Proseminar in Medieval Music (184b, Fall 2016)

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Proseminar in Medieval Music (184b, Fall 2016) DRAFT SYLLABUS SUBJECT TO CHANGE (last updated 9/28/2016) Lecturer: Prof. Karen Desmond (kdesmond@brandeis.

1 Proseminar in Medieval Music (184b, Fall 2016) DRAFT SYLLABUS SUBJECT TO CHANGE (last updated 9/28/2016) Lecturer: Prof. Karen Desmond Office Hours: Tuesdays and Fridays: 11:30AM to 12:30PM, or for appointment. My office is in Room 222, Slosberg Music Building. Schedule: Wednesday 9AM-12 PM Description: This course focuses on three repertories of medieval music in Western Europe: plainchant, French secular song, and the motet. In addition to listening to lots of music (and analyzing and composing), we will consider some concepts central to the study of medieval music, such as: the the role of the composer and performer; institutional and political contexts for the performance and composition of music; the relationship of theory to practice; intertextuality; technological developments in the transmission of music; the medieval art of memory; and conceptions of auctoritas in the Middle Ages. Learning outcomes: An in-depth knowledge of the content, style, and techniques of specific medieval repertories, and the related technical vocabulary; An understanding of the intersections between culture and artistic products and processes, and how artists and listeners participate in this interaction; Familiarity with some of the key musicological scholarship and trends in the field pertaining to the study of composition and analysis in medieval music; An introduction to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of music using approaches and materials from history, literature, art history, etc. Required Work Class Participation (incl. seminar presentation) Participation includes your in-class discussion of reading and listening assignments. Each class member will have responsibility for presenting one topic during the term and leading the class discussion. Citations of course readings

2 2 and compositions are expected to be included in your final research paper. In order to facilitate full participation in seminar discussions, you will be asked each week to submit answers to Teaching Questions (TQs) through an online form. Composition Assignment: Due Wednesday, November 2. You will be working on this assignment in class in the weeks prior. Research Paper: pages double-spaced, in two drafts. Please arrange to meet with me early (preferably in November) to discuss your research paper topic, with a good outline for your paper, ideas for your opening with your basic thesis, and specific examples you plan to discuss. NB: All reading assignments for the week should be completed before the class meets. Textbook There is one required textbook for this class: Margot Fassler s Anthology of Western Music (New York, 2014) (hereafter Fassler). This will be supplemented in class with extra scores and translations: please keep everything in one binder and bring them to every class. Readings, Listening Assignments, Videos Links to all the required readings and listening assignments will be provided on Latte. You are also encouraged to browse the Naxos library and YouTube to broaden your knowledge of the medieval repertories we are studying. Explanation of required versus optional The required readings are required (obviously). I have added the optional readings as they either: 1) provide general background to the topics, historical periods, or concepts being discussed in class; or 2) provide more in-depth discussion of the week s topic. If you feel your understanding of a particular genre or historical period is weak, then you should read the optional background readings. If you are in charge of leading a particular week s discussion, you may want to read all the optional readings. Explanation of how to read: First of all, as a graduate student, you need to learn how to read efficiently. Articles, book chapters, etc., are most often structured in the following way: an introduction that will introduce the main concepts and arguments, and material to be examined; a detailed examination of certain aspects; a conclusion that will summarize the findings and how they relate to the author s hypothesis. You need to recognize when you can skim certain materials, and when you should read more closely, as in trying to follow the author s argument and hypothesis and what sort of evidence is being brought to bear. Secondly, don t take the readings as gospel. If something is published in a book or an article, that does not mean it is the THE ABSO- LUTE TRUTH. You need to be able to differentiate between the author s own opinion, and the facts on which the author bases his/her opinion. Are the sources of these facts reliable? On what basis does the author draw their conclusions? Do you trust this author s scholarship? If you disagree with a reading, that is fine, but try to figure out why, and how you can support your own argument.

3 3 Class Policies Due dates for course work are noted in the Required Work section above. Attendance at seminars is required and will affect your class participation mark. No more than one unexcused absence allowed. No use of mobile phones in class (no texting, s, Facebook, etc.). As for laptops or ipads, I would prefer that you take notes by hand. Several research studies have demonstrated that student retention of class content and ideas is significantly better when notes are taken by hand, and use of laptops or other devices during class is negatively correlated with student grades (see Junco 2012, Fried 2008, Muller & Oppenheimer 2014). If, however, there is a specific reason for using an electronic device during class please come and see me immediately. Brandeis Policy Statements Students with disabilities: If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately. Academic Integrity: You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. Please consult Brandeis University Rights and Responsibilities for all policies and procedures related to academic integrity. Students may be required to submit work to TurnItIn.com software to verify originality. Allegations of alleged academic dishonesty will be forwarded to the Director of Academic Integrity. Sanctions for academic dishonesty can include failing grades and/or suspension from the university. Citation and research assistance can be found at LTS - Library guides. Course Outline and Schedule The course materials will be made available on Latte. I. COMPOSITION AND CHANT The topics discussed in this unit include how we might conceptualise chant as being composed ; what role generative composition played in the creation of the medieval chant repertory; the relationships between chant and the texts it sets; the impact of notational systems on the transmission and composition of chant; and the role of music theory in the history of plainchant. Week 1 Aug 31 Orality, literacy, notation, and composition. Introduction and review of syllabus. The transmission of the plainchant repertory from the first centuries of the Christian church, and its earliest written transmissions. Notions of the Gregorian repertory, the reforms of Charlemagne, and the codification and dissemination of plainchant. Required readings:

4 Susan Rankin, Carolingian Music, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1993), 274 316. Emma C.

4 4 Susan Rankin, Carolingian Music, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1993), Emma C. Hornby, The Transmission of Western Chant in the 8th and 9th Centuries: Evaluating Kenneth Levy s Reading of the Evidence, Journal of Musicology 21/3 (2004): Other readings (general background): Fassler, Music in the Medieval West (Norton, 2014), 1-13, Taruskin, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 1 of The Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford, 2009), 1-35 Other readings (background to Hornby): Leo Treitler, Homer and Gregory: the transmission of epic poetry and plainchant, The Musical Quarterly 60/3 (1974), Leo Treiter, Centonate chant: Übles Flickwerk or E pluribus unus?, Journal of the American Musicological Society 28/1 (1975), David G. Hughes, Evidence for the traditional view of the transmission of Gregorian chant, Journal of the American Musicological Society 40/3 (1987), Kenneth Levy, Charlemagne s archetype of Gregorian chant, Journal of the American Musicological Society 40/1 (1987), Leo Treitler, Communications in JAMS 41 (1988), , concerning Levy and Hughes, above; incl. Levy s response & Hughes's response. Anon., Resurrexi (Fassler) Anon., Viderunt omnes in (Fassler) Anon., Haec Dies Anon., Alleluia Pascha nostrum (Fassler) Week 2 Sept 7 Readings in medieval musical thought. The development of a body of theory to accompany the codification of plainchant. The role of memory in the performance and notation of chant (modes, hexachords, solmization, the Guidonian hand). Required readings: Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Oxford, 2005), 45-52, 56-77,

5 Other readings (background): Fassler, Music in the Medieval West, 93-102 Taruskin, Music from the Earliest Notations, 68-92, 99-104 Week 3 Sept 14 The form and shape of chant.

5 5 Other readings (background): Fassler, Music in the Medieval West, Taruskin, Music from the Earliest Notations, 68-92, Week 3 Sept 14 The form and shape of chant. An analysis of some of the more complex and lengthy medieval chants, such as tropes and sequences. How were older chants elaborated and extended to create new material? Concepts of glossing, auctoritas and how they relate to the composition of music. Analysing the compositions of Notker, Peter Abelard and the Victorines. Required readings: Richard Crocker, History of Musical Style, Fassler, Music in the Medieval West, 66-74, , Anon., Rex omnipotens (Fassler) Anon., Sancti spiritus (Fassler) Peter Abelard (attrib.), Epithalamica (Fassler) Adam of St. Victor, Zima vetus (Fassler) Week 4 Sept 21 Words and music in medieval chant. The poet-composers of the late Middle Ages. Can we talk about expressivity in medieval chant? Hildegard of Bingen and the sequence. The sequence in England in the Middle Ages, contrafacta, and the vernacular. Blurring the lines between sacred and secular. Required readings: Fassler, Margot, Music for the Love Feast: Hildegard of Bingen and the Song of Songs. In Women s Voices across Musical Worlds, edited by Jane A. Bernstein, (Boston, 2004). Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, 2001), Other readings (background): Fassler, Music in the Medieval West, Hildegard, O ecclesia (Fassler)

6 6 Hildegard, O viridissima virga Hildegard, Ave generosa II. THE POET-COMPOSER: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF MACHAUT S SONGS In his 1978 textbook Medieval Music the musicologist Richard Hoppin wrote that Medieval music, as a rule, makes little effort to reflect either the emotions or the meanings of its texts. This unit considers medieval song as an art of poetry and music through a focus on the most famous poet-composer of the Middle Ages Guillaume de Machaut and interrogates the text-music relationship in his works. Week 5 Sept 28 Words and music. The first two weeks focus on Machaut s Prologue and Remède de Fortune, analyzing Machaut s poetry and song, and the courtly context that saw the production of these two works. David Maw, Machaut and the Critical Phase of Medieval Polyphony: Review of Essays on Music and Poetry in the Late Middle Ages by Marie Louise Göllner. (Hans Schneider, Tutzing, 2003) and Machaut s Music: New Interpretations edited by Elizabeth Eva Leach (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2003), in Music and Letters 87/2 (2006): Other readings (for general background): Taruskin, , Excerpts from Remède de Fortune (incl. the songs Dame, de qui, and Dame, a vous san retoillir in Fassler) Full edition of the Remède in James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler, eds., and trans., music ed. Rebecca A. Baltzer, Le Jugement du Roy de Behaigne and Remede de Fortune, The Chaucer Library (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), Guillaume de Machaut, Douce dame jolie Guillaume de Machaut, Se je souspir Week 6 Oct 5 Words and music, cont. This week s readings give further consideration to the poetic voice as expressed through the union of words and music.

7 Required readings: Elizabeth Eva Leach, Singing More about Singing Less: Machaut s Pour ce que tous (B12), Machaut s Music: New Interpretations edited by Elizabeth Eva Leach (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2003), Jennifer Bain, Balades 32 and 33 and the res dalamagne in Machaut s Music: New Interpretations edited by Elizabeth Eva Leach (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2003), Other Bibliography: Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), Judith Peraino, Introduction: Love, Self, and Song in Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self-Expression From the Troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut, 3-32 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Sylvia Huot, Guillaume de Machaut and the Consolation of Poetry, in Modern Philology 100 (2002): Douglas Kelly, Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and Poetry of Courtly Love (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978). Deborah McGrady, ed., Controlling Readers: Guillaume de Machaut and His Late Medieval Audience (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2006). Guillaume de Machaut, Pour ce que tous mes chans Guillaume de Machaut, Plourez, dames OCTOBER 12-NO CLASS Yom Kippur Week 7 Oct 19 Counterpoint. The Remède de Fortune emphasizes the new art of song taught to the protagonist by Hope. An important aspect of the new art was a new approach to part-writing from the middle of the fourteenth century. The next two weeks examine the art of counterpoint in Machaut s songs, and how analysts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have approached the study of medieval counterpoint and form. Required Elizabeth Eva Leach, Counterpoint as an Interpretative Tool: The Case of Guillaume de Machaut s De toutes flours (B31), Music Analysis 19 (2000): Elizabeth Eva Leach, Counterpoint and Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Song, in Journal of Music Theory 44 (2000): Other readings: Richard Crocker, Discant, Counterpoint and Harmony, Journal of the American Musicological Society 15 (1962): Sarah Fuller, Tendencies and Resolutions: The Directed Progression in Ars Nova music, Journal of Music Theory 36 (1992): (Fuller has written a series of important articles on 14thcentury sonority and counterpoint).

8 Jennifer Bain, Messy Structure? Multiple Tonal Centers in the Music of Machaut, Music Theory Spectrum 30/2 (2008): Guillaume de Machaut, Honte, paour, doubtance Guillaume de Machaut, De toutes flours 8 Week 8 Oct 28 Counterpoint, cont. This week s readings challenge the intent of the contemporary analyst. Required readings: Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Machaut's Rose, Lis and the Problem of Early Music Analysis, Music Analysis 3/1 (1984): Bent, Margaret. The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis, in Tonal Structures in Early Music, edited by Cristle Collins Judd, (New York: Garland, 1998). Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Rose, lis revisited, in Machaut s Music: New Interpretations, edited by Elizabeth Eva Leach, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003). Other readings: Margaret Bent, The Harmony of the Machaut Mass in Machaut s Music: New Interpretations, edited by Elizabeth Eva Leach, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003). Works: Guillaume de Machaut, Rose, liz III. FORMING THE MEDIEVAL MOTET The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the emergence of a complex genre of polyphony, that was to remain a primary focus for composers for several centuries to come. The last section of this class looks at questions of form, structure, and interpretation through analyses of the late medieval motet. Week 9 Nov 2 The emergence of the motet. Introduction to the motet and competing theories regarding its emergence, especially regarding the role of the discant clausula and added texts. Catherine A. Bradley, Contrafacta and Transcribed Motets: Vernacular Influences on Latin motets and Clausulae in the Florence Manuscript, Early Music History 32 (2013): 1-70 Other readings (general background): Taruskin, Works: Ex semine clausula and motets Week 10 Nov 9 Sacred and secular themes. This week s class examines the juxtaposition of the sacred and profane in the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century motet. In addition to examining themes of intertextuality in the ars

9 9 antiqua motet, we also consider the issue of the sacred and secular as it relates to Machaut s life and works, and the scholarly interpretation of his output. Sylvia Huot, Allegorical Play in the Old French motet: The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), ( The Christian Machaut ). Anne Walters Robertson, Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in his Musical Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), chapter 3. Optional: Anne Walters Robertson, Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in his Musical Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), chapter 4 [as an example of her reading of the first seven motets]. Karen Desmond, Refusal, the Look of Love, and The Beastly Woman of Machaut s Balades 27 and 38, Early Music History 32 (2013), pp [not really about motets, but an example of a reading of Machaut that incorporates both sacred and profane elements] 2vv and 3vv motets on TANQUAM (transcriptions will be provided) Anon., Qui voudroit/debonairement/quant naist/tanquam (score on Latte) Week 11 Nov 16 Sound and sense. Performance and comprehension issues in polytextual motets. Christopher Page, Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), chapter 3. Suzannah G. Clark, S en dirai chançonete : Hearing Text and Music in a Medieval Motet, Journal of Plainsong and Medieval Music 16 (2007): Anna Zayaruznaya, Form and Idea in the Ars nova Motet, (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2010) (excerpts from Chapter 2: Hearing Voices ) Dillon, Emma. The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, , The New Cultural History of Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 (excerpts) Other readings: Bent, Margaret. Reflections on Christopher Page's Reflections, Early Music 21 (1993): Rob C. Wegman, Reviewing Images, Music & Letters 76 (1995): Desmond, Karen Review of The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, by Emma Dillon (Oxford University Press, 2012) in The Medieval Review (January 2013), available online at bitstream/handle/2022/15235/ html

10 10 Catherine A. Bradley, Seeking the Sense of Sound [Review article of Emma Dillon, The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, (2012)], Journal of the Royal Musical Association, (2014) 139/2: Anon., Jolietement / Quant voi / Je sui joliete / APTATUR NOVEMBER 23-NO CLASS Week 12 Nov 30 Form and the ars nova. Margaret Bent, What is Isorhythm? Quomodo cantabimus canticum? : Studies in Honor of Edward Roesner, ed. by Rena C. Mueller, John Nádas and Gabriela Ilnitchi (Madison, Wisconsin, 2008), Margaret Bent, Polyphony of Texts and Music in the Fourteenth-Century Motet: Tribum que non abhorruit/quoniam secta latronum/merito hec patimur and Its Quotations, in Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (New York and Oxford, 1997), Zayaruznaya, The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms and the Medieval Motet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1-11, Philippe de Vitry, Tribum/Quoniam Philippe de Vitry (attrib.), In virtute/decens Philippe de Vitry, Cum statua/hugo Week 13 Dec 7 Notation and the ars nova. Karen Desmond, chapter 5 (draft) from The Ars nova in Music and Medieval Thought: Making it New, (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press) Philippe de Vitry, Colla/Bona Anonymous, Amer/Durement Philippe de Vitry, Vos/Gratissima Philippe de Vitry, O canenda/rex Machaut, Hareu/Helas (M10) Final paper due December 14.

MUS 131A Spring 2018 History of Music I: Ancient through Early Baroque

MUS 131A Spring 2018 History of Music I: Ancient through Early Baroque Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:00-12:20 PM, Slosberg Music 215 Professor Karen Desmond (kdesmond@brandeis.edu). My office hours are Tuesdays