Charpentier 

“Charpentier’s Motets melêz de symphonie: A Nephew’s Offering”

Shirley Thompson, Birmingham Conservatoire, UK

With the exception of Médée and a few miscellaneous pieces, little of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's music was published either during his lifetime or in the subsequent generation. One publishing venture that might have enhanced the composer's posthumous reputation was an engraved volume of twelve petits motets which appeared in 1709 under the title Motets melêz de symphonie, composez par Monsieur Charpentier. This was published by the composer's nephew and beneficiary Jacques Édouard, a Parisian bookseller and printer.  It appears, however, that the motet collection was not a great success. Although Édouard clearly intended to publish further volumes, these never followed and he subsequently sold his uncle's manuscripts to the Royal Library in 1727.

This paper will examine tantalizing clues which shed light on how Motets melêz de symphonie was prepared from the composer's originals.  It will demonstrate how red crayon markings in the autographs relate more directly to the engraving process than has previously been realized.  It will reveal that in the course of preparation for publication, pages must have been removed from the composer's autograph manuscripts and only restored to their original position some time later.  The paper will conclude with a discussion of internal clues in Motets melêz de symphonie which help explain the volume's apparent limited success.

“‘Even Good Homer Nods’: Charpentier’s Copy of Beretta’s
16-Part Missa Mirabiles elationes maris”

Graham Sadler, University of Hull, UK

Marc-Antoine Charpentier's voluminous legacy of autograph manuscripts includes an annotated full score of the Missa Mirabiles elationes maris by Francesco Beretta, followed by a three-page critique: "Remarques sur les Messes à 16 parties d'Italie" (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Vm1 260). For many years it was assumed that Charpentier copied out this four-choir Mass as a learning experience before composing his own Messe à quatre chœurs, H.4. More recently Jean-Charles Léon has noted fundamental differences in the compositional techniques of the two works, undermining the notion that Beretta's Mass was a model for Charpentier's. This conclusion is supported by Patricia Ranum's study of Charpentier's music paper, where the Beretta score is shown to postdate H.4 by perhaps as much as ten years.

Against the background of such research, the present paper will take a fresh look at Rés. Vm1 260, exploring the implications of Charpentier's copying process and presenting evidence that the score was prepared with the possibility of performance in mind. (But where?) It will situate the copying of the Beretta within the context of Charpentier's absorption of Italian influence, now known to have continued long after the composer's youthful apprenticeship in Rome. Finally, the "Remarques sur les Messes à 16 parties d'Italie", which have hitherto excited remarkably little comment, will be analysed in detail and related to annotations in the score - a study which in turn illuminates aspects of Charpentier's own technique and psychology.            

Music and the Sacred across Europe 

"Serenading the Addolorata: Music in Confraternal Devotions at
Santa Maria dei Servi in Milan”

Christine Getz, University of Iowa

Post-Tridentine reforms enacted in the city of Milan at the close of the sixteenth century served only to strengthen an already firmly ensconced devotion to the Virgin.  In 1594, in fact, Milanese historian Paolo Morigia observed that Milan boasted as many as forty-two distinct Marian cults within the city walls alone.  Although the subject of Morigia’s text, the Madonna of Miracles at Santa Maria presso San Celso, was the most prominent of these at the time his essay was penned, it was to encounter serious competition within the year from the Servites and the Dominicans.  On 16 April 1594 the Servites erected a Confraternity of the Addolorata in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, and soon thereafter the confraternity began holding formal services that featured polyphony. 

The archival evidence indicates that the services frequented by the confraternity included Vespers and a procession of the Madonna on the fourth Sunday of the month, Saturday Vespers, and special services, perhaps also at Vespers, on most of the standard Marian feasts and on selected feasts honoring the saints.  The evidence further suggests not only that the disposition of the altars and the decoration of the church reflected the festal calendar, but also that the small sacred concerto played an important role in forwarding the spiritual program of the confraternity from the very outset. 

The musical document most closely associated with the confraternity during the first quarter of the seventeenth century is Giovanni Battista Ala’s Secondo libro de’ concerti ecclesiastici (1621).  It contains eighteen settings of psalms, Antiphons, and votive texts, all of which were integral to the Vespers services sponsored by the confraternity. Two motets that specifically address the Addolorata are of particular interest, for they not only were sung on the fourth Sunday of the month, but also reflect the maternal themes underscored by the decoration of the church.  Although little information on the singers of Ala’s tenure is extant, an examination of the two concerti for the Addolorata in light of the surviving evidence suggests that performance of them may have featured instruments in lieu of certain voices.

“‘A Famous Man of Famous Successors’ and Lobet den Herrn : Johann Pachelbel at St. Sebald in Nuremberg”

Kathryn Welter, Wayland, MA

With the 300th anniversary of Johann Pachelbel’s death (b. Sept. 1653, d. 9 March 1706) looming on the horizon, it is an appropriate time to revisit his role as one of the most influential pre-Bach musicians in Germany.  His work as composer, organist, and teacher is well-documented, and recent scholarship in the forms of a thematic catalogue and two new complete works editions allow us to delve more deeply into the myriad issues presented by Pachelbel’s rich and varied repertoire. 

By 1696, Johann Pachelbel was well known in Germany and had filled both civil and church positions in the cities of Vienna, Eisenach, Erfurt, Stuttgart, and Gotha, and was just beginning a position as organist in Nuremberg at St. Sebald church following the death of Georg Caspar Wecker.  On the occasion of Pachelbel’s assumption to the St. Sebald post, Conrad Feuerlein preached an Orgelpredigt (organ sermon), which had previously been presented five years earlier at the dedication of St. Sebald’s new organ, in 1691.  The 1696 version of the sermon is rededicated to “a famous man of famous successors,” Johann Pachelbel, and takes as its subject the 150th Psalm, Lobet den Herrn.
 
This paper examines the occasion in light of its significance for Pachelbel’s career and oevre and proposes the inclusion of Pachelbel’s sacred concerto, Lobet den Herrn in seinem Heiligtum (Psalm 150), on this occasion.  Previous scholarship by Henry Woodward and Jean Perreault has suggested that the work may have been composed either for this occasion or for the original organ dedication at St. Sebald.  The discussion takes into account the appropriateness of this work to the occasion in terms of composition, content, venue, and musical forces, and includes a discussion of the provenance of this work, which exists in a unica source from the Tenbury collection in England.  The conclusion suggests that if not composed expressly for this occasion, the work was certainly a part of this celebration of Johann Pachelbel and, in Feuerlein’s words, his “astonishing work.”    

"The Psalms of David and Women’s Musical Culture in Seventeenth-Century England”

Linda Austern, Northwestern University

Englishwomen received a mixed message about music during most of the seventeenth century.  On the basis of longstanding sacred and secular authority, conduct writers, moral philosophers, and preachers condemned the public performance of music by women as a dangerous inflamer of the passions.  Many, especially radical Protestant writers, even found fault with the private performance of certain genres and styles of music, believing them threats to the tender moral faculties of young virgins and chaste wives.  However, on the basis of Biblical authority and continuing interpretations of the Church Fathers in an era of religious controversy, women of all social classes were encouraged to exercise appropriate musical skills with the psalms of David. 

New and pre-existing settings of the psalms, sometimes accompanying original translations, offered a rare opportunity for vocal and instrumental performance, personal expression of religious devotion, and a practical means to cure a multitude of spiritual disorders.   However, largely because women’s psalm performance was consigned to private spaces, it went unremarked by commentators on the major musical and theological issues of the era, and has thus remained largely beyond the purview of modern scholarship.  It has long been assumed that women’s participation in this beneficial music was limited to congregational singing from the official Anglican psalters in the company of men and children.  Recently-recovered contemplative works by such musically-competent women writers as Mary Sidney Herbert and Aemilia Lanyer, coupled with extant diaries, portraits, memoirs, and music manuscripts known to have belonged to women, begin to suggest a more complicated situation.  Protestant women’s private devotional culture, which has been the subject of recent scholarship in literary, historical, and religious studies, can now be shown to have had a significant musical component which offers new insight into the social and musical practices and networks of English women from the first two thirds of the seventeenth century.  As this paper will demonstrate, the private devotional frame around women’s psalm performance permitted the subversion of many rules governing women’s music, including those about appropriate styles of performance and about composition. 

“A Newly Discovered French Baroque Mass by Jean Gilles (1668-1705): Reconsidering the Concerted Mass in France c. 1700"

John Hajdu Heyer, University of Wisconsin/Whitewater

Mass settings in France during the grand siècle were relatively rare, and concerted mass settings were even more so.  Our students learn that, of the French Baroque masters, Charpentier alone created concerted masses worthy of consideration.  Anthony supported this view in French Baroque Music in his chapter titled, "Mass and Oratorio: The Domain of Marc-Antoine Charpentier."  Cessac affirms Anthony's portrayal more explicitly in her book Charpentier, where she asserts, "Charpentier was, in fact, the only composer who dared approach the mass using the same musical language that other French composers reserved exclusively for the motet."

The concerted mass style most certainly took hold slowly in the Ile-de-France, and Cessac's assessment rings true when considering masses there.  But an examination elsewhere in France produces a different picture. From the time of Guillaume Bouzignac (c. 1587-after 1642) composers in southern France displayed greater interest than their northern counterparts in applying progressive tendencies to mass composition.  Surviving inventories from cathedrals in southern France list more than fifty messes en symphonie as having existed, although most are now lost.

Music, Dance, and Art in Italy 

"'They Dance Well For Whom Good Fortune Plays’: Dance Etchings by
G. M. Mitelli (1634-1718)”

Barbara Sparti, Rome

The prolific and popular artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli lived in Bologna, the most important Papal city after Rome.  He was an independent artist, a buon viveur, and a devoted counter-Reformation Catholic.  His etchings were a political and social commentary, often satirical, moralistic, allegorical.  They were all an explicit mixture of reality and fantasy.  Given the etchings' universal appeal, Mitelli's variety of symbolism was probably easily legible by his contemporaries--from artisan to elite. 

Fourteen etchings feature or include dancing.  They have a certain credibility because, first, there is no question here that dancing is taking place since Mitelli always depicts dance in motion, and not statically, as in most images from previous centuries where the elite, to distinguish themselves from "vulgar rustics", tended to be portrayed impassively contained. 

Mitelli shows us solo dancers--men and women--effortlessly soaring in the air, with arm and leg positions confirming a 16th-century Italian style, rather than the new "danse noble" imported from France.  Dress, instead, is a mix of Italian and French fashions, of 16th- and 17th-century styles, of realistic urban wear and theatrical-allegorical costumes.  

Five etchings show a couple dancing, and despite the references to vice, depravity, seduction, falsity, the dancing itself is decorous, and only while Death peers in, shows a certain abandon.  Mitelli seems to be saying, if you dance to the wrong kind of music, on the wrong occasion, and for the wrong reasons, you will end up badly.  Mitelli's Tarot cards include a dancing fool-conjurer ("bagatto") playing a drum.  Other accompanying instruments in the dance etchings are lutes, violins, guitars, cornettos, a harpsichord, and a double bass.  More than accurate replicas or correct playing positions, they suggest different social contexts for the dance scenes.

Though Mitelli uses dance as an emblem, he gives us convincing insights into different types of dancing performed by different kinds of people in late 17th-century Bologna, in particular by the urban middle class: the images are a rare source for a little-known period and social group and hence of extraordinary importance to dance historians.  Furthermore, Mitelli's depictions, besides their suggestion of improvisation, feature that characteristic of dance, almost entirely absent from "noble dance" images and here given prominence, the joy of dancing.

“Artists and Musicians in Early Baroque Rome:  Contacts and Commissions”

Noel O’Regan, University of Edinburgh, UK

Artists and musicians had various points of contact in early baroque Rome, through patrons and institutions such as confraternities in which they were members. The archives of the Accademia di S. Luca (for painters and sculptors) reveal annual commissions to musicians (including Palestrina) for the patronal feast on October 18th. On one occasion, the papal singer Francesco Severi was paid, not in money, but by the gift of a painting. Another papal singer, Orazio Griffi, seems to have commissioned a painting of St. Francis of Assissi from Orazio Gentileschi, probably for the oratory of S. Gerolamo della Carità. Andrea Sacchi’s portrait of the papal singer Marcantonio Pasqualini is well known. This paper will explore links between artists and musicians in early 17th century Rome and seek to draw parallels between their experiences, particularly in corporate activities.

Lecture Recital

“‘E dir a l’empia fera’: An ‘Echo of Whispers’ and the Poetics of the Affetti Cantabili”

Massimiliano Guido, University of Pavia

Frescobaldi’s two Books of Toccatas (1615 – 1627) are considered a pivotal moment for keyboard music. The Renaissance form of the Venetian toccata imploded, achieving great freedom in structure and motivic treatment. Frescobaldi himself describes this style according to the “new manner of playing with affetti cantabili,” which provides both the theoretical frame and a concrete reference to the Seconda prattica. Some previous scholarly works attempted to provide a better insight into this complex phenomenon, following Frescobaldi’s allusions to the importance of madrigali moderni, and delineating a close relationship between vocal and instrumental music. This research considers as a central element the intabulation of Ancidetemi pur by Arcadelt, which takes the place of the twelfth toccata (Second Book). Its presence raises important questions and deals directly with the definition of affetti cantabili. It will be explained why Frescobaldi broke down the golden number of twelve for the sake of this piece, which was clearly not a modern madrigal, nor in any way related to the contemporary manner of rendering poems in music.

The point of departure is Arcadelt’s madrigal, scrutinized in search of structural elements and pathetic devices. The compositional tool of diminution, according to contemporary praxis, is used to analyze the transfer to the keyboard. It is possible to discover an adjustment of both music material and poetic text to the new style by synoptically reading Frescobaldi’s setting and the intabulations by Mayone, Trabaci, and Strozzi.

One of the substantial findings is the definition of three different functions of diminutions in Frescobaldi. The discussion of structural division, cadential patterns, and diminutions sheds new light on Frescobaldi’s compositional process, delineating a precise need for expression and demonstrating a continuing elaboration of a new musical idiom. The poetic lines influenced the composer directly: the music carries out all the affects portrayed by the text, according to the rules of seconda prattica, through complex musical techniques rather than an abstract theory. This implies a semantic paradox: the text is no longer there, and the principles of the nuovi madrigali are pushed into a realm where they could not have been enunciated.            

"Li due Orfei…" 

"New Light on the History of L’Orfeo (Francesco Buti/Luigi Rossi)”

Michael Klaper, University of Erlangen

The historical significance of Francesco Buti and Luigi Rossi’s “tragicomedia per musica” L’Orfeo, first performed 2 March 1647 in Paris, lies in its dual distinction as both the first opera written especially for the Parisian court and the first real opera performed in France before a large audience. Since the publication of Henry Prunière‘s masterful study L’opéra italien en France avant Lulli in 1913, the history of L’Orfeo was thought to be quite clear: Performed three times before Lent – with delay arising from problems with Giacomo Torelli’s complicated machinery – L’Orfeo went on to receive under more favorable circumstances five more performances after Easter. Thus, aside from the severe criticisms launched by Mazarin‘s enemies in the context of the fronde, the genesis and reception of L’Orfeo seem to have been rather uncomplicated.

The aim of the paper is to show that the history of the work is far more complicated than has generally been assumed. This argument is based partly on new archival findings. The Vatican library possesses a corpus of letters written by Buti to Cardinal Antonio Barberini, and many of these stem from the time of the creation and first performances of L’Orfeo. These hitherto neglected materials offer new insights not only into the career of a diplomat and librettist who was forced to mediate between two different patrons (Antonio Barberini and Mazarin), but also into the circumstances surrounding the opera’s creation. Based on Buti‘s letters, I will argue that the opera was created in a rather short span of time. Finally, a thorough comparison of the most important primary sources (a manuscript copy of the libretto, a manuscript copy of the score, a printed scenario, and two contemporaneous reports of the first performances) strongly suggests that the opera was revised at some point in its history. Though the date of this revision cannot as yet be determined, its implications for the reception history of the Italian opera in France cannot be overestimated.

“The Rhetoric of Heroism. Voice and Genre in Monteverdi’s Orfeo”

Ståle Wikshåland, University of Oslo

The singing style of Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo, especially that of its main protagonist, is characterized by a new rhetoric, compared to the standards of the already established new genre of musical drama, the so called pastoral, or tragicommedia. The goal of this presentation is to show how Orfeo's singing, voicing a new expressivity on stage, enacts rather than recites the plot in question. Hereby, Orfeo transgresses, or at least expands the rhetorical repertoire of stile recitativo in Peri and Caccini, Monteverdi's forerunners and competitors in the new dramatic genre.

Moreover, it will be a point to demonstrate how Monteverdi utilises the exposure of a new rhetoric as a principle for constructing his musical drama. Using the standard setting for the pastoral, the community of shepherds with Orfeo himself as primus inter pares as point of departure, the plot develops through the first three acts as Orfeo step by step stands forth from the pastoral collective. The character of Orfeo is constructed through the proceeding difference from nymphs and shepherds, i. e. in the actively construction of difference from the pastoral genre. And in the very moment his character is put on display, the connections to the pastoral idyll are forcefully cut by La Messagiera's news of the death of Eurydice, in a way that blocks his return to the pastoral setting. He is literally left alone on the stage as an individual, forced into his heroic deed through the experience of suffering, no longer embedded in the pastoral community, and with a style of singing unheard of in any pastoral manner. This transgression of the dolce maniera of the tragicommedia, displays the construction of a new heroic character on stage, a new kind of subjectivity, with potential of acting as an operatic hero defined by a new way of singing, of a new musico-dramatic rhetoric. This measuring up of the distance to the established genre of the pastoral in the very performance of the new musical drama, defines a new genre and a new dramaturgy which came to earn the work in question the status of the first opera proper, an ambition which it states anew, every time the opera is performed.

Biography and Patronage 

“Francesco Corbetta: Musician, Magician...Spy?”

Claire Fontijn, Wellesley College

Francesco Corbetta (c. 1615-1681) enjoyed an international career as one of the earliest guitar virtuosos. Born in Pavia, he was named academician of the Erranti of Brescia in 1643, a distinction that he publicized in his op. 2, Varii Capricii per la Ghittara Spagnuola. His dedication of the volume to the Duke of Mantua signals the patronage that he enjoyed there. Unpublished letters preserved at the Mantuan Archivio di Stato reveal that his service to the Gonzaga extended to close to a decade; by the early 1650s Corbetta had moved on, having received accolades as a musician in Venice and France well before his first documented Parisian performance in Lully's ballet La galanterie du temps (1656). In addition to these tours, we also find him active in Germany (in the service of Georg Wilhelm of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1624-1705)), the Netherlands (in Breda, in the circle of Constantijn Huyghens) and, especially, in England, where he worked as a musician who enchanted the court of Charles II. In this biographical paper, I examine Corbetta's function as the "magician" who sparked a veritable vogue in guitar playing at court through his captivating dance suites and mesmerizing ground bass patterns. Even more intriguingly, I explore the possibility that he worked as a spy whose musical profession allowed him to travel easily from country to country. In addition to archival materials, the paper draws on various publications: memoirs; Corbetta's 1671 La Guitarre Royale; and political commentary assembled in Hamburg immediately following the composer's death.

“Female Patronage in Seventeenth-Century Rome: The Case for Maria Mancini”

Valeria de Lucca, Princeton University

My paper constitutes the first investigation of Maria Mancini's activity as a patron of music and theatrical entertainments between 1661 - the year of her arrival to Rome from Paris to marry Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna - and 1672 - when she left both Rome and her husband. During that time Mancini revitalized Roman cultural life, uniting her Parisian taste for entertainments with her great passion for Venetian opera. From exotic masquerades to eccentric carri and lively salons open to artists and politicians, Mancini - whether as patron or as performer - was always the protagonist of Roman chronicles. She organized serenades and balli in Rome, was the dedicatee of numerous operas in Venice and Milan between 1664 and 1667, and in 1672 she personally sponsored a performance of Cesti's Il Tito for the newly-opened Teatro Tordinona. Mancini became the principal supporter of some of the most famous singers and musicians of those years, who found in her a knowledgeable and attentive friend and patron.

Although numerous studies have examined Maria Mancini Colonna and her adventurous life, her role as patron has only received scant consideration. Based on an array of primary sources made available here for the first time, including Mancini's autobiographies, letters, avvisi di Roma, and archival records found in the Colonna Archive, my paper provides new insights not only into musical life in mid-seventeenth century Rome but also into the dynamics of female patronage of the arts. The case of Maria Mancini stands out as a complex example of patronage in seventeenth-century music and culture. Her support of the arts, which seems to be motivated not by the desire to increase the power and prestige of the Colonna family but rather by her own passion for entertainments, becomes a means to negotiate her freedom from her husband and the strictures of Roman society. Furthermore, her relationship with the artists she supported was based on more than mere financial terms, again revealing her deep involvement in music and the arts. A consideration of Mancini's patronage invites us to reassess our notion of patronage primarily as an act of material compensation offered to artists in exchange for their production.

Lecture Recital

"À jouer ou à chanter: Evidence for Adapting Seventeenth-Century Vocal Airs to Woodwinds”

Debra Nagy, Case Western Reserve University

Published in the first decade of the eighteenth century, Christophe Ballard's three volumes of brunettes codified a repertory of well-known airs that had long been in circulation and whose origins have been traced back as far as the late sixteenth century. Ballard updated and arranged these brunettes by adding bass lines to previously monophonic airs à danser, reharmonizing melodies, and altering rhythms. A variety of early eighteenth century publications adapt this same repertory to woodwinds in much the same manner as Ballard. In particular, woodwind arrangements such as Jacques-Martin Hotteterre's Airs et Brunettes (Paris: Boivin, c.1723) and Michel Pignolet de Montéclair's Recueil de Brunettes (Paris: Boivin, c. 1730) retained features common to seventeenth-century vocal performance practice, including underlaid text, idiosyncratic vocal beaming, recommendations for transposing to vocal ranges, and double ornamentation, which emphasize the correspondence between woodwind performance and vocal music. In my lecture recital, I will argue that these airs were staples in the musical diet of late seventeenth century wind players and that eighteenth-century publications of airs and brunettes for woodwinds merely formalize wind players' long-standing practice of adapting and arranging vocal music. I will discuss the ways in which treatises and musical sources by Hotteterre, Montéclair, Christophe Ballard, Bénigne de Bacilly and others advance vocal airs as a prime source of solo music for woodwinds as well as recommend options for their adaptation. My hypothesis raises several significant possibilities, two of which the paper addresses. First, it identifies vocal airs as a source of solo repertoire for woodwinds prior to 1700 (although the flute and oboe were developed in the 1660s and 1670s, Michel de la Barre's Premier livre de pièces (1702) was the first collection of solos designed specifically for woodwinds). Second, it corroborates the often cited yet enigmatic comments of Michel de la Barre, who, in his Mémoire sur les musettes et les hautbois (no date), drew connections between the composers of airs sérieux of the 1660s and 1670s and the inventors of the "new" woodwinds (the Hotteterres and Philidors).

Sources and Performance 

“‘Fowle Originalls’ and ‘Fayre Writeing’: Reconsidering Purcell’s Compositional Process”

Rebecca Herissone, University of Manchester, UK

Purcell’s surviving autographs have long been a source of fascination, and the extensive evidence they preserve of his working methods has been examined in several academic studies. However, methodology has generally focused on analyzing notational changes within the sources, and neither the appropriateness of the standard labels ‘working draft’ and ‘fair copy’, nor the broader relationship in this period between the creation of a composition and its encoding in notation, has been systematically assessed. This paper challenges current assumptions about Purcell’s compositional processes, arguing that, because the autographs were created for specific, often practical, purposes, not necessarily directly connected to the compositional process itself, it is misleading to interpret them divorced from their function and the cultural and social contexts in which they were produced. There are three main factors to consider: first, Shay and Thompson have established that the methods Purcell used to record his compositions changed as his employment conditions altered; second, Purcell maintained a clear separation between different genres of music in both his private and court scorebooks; and third, music was notated for at least five different purposes, the categories including performance materials, file copies, and what we might term ‘transmission’ copies, which, as Robert Ford has highlighted, were sent by the composer to provincial colleagues.

Analysis of the autographs surviving for two contrasting genres—liturgical sacred music, written for choir and organ alone, and court odes—serves to illustrate the ways in which this contextual perspective on the sources can transform our understanding of Purcell’s compositional methods.  Surviving ‘fowle originalls’—a contemporary term, usually (but inappropriately) translated as ‘working drafts’—demonstrate differences of approach between genres in the earliest notated stages, while comparisons between the two main court scorebooks and related non-autograph sources indicate contrasting attitudes to and techniques of revision. The manuscripts also suggest that more of Purcell’s compositional amendments may have been made without a specific performance context in mind than has previously been thought, an observation that draws into question modern assumptions about the ontological centrality of musical performance in this period.

Lecture Recital

“Crossing the Rhine with Froberger: The Significance of Recent Manuscript Discoveries"

David Schulenberg, Wagner College

Recently discovered manuscripts now in Dresden and Berlin represent the most important Froberger finds in over a century. Although both manuscripts were quickly published in modern editions, their significance in relation to one another and to other Froberger sources has yet to be fully assessed. At a minimum, they will necessitate the revision of an ongoing “complete” edition and catalog of his music.

Both manuscripts contain keyboard dances and laments; one also contains toccatas. The provenance of both manuscripts implies origins relatively close to Froberger, and they provide superior texts for movements previously known only from inaccurate peripheral sources. Many movements include descriptive rubrics significant for performance practice and for Froberger's biography.

Examination of the texts raises issues similar to those occurring in other seventeenth-century keyboard repertoires. Initial enthusiasm that the manuscripts provide previously unknown versions of music by Froberger must be tempered by the likelihood that many readings, including the triple-time version of Gigue 13, derive from copyists. Nevertheless, the manuscripts provide more coherent texts than those previously known for the famous laments, and some variants probably shed light on Froberger's compositional process; comparison of concordances shows that the Dresden manuscript almost certainly preserves some movements in versions prior to the composer's famous Vienna autographs.

The programmatic titles and rubrics provide further evidence that Froberger was interested in musical representation—frequently of an autobiographical nature—to a degree unique in seventeenth-century music. His contacts with northern European intellectuals, as well as Mattheson's apparent familiarity with the Berlin manuscript (or a related source), place these pieces within an aesthetic tradition extending from Descartes to eighteenth-century theories of musical meaning. This is clearest in the Berlin manuscript's rubrics for Allemande 27, in which minute musical symbols are purported to represent precise details in an eventful and dramatic ferry passage across the Rhine.

The talk will be complemented by separate performances of works from the two manuscripts: Suites 13, 16, and 27, and the laments for Blancrocher and Ferdinand III.

 Conference Coordinator: Gregory Johnston :: Site designed by Tim Neufeldt :: ©2005 :: Last updated 27.02.06