Music and Letters - current issue

Speculative 'Musica' and the Medieval University of Paris

Dyer, J. — 2009-04-29

During the early Middle Ages quadrivial musica (the study of abstract mathematical proportion) was part of the educational programme in the liberal arts; the fundamental text was Boethius’ De institutione musica. With the rise of the universities in the thirteenth century, the goals of education and the content of the curriculum changed dramatically. Aristotelian logic and natural science virtually extinguished interest in the quadrivium—and necessarily music—at the university level. An analysis of the curriculum, teaching methods, questiones disputate (a derivative of the university dispute), and student examination questions at the University of Paris reveals that music had no place in the official instructional programme of the University. A few sources, however, indicate that Boethius’ De institutione musica still commanded interest in some circles, particularly at Oxford and in Central Europe in the fourteenth century.

The Need for Latin Textual Scholarship in Renaissance Musicology

Verbeke, D. — 2009-04-29

Focusing on the need for a more thoughtful treatment of textual material in the study of music, this article pleads for a closer collaboration between Latinists and musicologists studying Renaissance music and literature. Familiarity with musical sources would introduce Latinists to new aspects of the classical tradition and a largely unknown corpus of Neo-Latin texts. Musicologists would benefit greatly from philological and literary competence when editing and interpreting Latin sources that pertain to the biography of Renaissance composers or the publication history of Renaissance music. The need for Latin textual scholarship is demonstrated through numerous examples taken from articles and monographs on sixteenth-century motet collections and from modern critical editions of the same collections. These examples argue for a more careful use of Latin sources, as well as for a change in editorial practice when preparing a critical edition of Renaissance music.

'Mutato semper habitu': Heinrich Schutz and the Culture of Rhetoric

Varwig, B. — 2009-04-29

This article proposes a fundamental reappraisal of the scope and significance of rhetoric in early seventeenth-century compositional theory and practice. Moving beyond the inherited conception of musical rhetoric as a hermeneutic tool to match musical gestures with specific affective meanings, it reconstructs the discipline as the dominant intellectual force it was, and situates early seventeenth-century German music and music theory within this wider cultural domain. The conceptual world of the German musica poetica theorists around 1600 was shaped in particular by rhetorical procedures for verbal composition first explored by Erasmus of Rotterdam, who defined and popularized pervasive creative paradigms of variation and amplification. Reading the compositional practice of Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries against the background of such an Erasmian procedural approach opens up fresh perspectives on the structural intricacies and expressive potency of this repertory.

Defining the Term 'Absolute Music' Historically

Pederson, S. — 2009-04-29

In his influential book The Idea of Absolute Music, Carl Dahlhaus claimed there was ‘a comprehensive concept of "absolute" music which reveals the latent unity of musical aesthetics in the nineteenth century’. However, a history of the term ‘absolute music’, as opposed to the concept, leads in different directions that disrupt that latent unity. A reinvestigation of some of the ground covered in Dahlhaus's book shows, first, that it is a myth that Hanslick championed the term. Absolute music emerged as a positive concept associated with Hanslick only around 1880, which is when it started being used to designate the opposite of programme music. I also present evidence that Wagner and Nietzsche did not use the term ‘absolute music’ in a positive sense. A metaphysical ‘absolute music’ is found primarily in the writings of August Halm and Ernst Kurth. These theorists developed esoteric theories centred on Bruckner's music as the most perfect embodiment of absolute music. Dahlhaus's account of the idea of absolute music as the key aesthetic concept of the nineteenth century relies heavily on the twentieth-century writings of Halm and Kurth; it was only at this point that the term began to be used in combination with the concept. The conclusion addresses the question of why Dahlhaus constructed a unified idea of absolute music. The development of Dahlhaus's thought is considered in the context of his position as a professor of music in West Berlin, waging an ideological battle against Marxist musicology and his East Berlin counterpart Georg Knepler.

The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe 1470-1530. By Rob C. Wegman

Perkins, L. L. — 2009-04-29

Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry, and Art in Renaissance France. By Carla Zecher

Perkins, L. L. — 2009-04-29

Cristobal de Morales. Sources, Influences, Reception. Ed. by Owen Rees and Bernadette Nelson.

Rodriguez-Garcia, E. — 2009-04-29

Devotional Music in the Iberian World, 1450-1800: The Villancico and Related Genres. Ed. by Tess Knighton and Alvaro Torrente.

Laird, P. R. — 2009-04-29

Chambonnieres: A Thematic Catalogue--The Complete Works of Jacques Champion de Chambonnieres (1601/02-1672). By Bruce Gustafson.

Ledbetter, D. — 2009-04-29

The Viola da Gamba Society Index of Manuscripts Containing Consort Music, Vol. 2. Compiled by Andrew Ashbee, Robert Thompson, and Jonathan Wainwright.

Pinto, D. — 2009-04-29

J. S. Bach's Concerted Ensemble Music: The Concerto. Ed. by Gregory Butler.

Yearsley, D. — 2009-04-29

Mozart's Viennese Instrumental Music. A Study of Stylistic Re-Invention. By Simon P. Keefe.

Rushton, J. — 2009-04-29

The Cambridge Companion to Haydn. Ed. by Caryl Clark.

Will, R. — 2009-04-29

Heinrich Heine and the Lied. By Susan Youens.

Glauert, A. — 2009-04-29

Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs. By Jon W. Finson.

Tunbridge, L. — 2009-04-29

Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music. By Michael P. Steinberg.

Tregear, P. — 2009-04-29

Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900-1945. By Karen Painter.

Attfield, N. — 2009-04-29

Jean Sibelius. Dagbok 1909-1944. Ed. by Fabian Dahlstrom. * Jean Sibelius: Poesie in der Luft. Studien zu Leben und Werke. By Tomi Makela. * Sibelius. By Andrew Barnett.

DMG, — 2009-04-29

Bartok and the Grotesque: Studies in Modernity, the Body, and Contradiction in Music. By Julie Brown.

Bayley, A. — 2009-04-29

Ligeti, Kurtag, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War. By Rachel Beckles Willson.

Bauer, A. — 2009-04-29

Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography. By Michael Kurtz. Trans. by Christoph K. Lohmann and ed. by Malcolm Hamrick Brown.

Medic, I. — 2009-04-29

Messiaen Studies. Ed. by Robert Sholl.

Broad, S. — 2009-04-29

The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman's Film. By Heather Laing.

Citron, M. J. — 2009-04-29

Silence, Music, Silent Music. Ed. by Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor.

Waltham-Smith, N. — 2009-04-29

Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together. By Kay Dickinson.

Cenciarelli, C. — 2009-04-29

Music and Urban Geography. By Adam Krims.

Bohlman, P. V. — 2009-04-29

Notes to Contributors

2009-04-29

'Music & Letters' Awards

2009-04-29

Authors of Articles in this Issue

2009-04-29

Books Received

2009-04-29

Nigel Fortune (1924-2009)

2009-04-29