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Musikalische Kunstwerke im strengen Style von J. S. Bach und andern Meistern, published by Hans Georg Nägeli has been discussed primarily in the field of Bach studies. However, his writings reveal that he collected not only Bach's music but also the works of the composers from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in the strict style. This study aims to investigate Nägeli's focus on the strict style from aesthetical and historical aspects and points out that Nägeli's publication of the series is comprehended as a good example of the inclination after the turn of the nineteenth century to the canonisation of the previous styles and works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2011 discovery that the substantial collection of sixteenth-century printed partbooks preserved in Madrid's Real Conservatorio Superior de Música originally belonged to an Austrian diplomat, Wolfgang Rumpf, has opened up new perspectives on the formation of early modern music libraries. Employed by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Rumpf was also an informant of Philip II of Spain, who rewarded him with induction into the chivalric Order of Santiago. The Order, headquartered at Uclés, received the bulk of Rumpf's music library after his death. This article uses Rumpf's library, and the catalogue he commissioned from the Imperial Librarian Hugo Blotius, to shed light on the music book's place in early modern material culture, and music's place in an expanding world of knowledge. Rumpf's partbooks were not, in the first instance, intended for performance; they reflect instead his assiduous efforts to assemble a 'universal library' in which music books formed an integral part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on contrafactal practices in Japanese Christian communities during the 16th century. It mentions negotiation of social, cultural and religious identities, the consequent exchanges between the proverbial East and West gave birth to a truly syncretic genre of liturgical performance in which music was applied. It analyze musical traditions of Kirishitan communities in the first decades of the Jesuit mission.

How do we make sense of ‘parody Masses’ and related phenomena from the long 16th century? What critical and analytical approaches might we adopt, and what terminology might we best use? This study argues for a clear distinction to be drawn between facture (the act of making) on the one hand, reception on the other. It considers processes of polyphonic transfer, of transformation, and of the transfusion of concepts from model to Mass; experimentally, it uses the prefix ‘T-’ to designate works made using these principles. Drawing on T-Masses by Ludwig Daser and Matthaeus Le Maistre modelled on motets by Josquin des Prez, it considers how successive composers could research the different combinative possibilities of a fuga subject, and exploit the principle of concept-transfusion, whereby polyphony in the Mass invites recollection of specific words from the model. Questions are raised about the usefulness of commonly employed terms such as ‘parody’, ‘imitation’, ‘borrowing’ and ‘intertextuality’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierluigi Farnese (1503–47) was the 1st Duke of Parma and Piacenza (r.1545–7). His fortune heavily relied on the political and diplomatic ability of his father, Paul III (1468–1549). Pierluigi took an active and severe attitude towards local feudatories; as a result, he had many enemies and was assassinated in September 1547. While Pierluigi was unsuccessful as a ruler, he was aware of the impact of the arts for his political strategies: he collected artworks and tried to establish a musical household. This article presents previously unknown documents showing Pierluigi’s attempts to recruit musicians for Piacenza, including a travelling band from Brescia; a certain Girolamo Leone, presumably a singer of the Brescian cathedral; the Genoa musician ‘Jacomo tenorista’; and the Roman musician ‘Bolognia’, presumably Galeazzo Baldi, member of Paul III’s musica segreta. Pierluigi enlisted the help of Jean Michel, a French singer active in Ferrara, to look for singers there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper resulted from research conducted in various libraries of the Republic of Poland within the exchange programme between the Polish and Croatian Academies of Sciences in the period 2008-2013 and during my participation in the international HERA research project MusMig (Music migrations in early Modern Age: the meeting of European East, West and South) from 2013 to 2016.1 The works under consideration were found in 20 Polish libraries in 11 cities in the form and range of 24 titles written by 10 authors and they exist in several dozens of copies. They form part of a much broader spectrum of all titles written by Croatian authors and published between the 16th and 18th centuries kept in Polish libraries in almost 300 copies in all.2 In this paper I will briefly describe the authors and their works containing musical topics as well as the Polish book collections in which they have been preserved, with some remarks on both the possible origins of these titles and on the question of how they came to be purchased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this article is a musical manuscript from the 16th century that is currently found in the Batthyaneum from Alba-Iulia, Romania. We speak about the Gradual from Cluj-Napoca that despite being scanty, it off ers a well-enough insight into the Transylvanian musical life of that time. We are continuously exhibiting the manuscript, driven by the desire to reintegrate the chants into the Roman-Catholic Liturgy, offering this way a great practical importance to our theoretical research. We performed a historical, palaeographical and contentual analysis and comparison with the model gradual of that time, the Bakócz Gradual. Th e research work was encumbered by the uncertain proprietorship of the Batthyaneum Library, still unclear until Today. In spite of these obstacles and circumstances, we aimed for a thorough analysis. We promote the theory that the Gradual from Cluj-Napoca was written to serve the Saint Michael church from Cluj. We present, however an another theory as well that considers the Gradual to be ordered for the old Roman-Catholic church from Kolozsmonostor. The article contains the transcription and a small analysis of the Saint Stephan (Stephan Regis) Alleluia from the two compared Graduals. Our article presents an important work from the 16th century's Transylvanian church music, in comparison with a well-known gradual from Hungary, highlighting this way the high-standard quality of the Transylvanian church music of those times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores evidence for polyphonic music in Italian convents during the first half of the 16th century. It presents a summary of documentary evidence relating to conventual music in the pre-Tridentine era, alongside practical evidence from contemporary treatises regarding methods by which convent choirs could develop a polyphonic repertory from existing music. It revisits claims for mandatory downwards transposition of music written in high clefs, and considers two manuscripts--Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Ms.761 and Brussels Bibliothêque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique, Ms.27766-in the light of this investigation. The article aims to open up a conversation regarding the status of convent polyphony in the early 16th century, shedding new light on its importance and advocating a fresh approach to the possibility of female performance for the Franco-Flemish repertory of the great papal and ducal chapels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Renaissance music, it is generally understood that in particular contexts, certain notes that are written diatonically are to be performed chromatically, i.e. a semitone higher or lower than written. The rules that govern which notes should be chromatically altered in this manner are relatively well codified and enumerated by contemporary theorists. However, in actual music the application of one rule often results in the violation of another, often iteratively. Josquin's Basies moy provides a particularly difficult case study in this phenomenon. Basies moy was initially published in two versions--one in four voices, and another with two additional lower voices; chromatic alterations that work without problem in one version are often problematic in the other. Furthermore, because the piece is a canon, an alteration that is effective in one place may present problems when it is repeated in the imitating voice. This article attempts to elucidate some challenges that commonly arise when applying chromatic alterations to Renaissance music by studying the challenges in Basies moy in light of work by contemporary theorists, and by presenting possible solutions to these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme is the property of Iter Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A tradition for singing songs in the vernacular on Christmas Eve, whether as an integral part of the Officium pastorem or paraliturgical celebrations related to it, in Spanish churches, chapels and convents dates from at least the end of the 14th century, and possibly even earlier. Certainly, by the first decades of the 15th century such songs began to be written down, although it seems likely that these notated versions would not have been used in performances where the actor-musicians were often dressed or masked as shepherds or other persons present at the Nativity scene. Rather, it seems that the notating of the songs served at least two other purposes: as a record of an ecclesiastical institution's ceremonial practice and/or for the rehearsal and memorization of the songs to be performed on Christmas Eve. The recent discovery of four (incomplete) Christmas villancicos in two 16th-century leaves that originally formed part of a substantial volume of sacred songs in the vernacular is of particular interest as witness to the increased institutionalization of this repertory. The songs themselves also reflect the final stages in the transition from a semi-improvised tradition to a more formal act of creation that would, in the course of the 16th century, become one of the most regular and important duties of the chapel masters of Spanish cathedrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores scholarship on music during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Topics discussed include the cultural turn in music research, the impact of performers and the repertory on the study of music, and the impact of technological innovations on musicology. Other topics include online databases, editorial practices in critical editions of music, and the difference between improvisation and composition.

Song was frequently disciplined in the sixteenth-century Consistory of Geneva as part of the broad program of social Reform led by Calvin. Between 1542 and 1552, more than one hundred Cases involving illicit singing came before the Consistory court. These cases reveal the Consistory's persistent attempt to control the singing of all members of Genevan society regardless of social status or situation. They also offer a new field of evidence for exploring the boundaries between proper (honneste) and improper (deshonneste) singing in Reformed communities. The bulk of the cases sun-eyed from this period involved charges of illicit singing alongside other immoral behaviors, such as gambling and fornication. These cases direcdy linked indecent singing to other forbidden acts--a connection that worked out a neo-Platonic view of music in juridical process and provided the rationalization for the entire project of disciplining song in the courts. Concerns over improper song leading to illicit behavior and ultimately to social disorder were dramatically illustrated in a cluster of Consistory cases related to the famous Bolsec affair that exploded in Geneva near the end of the year 1551. Bolsec's contrafactum on the tune of Psalm 23 from the Geneva Psalter--1 written during Bolsec's lengthy stay in prison--spread his dissenting theology to his supporters and enacted the dangerous potential of song to disrupt the unity of the Reformed city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As arguably the most important long poem of the latter half of the twentieth century, Basil Bunting'sBriggflattshas invited no small number of critical considerations, investigations, and explications. It is, in fact, a poem whose very substance would seem to call out for some form of elucidation, despite – or perhaps in part because of – its author's staunch refusal to reveal much more about the structure and meaning of his magnum opus than that its composition was informed by some combination of Scarlatti's B minor fugato and the illuminations of the obscure Lindisfarne Gospels, and thatBriggflatts’ text, moreover, could best and only properly be understood for its ‘music’. Just what Bunting's ‘music' was, and exactly how that music should be heard, has remained something of a mystery. A close consideration of Bunting's strong ties to sixteenth-century music and poetics, however, reveals a prosodic agenda both whose substance and whose yield in Bunting's practice uncannily resemble those of the Tudor court poet John Skelton and his highly idiosyncratic prosodic approach, now known eponymously as Skeltonics. Although Bunting was demonstrably familiar with Skelton's work, the extent to which his engagement with the Skeltonic tradition inBriggflattswas totally self-conscious remains unclear. What is beyond doubt, however, is that Bunting's abandonment of Puttenhamian verse in favour of tight textual ‘condensations' of rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration enabled him to achieveBriggflatts– arguably the very greatest of Skeltonic works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dictum is an interesting form of religious cantata, developed in Transylvania and deriving from 15th and 16th-century Passion music in the German tradition of the Lutheran Church. Its most interesting feature is that it also involves the congregation members through inserted chorales sung by them. An impressive collection of dicta has been preserved in the archive of the Lutheran Church A.C.; however, this music genre was not spread in all Transylvanian areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article includes summaries of the contributions made by renowned music scholars through the medium of literature such as Maria Teresa Afrini, Silvia Lazo, Stephen A. Bergquist and Simon Wyatt. The historical significances of the changes in musical art, literature and instruments from 16th century Europe are mentioned in detail focusing on Germany, Paris and Italy.

The article examines an early modern book on the history of music, "Elegia de praecipvis artificibvs et laude mvsices," by Valentin Neander. In particular, the author focuses on Neander's description and assessment of the contribution of composers Josquin Desprez, Orlando di Lasso, and Clemens non Papa to Renaissance music. He discusses various aspects of Neander's critique, including musical texture, musical genres, and the relationship of the three composers' music to the trivium of medieval education.

John Dowland’s music, instrumental and vocal, has a ‘graphic’ quality that goes deep into the alert listener’s mind. This article explores the 16th-century love of creating emblems from aspects of human experience and awareness—passions, pleasures, subjects that contain a ‘teaching’, moral philosophy—all explored in graphic symbolism and in verbal form, both poetry and prosody, and always epigrammatically. When this lively tradition is applied to Dowland’s works it seems that the ‘emblematic’ way of relating to musical phrases is a conscious aspect of his composing; this in turn opens a new awareness of how to perform the repertory, thereby benefitting a modern audience not schooled in the emblem tradition. Much remains to be explored, but a new and valuable view on late 16th-century music and lyrics is established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his brilliant studies and accurate editions Anthony Newcomb has shown Alfonso Fontanelli's contributions to the definition of "the new Ferrarese style of the 1590s" and, therefore, to the birth of the seconda pratica. My article focuses on a specific aspect of Fontanelli's polyphonic writing: the handling of cadences for not only syntactical and tonally structural but also expressive purposes. The literary-musical analyses of some of the most representative settings published in Fontanelli's two books of madrigals (1595 and 1604)--including masterpieces such as "Tu miri, o vago ed amoroso fiore" (Anonymous), "Io piango, ed ella il volto" (Petrarca), "Lasso, non odo più Filii mia cara" (Anonymous), and "Dovrò dunque morire" (Rinuccini)--shows, above all, the unusually wide range of Fontanelli's cadential palette. He used not only traditional models (such as the perfect, authentic, Phrygian, and half cadences) but also a great variety of alternative solutions (including what Newcomb has named "evaporated" and "oblique" cadences) that are often so experimental and bold as to escape rigid classification. In the context of a basically chromatic, dissonant, harmonically restless, and tonally unfocused polyphonic flow such cadential variety seems to reflect Fontanelli's intention not only to underscore the conceptual and emotional meanings represented in the verbal text but also to sharpen their large-scale affective contrasts. In these and other experimental traits of his "cadential style" Fontaneiii further developed (possibly through the mediation of Jacques de Wert, and also under the influence of composers such as Luzzaschi and Gesualdo) those basic compositional techniques and exegetic principles that Cipriano de Rore, the real father of the seconda pratica, had already established in his later madrigals, and that Vincenzo Galilei, in turn, had neatly codified in his treatise on counterpoint (ca. 1588-1591). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first glance Leonard Meldert's Primo libro a cinque (1578) seems to represent a synthesis of the composer's activity at the court of Guidubaldo II Delia Rovere, Duke of Urbino--where the composer arrived in 1573--and his private service, beginning late in 1574, to the duke's brother, Cardinal Giulio Delia Rovere, to whom his madrigal collection is dedicated. But a deeper investigation of the book's structure and content reveals that it tells another story. Almost all of the pieces were composed either in Pesaro for Guidubaldo--or, rather, for Guidubaldo' beloved daughter-in-law Lucrezia d'Este from Ferrara--or in Fossombrone or Urbino for Cardinal Giulio, and the selection of texts appears consistent with the literary tastes of the Urbino court (where the young Tasso, too, lived for a while and staged, for the first and only time, his pastoral comedy Aminta). But the inner structure of the book appears, surprisingly, to be modeled according to a sort of autobiographical plan. The twenty madrigals are clearly divided, by modal as well as literary strategies, into three sections: the outer ones, in cantus durus, set conventional happy love scenes to music; the central one, in cantus mollis, presents an incredible series of texts expressing deep suffering due to a bad situation (the composer forced to silence, an angry "signore" ignoring the composer's words, etc.). The importance given to the affect of suffering is partly explained by Meldert's dedication letter, in which he says that Guidubaldo's death in September 1574 left him without "speranza di protezione" (without any hope of protection) and that some time elapsed before he was able to recover thanks to the patronage of Cardinal Giulio. Thus the three parts of the book may respectively refer to a) an initial happy period with Guidubaldo, b) a second period of uncertainty under the new duke Francesco Maria II (who dismissed his father's musical chapel along with many of his former servants), and c) a third newly felicitous period in the cardinal's service. Moreover, a philological study of the texts chosen by Meldert reveals that during the troubled and painful period he was probably trying to establish connections with other musical circles (in particular that of Antonio Londonio in Milan) in an attempt to redirect his life and career. Taking this data as my starting point, in this paper I will reconsider the common view of the relations between a madrigal book and its patron/dedicatee as well as the new idea of "authoriality" (i.e., authorial presence) that is reflected in a musical publication of the second half of the sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article appraises Francisco Salinas's rhythmic theory from Book 5 of his 1577 treatise De Musica Libri Septem. First, Salinas's rhythmics are iglaced in historical context as part of the sixteenth-century humanistic renewal of interest in classical metrics. On the one hand, this theory belongs to a long tradition dating back to St. Augustine and beyond. On the other hand, Salinas presents several innovations for sixteenth-century rhythmic theory that have previously been overlooked. Salinas's justifications for writing on rhythmics are examined, and then the internal workings of his theory are scrutinized. Topics covered by Salinas include the mora, syllable quantity, arsis and thesis, poetic feet and rhythmus, and these are evaluated in turn. The final section discusses Salinas's use of musical examples and suggests some modifications to his theory that would be needed to analyze sixteenth- century music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the music collected in the 16th-century Italian madrigal anthology "L'amorosa Ero," by the Brescian Count Marc'Antonio Martinengo di Villachiara. An historical overview of the volume's context is given including details of the musical culture of Italy at the time and the author's life as a music patron. A comparison is then given between the several composers featured in the anthology, including Alfonso Ferabosco, Claudio Merulo, and Antonio Morsolino.

An essay is presented examining the musical setting of poems by the 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, particularly his works seen in the anthology "Rime." Introductory comments are given noting scholastic focus on Tasso's more serious poems. It is then asserted that Tasso also produced several lighter poems which were also set as canzonetta madrigals, suggesting the poet's contributions to the repertoire were greater than previously credited.

Copyright of Musicology of Lithuania / Lietuvos muzikologija is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Music & Theatre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Two newly discovered manuscripts in the Biblioteca Estense provide an insight into convent culture in late sixteenth-century Italy. They are the work of Annalena Aldobrandini, a nun at the convent of Santo Spirito in Florence. Annalena's manuscript contains eight veglie intended for performance during Carnevale and the Calendimaggio. Striking detail is preserved in the instructions for instruments, music, staging and costumes. Subject matter ranges from intellectual debates about the sciences and the arts to an appreciation of religious commitment and the difficulties of maintaining moral rectitude as part of monastic life. There is a wealth of practical information regarding music in a little-known dramatic context as well as a unique exposition of the Divine Office as a musical, as well as a religious, experience. The veglie are testament to the creativity of the nuns, showing how they, like the Medici outside, used spectacle as a method of community bonding. Moreover, because they were transmitted in manuscript rather than in print, they are unmediated by any masculine agency. The importance of this manuscript to our better understanding of early modern monastic women, their attitudes to enclosure, education and the performing arts, and their interactions with the secular world cannot be overestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Elizabethan Reformation of 1559 marked not only a religious, but also a socio-cultural watershed, yielding processes of transformation and redefinition of existing tropes and symbols, as reflected in a variety of aesthetic expressions engendered in England during the last third of the sixteenth century. English keyboard music, hitherto largely composed for the organ and conceived in terms of the Catholic rite, now lost its liturgical function and composers, notably William Byrd, organist of the Chapel Royal and England's foremost musician, began exploring new compositional avenues of non-ecclesiastical keyboard music. The first known collection of the new repertoire is My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591), an ornately designed manuscript of Byrd's secular keyboard music dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Neville. Exploring the volume both as a musical text and as an artefact in the context of post-Reformation English culture, this article seeks to explicate the aesthetic and communicatory value of Byrd's keyboard idiom in the specific material form in which it was dedicated to a patroness, demonstrating how the novelty and sophistication of his keyboard compositions were embedded in Renaissance intellectual traditions that shaped similarly innovative and genuinely English creative achievements in literature, visual art and indeed music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1597 John Dowland made his self-authorised print debut with The First Booke of Songes or Ayres. Many of the songs in the collection were, as Dowland indicates, 'ripe inough by their age', having 'already grac't' the two universities. The songs, and their poetic texts independent of musical setting, had had various pre-print histories and would have invited specific contextually situated interpretations. Gathered together, set and ordered by Dowland in his printed collection the songs might attract alternative, though perhaps complimentary, readings informed by their new configuration and materiality. This article seeks to explore the ways in which the inclusion and positioning of these songs in a printed book might have impinged on the ways in which they were read and understood by contemporaneous readers, singers and listeners. The songs will be considered, firstly, through their framing by the prefatory pages of the book, and the various agendas these pages express - not least, that of the named author - and, secondly, from the perspective of their ordering and the overarching narrative it implies, the musical and textual interrelationships they evoke and their musical, poetic and political references to the world outside the pages of the book that might have also have informed interpretations of the songs as part of a printed collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we bring together historical research and the experience of performance to untangle problems regarding text underlay in the period around 1500. Although much has been written on the subject of underlay, the principal criterion we use for making decisions has not been discussed. We rely on internal musical evidence, principally motivic repetition. Our case study is Pierre de la Rue’s Salve Regina II, performed by Peter Schubert’s choir VivaVoce on their 2007 Naxos recording. We discuss how particular decisions about text underlay were taken, and their consequences. The new imitative style that developed in the late 15th century is characterized by an emphasis on obvious, literal repetition of musical material. Many pieces with relatively little text for extended sections of music feature extensive repetition of musical motifs after the opening of the point of imitation. In later sources we would expect to find these motifs texted. Based on comparison of sources and a study of developments in musical style, we propose that around 1500 singers were already repeating words and phrases of text in order to bring out the repetition of musical motifs--that, seeing musical repetition, they improvised an appropriate underlay ‘on the fly’. Our approach to text underlay reveals the connection between imitative style c.1500 and the expanded points of imitation with multiple entries of the soggetto typical of mid- and late 16th-century music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista, now credited to Jacob Obrecht, was long considered to be an anonymous Mass for the early 16th-century papal chapel, owing to its lack of attribution and its survival in only one Vatican source (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Cappella Sistina 160). As is well known, this Mass takes Busnoys’s Missa L’homme armé as its model, lifting many structural elements of the pre-existent work, though significantly replacing the cantus firmus with eight antiphons from the nativity feast of John the Baptist. While these antiphons heavily project the name ‘John’ in key structural moments across the work, no patron or dedicatee named John has been definitively connected with this Mass. For all of the attention focusing on the origins of Obrecht’s Mass, little has been said about its reception history, specifically in the context of another ‘John’—Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici). This important recipient of the only source of the Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista was considered a kind of precursor himself. Further, the preservation of two peculiar elements from Busnoys’s model—the descent of the cantus firmus to the bassus in the Agnus Dei and the durational ground plan—subtly reflect the figure of John the Baptist in the design of the Mass. These musical parameters combine to place a distinctly ‘Johannine’ stamp on the L’homme armé template. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It 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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an examination of two Renaissance motets composed near the year 1500, illustrating their structural forms. The pieces "Inviolata integra et casta es Maria," and "Alma redemptoris mater," by Heinrich Isaac are presented and contrasted with each other, focusing on their differing use of the cantus firmus as the primary compositional feature.

This article draws on a wide range of literary and archival sources in order to explore the cultural resonances of drumming in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. It concentrates not on instrument design and playing techniques but on the varied meanings that contemporaries attached to the ubiquitous sound of the drum. The discussion begins and ends with the unmistakable military associations of drumming. In between, consideration is also given to a range of interconnected but sometimes contradictory resonances that appear to have endowed drums with considerable cultural significance. Drums spoke, for example, of authority and they worked hard to impose order in urban streets. They also played their part in the contemporary culture of punishment, and many miscreants were subjected to the humiliation of public percussion. Beyond this, drums were particularly potent in their ability to express masculinity, and female drummers were rare and remarkable. The primal potency of the instrument also rendered it valuable to the insubordinate, and rioters — like soldiers — were regularly called together ‘by the drum’. Lastly, the sound of the drum was sometimes intensely festive and could also be used to publicize special events such as dramatic performances and the display of curiosities. The repercussions of drumming were thus varied, and confusion sometimes resulted when the different possibilities became entangled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines where sound is established as an independent element in the music of Palestrina. The central term is »Klangraum«, which is defined as the sum of all factors influencing the sound. Several examples show how the succession of voices, the compactness of voices, the homophonic or polyphonic texture, the choice of mode and disposition of voices influence the sound. Finally, the article discusses as an example how in the motet "Dies sanctificatus" sound aspects influence the structure of the composition and how, on the other hand, formal aspects are underlined by sound phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the influence of the musical works by the late Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina on the 19th-century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Details are given discussing ways in which Liszt encountered and was influenced by Palestrina, including his personal collections of the composer's work, direct influences and quotations of Palestrina within Liszt's compositions, and contributions which Liszt made to the scholastic reception and analysis of Palestrina's works in the 19th-century.

One of the earliest melodico-harmonic themes for variation appears in Spain in 1538 under the title 'Conde Claros.' Wildly popular, it inspired variation sets by at least six composers in three countries during the sixteenth century. At the same time, 'Conde Claros' was the subject matter of numerous popular ballads. These vocal and instrumental works are related by head motives that served as a point of departure for improvisations; together, they demonstrate how a formulaic ballad could evolve into a melodico-harmonic theme for instrumental variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a musical analysis of the Renaissance motet "Virgo prudentissima," a 1520 six-voice sacred choral work by the Franco-Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac. Details are given describing the history of the work, its distinct musical features, and its printing in the choirbook "Liber selectarum cantionum quas vulgo mutetas appelant."