22 February 2013: International Study Day
“Esoteric vs. Exoteric: Aspects of Music Cultures in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”

With Iain Fenlon (Cambridge), Harald Hendrix (UU), Karl Kügle (UU), Katell Laveant (UU), Ruxandra Marinescu (UU), and Katelijne Schiltz (LMU Munich)
Time and Location: Utrecht University, Drift 21, Sweelinckzaal, 9.30 am to 5 pm.

All welcome. For registration (free of charge), please e-mail Matjaž Matošec (m.matosec@uu.nl).

For the programme, see below.




International Study Day
“Esoteric vs. Exoteric: Aspects of Music Cultures in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”
Sweelinckzaal, Drift 21, Utrecht, Friday, 22 February 2013

Programme

9.30-9.45 am: Morning Coffee

9.45-10 am: Greetings and Introductory Statement (Karl Kügle, Utrecht University)

10-11 am: "Noise in the City: Singing in the Square" (Iain Fenlon, Cambridge University)

11-11.30 am: Coffee break

11.30 am-12 noon: “Religion for the Simple Minds: Folengo, Aretino, and the Writing of the Life of Jesus” (Harald Hendrix, Utrecht University)

12 noon-12.30 pm: “Adrian Willaert and the Cult of Relics” (Katelijne Schiltz, LMU München and UU Visiting Fellow, Research Group Musicology)

12.30-2.30 pm: Lunch break

2.30-3 pm: “The Lure of the Arcane: Musical Complexity and Social Register in Early Quattrocento Italy and late medieval Bruges” (Karl Kügle, Utrecht University)

3-3.30 pm: “The Lai des Hellequines and the sotes chancons in F-Pn fr. 146” (Ruxandra Marinescu, Utrecht University)

3.30-4 pm: Coffee break

4-4.30 pm: “Sharing Protestant Ideas and Faith Through Song and Drama in the French-Speaking Low Countries (1530-1560)” (Katell Laveant, Utrecht University)

4.30-4.45 Quodlibet: Final discussion and roundtable

Organizer: Karl Kügle (Utrecht University)
Assistant: Matjaž Matošec (Utrecht University)

Financial support in the form of a small conference grant from the Royal Society for Music History of The Netherlands (KVNM, www.kvnm.nl) is herewith gratefully acknowledged.


ABSTRACTS

Iain Fenlon: My concern is with a largely vanished corpus of songs which is nevertheless of enormous importance if, as historians, we are to have anything like a complete picture of musical experience in early modern Italy. The approach adopted will have more to do with historical anthropology than with aesthetics, and will focus on the urban practices of one place, Venice. How can we have any idea of the music of calle and campo, the music which, after all, was more likely to be heard by the vast majority of Venetians than the motets of Giovanni Gabrieli or Claudio Monteverdi? In my paper I shall attempt some answers.

Harald Hendrix: This talk explores the experimental mood that characterizes Venetian culture in the 1530s. It focuses on one specific case, the parallel biographies of Christ produced by two prominent non-classicist authors, Folengo (1533) and Aretino (1535). It argues that the completely different results do not depend on different positions with regard to religion and reform, but signal a desire for extreme stylistic experimentation.

Karl Kügle: All places and milieus arguably have exoteric and esoteric aspects, but different places and milieus come up with different ways of articulating these. I shall present four contrasting examples from late medieval urban societies, two from Brescia, the other two from Bruges, and examine the means by which various text types, physical media, and musical idioms are put to use to generate exclusivity or (at least the semblance of) inclusion. In each case, the sample stages a social identity which tells us as much, if not more, about the insiders speaking as about their (purported) Others.

Katell Laveant: This presentation will address the links between songs and drama as vehicles for Reformation ideas in the French-speaking cities of the Low Countries around 1530-1560. Both activities were increasingly censored by the Catholic authorities throughout this period. Since singing songs and performing plays are almost always associated in the numerous bans that aimed to prevent the spreading of Reformation ideas in the region, I will list the similarities and differences between these two oral communication strategies, and consider the level of knowledge the audience had to have of Protestant ideas to actually get involved into these events and adhere to them.

Ruxandra Marinescu: Why does the famous interpolated version of the satire Roman de Fauvel in F-Pn fr. 146 (ca. 1317) transmit an incredibly long and sophisticated lyric lai with music called Le Lay des Hellequines with no particular reference to the story and its characters? And why was such a fine composition placed right in the slanderous and carnivalesque charivari episode meant to protest the evil marriage of the horse Fauvel with Vain Glory? It is unlikely that this lai was meant simply to set a sharp lyric contrast with the surrounding textual and musical material. I argue that the Lay des Hellequines is tightly linked to the charivari in which it is inserted as well as to the overall moral design of the narrative.

Katelijne Schiltz: Willaert’s oeuvre contains two pieces in praise of relics associated with Jesus: O iubar, nostrae specimen salutis (published in Hymnorum musica, Venice, 1542) is a hymn for the Holy Shroud, Laus tibi, sacra rubens (printed in a motet collection of 1544 and surviving in various manuscripts) was written in praise of the Holy Blood. Whereas the latter work can be linked to the veneration of the Holy Blood in Bruges—which has a Chapel of the Holy Blood that Willaert visited during one of his trips from Venice to his native country in 1542—, for O iubar such an unequivocal context is missing. Questions arise about its place in the church calendar, the provenance of its text and melody and the occasion for which it was written. By confronting both works with each other—both musically and in terms of context—I hope to shed light on Willaert’s musical contribution to the cult of relics in sixteenth-century Venice and beyond.