melodies became rhythmicized for the sake of coordination. In the 14th century, composers of motets subjected cantus firmi to isoperiodic treatment, abstractly manipulating them into repeating rhythmic and melodic cells. A heyday for settings of cantus firmus can be seen in the 15th century with the proliferation of Mass Ordinaries based on a variety of melodies. Transformations of preexistent song are taken to greater lengths with experiments in ornamentation, fragmentation, transposition, migration, retrograde, and inversion. Polyphonic mass traditions based on the Caput melisma and the L’Homme armé song famously emerge in this context. Although the most familiar and frequently studied examples of cantus firmus technique occur in sacred Latin works, the technique was adapted for polyphonic works in other languages, notably German chorale settings by Lutheran composers. Cantus firmi also undergird numerous secular genres, including the French-texted chanson rustique and combinative chanson as well as the German Tenorlied. Among instrumental works using cantus firmus technique, the most obvious examples are compositions for organ based on liturgical melodies, which have formed a central part of the instrument’s repertoire from the 16th century to the present day. However, cantus firmus techniques also featured in works for instrumental ensemble, including the famous In nomine fantasia. Since 1600, the use of a cantus firmus (especially in long note values) has typically been regarded a historicist gesture, serving as a religious topos or referring to specific techniques from medieval and Renaissance music.

Richard Lavenham and the Cambridge Logic

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 241-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Vincent Spade
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Logical Study

Summary This paper argues that the 14th-century Oxford Carmelite Richard Lavenham was the author of the treatise De syncategorematibus that was used as a textbook in 15th-century Cambridge, a version of which was printed several times in the late 15th and early 16th centuries in the Libellus sophistarum ad usum Cantabrigiensium. The manuscript versions of this treatise differ significantly from one another and from the printed editions, so that the claim of Lavenham’s authorship needs to be carefully considered. The evidence for this claim is described briefly. The identification of the De syncategorematibus in the Cambridge Libellus as Lavenham’s provides the first real indication that Lavenham, whose works testify to the influence of other authors on logico-linguistic studies in late 14th-century Oxford, was himself not without influence as late as the early 16th century. On the other hand, the De syncategorematibus is not a very competent treatise, so that its inclusion as a textbook in the Libellus sophistarum is an indication of the decline of the logical study of language in England during this period. A brief analysis of the contents of the treatise supports this observation.

scholarly journals Archaeological excavations in St Giles' Cathedral Edinburgh, 1981-93

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Collard ◽  
John Lawson ◽  
Nicholas Holmes ◽  
Derek Hall ◽  
George Haggarty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Church ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
The South ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
East End ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The Church

The report describes the results of excavations in 1981, ahead of development within the South Choir Aisle of St Giles' Cathedral, and subsequent archaeological investigations within the kirk in the 1980s and 1990s. Three main phases of activity from the 12th to the mid-16th centuries were identified, with only limited evidence for the post-Reformation period. Fragmentary evidence of earlier structural remains was recorded below extensive landscaping of the natural steep slope, in the form of a substantial clay platform constructed for the 12th-century church. The remains of a substantial ditch in the upper surface of this platform are identified as the boundary ditch of the early ecclesiastical enclosure. A total of 113 in situ burials were excavated; the earliest of these formed part of the external graveyard around the early church. In the late 14th century the church was extended to the south and east over this graveyard, and further burials and structural evidence relating to the development of the kirk until the 16th century were excavated, including evidence for substantive reconstruction of the east end of the church in the mid-15th century. Evidence for medieval slat-bottomed coffins of pine and spruce was recovered, and two iron objects, which may be ferrules from pilgrims' staffs or batons, were found in 13th/14th-century burials.

The first Russian dictionaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-43
Author(s):  
Н.Е. Касьяненко
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Статья посвящена истории развития словарного дела на Руси и появлению первых словарей. Затрагиваются первые, несловарные формы описания лексики в письменных памятниках XI–XVII вв. (глоссы), из которых черпался материал для собственно словарей. Анализируются основные лексикографические жанры этого времени и сложение на их основе азбуковников. В статье уделено внимание таким конкретным лексикографическим произведениям, как ономастикону «Рѣчь жидовскаго «зыка» (XVIII в.), словарям-символикам «Толк о неразумнех словесех» (XV в.) и «Се же приточне речеся», произвольнику, объясняющему славянские слова, «Тлъкование нεоудобь познаваεмомъ въ писаныхъ рѣчемь» (XIV в.), разговорнику «Рѣчь тонкословія греческаго» (ХV в.). Характеризуется словарь Максима Грека «Толкованіе именамъ по алфавиту» (XVI в.). Предметом более подробного освещения стал «Лексис…» Л. Зизания – первый печатный словарь на Руси. На примерах дается анализ его реестровой и переводной частей. Рассматривается известнейший труд П. Берынды «Лексикон славеноросский и имен толкование», а также рукописный «Лексикон латинский…» Е. Славинецкого, являющий собой образец переводного словаря XVII в. The article is dedicated to the history of the development of vocabulary in Russia and the emergence of the first dictionaries. The first, non-verbar forms of description of vocabulary in written monuments of the 11th and 17th centuries (glosses), from which material for the dictionaries themselves were drawn, are affected. The main lexicographical genres of this time are analyzed and the addition of alphabets on their basis. The article focuses on specific lexicographical works such as the «Zhidovskago» (18th century) the dictionaries-symbols of «The Talk of Unreasonable Words» (the 15th century). and «The Same Speech», an arbitrary explanation of slavic words, «The tlution of the cognition in the written», (the 14th century), the phrasebook «Ry subtle Greek» (the 15th century). Maxim Greck's dictionary «Tolkien names in alphabetical order» (16th century) is characterized. The subject of more detailed coverage was «Lexis...» L. Sizania is the first printed dictionary in Russia. Examples give analysis of its registry and translation parts. The famous work of P. Berynda «Lexicon of Slavic and Names of Interpretation» and the handwritten «Lexicon Latin...» are considered. E. Slavinecki, which is a model of the 17th century translated dictionary.

scholarly journals On the origin of Dagestani shamhals and Gazikumukh Shamkhalate (the 12th to 16th centuries)

2019 ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Arsen S. Akbiyev ◽  
Magomed-Pasha B. Abdusalamov
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
State Formation ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Arabic Version ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
The Core ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article discusses the problem of Dagestani shamkhalate and the term "shamkhal", which is debatable in Dagestani historical science, based on the analysis of sources and special historical literature. According to the authors, the Arabic version of the origin of the first Dagestani Shamkhals is untenable and beneath scientific criticism. The first rulers with the title "shaukhal" who appeared in Dagestan at the early 12th century, belonged to Turkic peoples who led ghazi groups (those who contended for the faith) and spread Islam in Upland Dagestan. The Turkic dynasty existed until the early 14th century only to be overthrown by the combined forces of the Golden Horde, Kajtaks and the Avar Khanate. The Golden Horde established their own ruler (Tatar-Shamkhal) from among the Chingissids, whose descendants ruled this state formation until the second half of the 19th century. The authors come to the conclusion that those were the Kumyks who supported the Tatar-Shamkhals unlike the rest warlike highland population who disliked them; and they finally migrated to live among the Kumyks when, in the second half of the 16th century, they faced deterioration. The Kumyks, being the basis, the core of Shamkhalism, after the withdrawal from Gazikumukh possession, prevented the final disintegration of the Shamkhalate and continued the traditions of medieval statehood

scholarly journals The evolution of the laws regulating access to forests and aquatic resources of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the mid-16th century

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Anna Pytasz-Kołodziejczyk
Keyword(s):  
Financial Burden ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Illegal Logging ◽  
Aquatic Resources ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Protected Forests ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Grand Duchy

In the 13th and the 14th century, grand dukes had exclusive rights to the forests and aquatic resources of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They maintained these rights in the 15th century despite the fact that the rights to royal forests and aquatic had been widely distributed since the reign of Vytautas. Beginning in the second decade of the 16th century, grand dukes became increasingly interested in the productivity of land belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in particular forests and aquatic resources. Their concern was largely motivated by the financial burden placed on the Lithuanian treasury in connection with the Muscovite- Lithuanian wars and the economic reforms implemented by Queen Bona and Sigismundus II Augustus. The monarchs passed laws regulating access to royal land in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. These regulations improved the management of royal land, protected forests against illegal logging and prevented excessive exploitation of water fauna (especially fish)

scholarly journals The soul in the mediaeval Psalter

Adeptus ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 84-101
Author(s):  
Kinga Lis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Middle French ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Selection Strategies ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman

The soul in the mediaeval PsalterThe paper is an attempt to examine what lies at the heart and soul of the mediaeval Psalter in the contemporaneous approach(es) to its vernacularisations. In particular, the paper investigates the applications of the mediaeval translation theory in relation to a 12th-century Anglo-Norman, a 15th-century Middle French and four 14th-century Middle English prose Psalter renditions, with a view to locate them within the spirit of the attitude to biblical translations current in the Middle Ages and against the backdrop of the position of the Psalter in the period. In practical terms, the analysis is conducted on the basis of the equivalent selection strategies for rendering four Latin nouns central to the Psalter: anima, animae ‘soul,’ cor, cordis ‘heart’ and, perhaps surprisingly, ren, renis ‘kidney’ and lumbus, lumbi ‘loins’. All cases of variation in this respect are studied closely from intra- as well as extra-textual perspectives in order to establish the possible reasons behind the divergences, as these constitute exceptions rather than the rule, even in apparently heterodox renditions. Dusza w średniowiecznym PsałterzuArtykuł stanowi próbę bliższego przyjrzenia się podstawowym zasadom średniowiecznego podejścia do tłumaczenia psałterza na języki wernakularne. Przedstawiono w nim analizę zastosowania mediewalnej teorii tłumaczeń w odniesieniu do dwunastowiecznego Psałterza anglo-normandzkiego, piętnastowiecznego Psałterza średniofrancuskiego i czterech czternastowiecznych tłumaczeń Księgi Psalmów na średnioangielski. Celem było wykazanie, w jakim stopniu analizowane teksty odzwierciedlają ówczesne podejście do tłumaczeń biblijnych w kontekście znaczenia psałterza w średniowieczu. Badanie przeprowadzone jest na podstawie doboru ekwiwalentów w tłumaczeniu czterech – niezwykle istotnych z powodu rangi tych tekstów w średniowieczu – łacińskich rzeczowników: anima, animae‚ ‘dusza’, cor, cordis‚ ‘serce’ oraz, co może zaskoczyć, ren, renis‚ ‘nerka’ i lumbus, lumbi, ‘lędźwie’. Najwięcej uwagi poświęcono ustaleniu źródła analizowanej z perspektywy zarówno intra-, jak i ekstratekstualnej wariancji w doborze odpowiedników, jako że rozbieżność w tym względzie stanowi raczej wyjątek, a nie regułę, nawet w tłumaczeniach – wydawałoby się – heterodoksyjnych.

scholarly journals The beginnings of Hungarian lexicography. From the first glossaries to multilingual dictionaries

Diacronia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emese Fazakas
Keyword(s):  
16Th Century ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Early Source

This study aims to present the beginnings of Hungarian lexicography, with a special focus on certain works that are closely connected with Transylvania. The early glossaries, starting with the 13th century, are either marginal or interlinear. The only early source in which glossaries are intertextual, distinguished from the Latin text by underlining, is Sermones Dominicales, a compilation of sermons written in the first half of the 15th century. The vocabularies and nomenclatures under analysis were elaborated between the 14th century and the end of the 16th century, most of them being based on lists of Latin words grouped according to semantic fields. The only work that was elaborated based on the Hungarian lexis is the Nomenclature from Schlägl, a copy dating from around 1405 of a document written a few decades before. Among these vocabularies there are some that could be regarded as the first attempts to elaborate specialized dictionaries. Starting with the 16th century, several dictionaries in which the title-words are arranged alphabetically were identified. However, the early dictionaries are either unfinished or only partially preserved. The most representative dictionaries, mainly multilingual, were elaborated starting with the late 16th century. Our presentation ends with József Benkő’s botanical dictionaries, edited in 1783, which mark the beginnings of modern Hungarian lexicography.

The Medieval Khwājagān and the Early Naqshbandīyya

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Gibran Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Public Displays ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Monolithic Group ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Current Spread ◽  
Common Identity

The Khwājagān (lit. “Masters”) were a constellation of Ṣūfīs in 13th- to 16th-century Mawara an-Nahr and Khurasan. The Naqshbandīyya were Ṣūfīs from among the Khwājagān who followed the teachings of their shaykh, or Ṣūfī master, Khwāja Bahāʾ ad-Dīn Naqshband (1318–1389). Given the eventual emergence of a more centrally organized Naqshbandī order among the otherwise unorganized Khwājagānī tradition by the mid-15th century, later Naqshbandī hagiographers have retroactively combined the development of both traditions under a single linear narrative. While such hagiographies from the 16th century onward portray the Khwājagān as a monolithic group, united in beliefs and rituals, and tracing its silsila (lit. “chain”) or spiritual lineage back to the first caliph Abū Bakr (r. 632–634), there is little evidence from the 13th and 14th centuries to buttress these claims. A study of earlier sources from this time period instead suggests that there was considerable variation among the attitudes and beliefs espoused by individual Khwājagānī Ṣūfī masters and that a loosely defined common identity among the Khwājagān grew out of aversion to the practices of more established Ṣūfī traditions that included ascribing particular importance to spiritual lineages and public displays of devotion. Thus, this Khwājagānī current spread across Central Asia in the form of local Ṣūfī communities, which sought to challenge traditional understandings of Sufism. Part of the Khwājagānī aversion to ostentatious modes of worship by more traditional forms of Sufism led to an increased preference for silent forms of dhikr (lit. remembrance) or the ritualistic recitation of sacred names and phrases, as opposed to more vocal and public forms. By the 15th century, this proclivity toward silent dhikr had become a hallmark of the Khwājagānī-Naqshbandī tradition. The term Khwājagān is the plural of the Persian word khwāja, which literally means “master” and often reserved for persons of distinction. As an honorific term, originally reserved as a title of prestige for prominent members of Persianate societies, Ṣūfī murīds or disciples used the title “khwāja” to refer to their masters or teachers with respect. In Naqshbandī sources written from the 16th century onward, hagiographers such as ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Kāshifī Ṣafī have consistently referred to all members of the Khwājagānī and the Naqshbandī tradition by the epithet “khwāja.” Consequently, these Naqshbandī hagiographers have used the term Silsila-ye Khwājagān or the Chain of the Khwājas to refer to both the Naqshbandī silsila and its predecessors among the Ṣūfī masters of 12th-, 13th-, and 14th-century Central Asia.

The Dede Korkut Ethic

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Meeker
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Islamic Civilization

The Book of Dede Korkut is an early record of oral Turkic folktales in Anatolia, and as such, one of the mythic charters of Turkish nationalist ideology. The oldest versions of the Book of Dede Korkut consist of two manuscripts copied sometime during the 16th century. The twelve stories that are recorded in these manuscripts are believed to be derived from a cycle of stories and songs circulating among Turkic peoples living in northeastern Anatolia and northwestern Azerbaijan. According to Lewis (1974), an older substratum of these oral traditions dates to conflicts between the ancient Oghuz and their Turkish rivals in Central Asia (the Pecheneks and the Kipchaks), but this substratum has been clothed in references to the 14th-century campaigns of the Akkoyunlu Confederation of Turkic tribes against the Georgians, the Abkhaz, and the Greeks in Trebizond. Such stories and songs would have emerged no earlier than the beginning of the 13th century, andthe written versions that have reached us would have been composed no later than the beginning of the 15th century. By this time, the Turkic peoples in question had been in touch with Islamic civilization for seeral centuries, had come to call themselves "Turcoman" rather than "Oghuz," had close associations with sedentary and urbanized societies, and were participating in Islamized regimes that included nomads, farmers, and townsmen. Some had abandoned their nomadic way of life altogether.

Opus and sermo: The Relationship between Alchemy and Prophecy (12th-14th Centuries)

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Crisciani
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Survey ◽  
The West ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Latin Culture ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe subject of this paper is the relationship between alchemy and prophecy in the Latin culture of the period between the initial diffusion of alchemy in the West in the 12th century and the 14th century. This is a preliminary survey, which provides the necessary background for a better understanding of the so-called 'explosion' of the kind of prophetic and visionary alchemy that took place in the 15th century. Alchemy, which is knowledge of hidden things and an art of transformation toward perfection, is here tentatively interpreted and analysed as a form of 'concrete prophecy'.

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