Musicology and Music History

A French 13th-century chante-fable. The only surviving example of the genre, its sole source is F-Pn fr.2168. It tells, in prose, the romantic story of the love of a count’s son for a foreign girl-captive. Interspersed in the narrative are verse sections (laisses) written in lines with equal numbers of syllables, all sung to the same double phrase of melody (a relic of narrative singing; ...

Designation attached to a three-voice Gloria in manuscript F-APT 16bis; the piece is also transmitted in I-IV 115. The Apt manuscript is now thought to contain music from the court of the antipopes at Avignon in the late 14th century. It is not clear whether the word refers to the name of a composer or to something else; it is now known that ‘Bararipton’ was a mnemonic used in medieval logic for one of the categories of syllogisms. However, any possible musical meaning of the word remains a mystery.

The Gloria seems to be in discant style, with text underlay following the typical French pronunciation of Latin. The lower parts are rhythmically linked and run both in parallel and in contrary motion. The preponderance of 8-5 and 5-3 chords is interrupted, sometimes at closing cadences, by 6-3 chords. Likewise, the sequence of 8-5–6-3–8-5 chords often gives way to parallel 5ths between cantus and contratenor. (The Gloria is ed. in PSFM, 1st ser., x, ...

Liturgical book of the Western Church containing some chants for the Mass. The term appears in Ordo romanus I (compiled in the late 7th or early 8th century and describing the papal Mass at Rome), where it refers to the book from which the cantor sings the gradual and the alleluia or tract: ‘Postquam legerit cantor cum cantatorio ascendit et dicit responsum. Si fuerit tempus ut dicat alleluia, bene; sin autem, tractum; sin minus, tantummodo responsum’ (see Andrieu, ii, p.86; some of the manuscripts call for another singer to perform the alleluia). Other early references to the cantatorium show that it was a liturgical book, but they are less specific about its contents and use (see Blaise, 128, and Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, ii/2, Munich, 1969, p.187; see also Hucke).

From this it has been inferred that the cantatorium was a book containing only graduals, alleluias and tracts, that is, chants performed by the cantor or soloists rather than by the choir. Three early manuscripts seem to correspond to this definition: one, dating from the beginning of the 9th century, in the Tesoro of Monza Cathedral (see Hesbert); another of the same period and character, of which fragments survive at Trier, Berlin and Cleveland (see Siffrin); and a manuscript with musical notation from the beginning of the 10th century (...

(Lat.: ‘songs of Beuren’)

The title given by Johann Andreas Schmeller to his complete edition (1847) of the poems in an early 13th-century German manuscript (now D-Mbs Clm 4660) that had come in 1803 from the Benedictine abbey of Benediktbeuern, about 50 km south of Munich. Since then the manuscript has been known by that title even though it is now generally agreed that it probably did not originate in Benediktbeuren and may have come from Seckau in Carinthia or the Tyrol. The manuscript is perhaps the most important source for Latin secular poetry of the 12th century; there are in addition some Latin sacred lyrics, German poems, liturgical plays and a satirical ‘Gamblers' Mass’. Several of the poems have music in unheighted neumes – a style of notation that is relatively rare at so late a date. The melodies must, for the most part, be reconstructed from concordances in the St Martial and Notre Dame repertories. Orff's cantata ...

A manuscript or printed book containing principally chansons (i.e. lyric poetry in French) or monophonic or polyphonic settings of such poetry. The most important medieval chansonniers date from the 13th century and contain the monophonic songs of the troubadours and trouvères (for summary list of principal monophonic chansonniers, and illustration, see Sources, manuscript: Secular monophony). Apart from Machaut’s complete works, secular music was mixed with sacred music in 14th-century manuscripts. From about 1420 the two genres began to appear in separate sources, sacred music in large choirbooks and secular music in small chansonniers, many of them prepared for princes, courtiers, or other well-born music lovers or bibliophiles. Chansonniers, some of them elegantly decorated, were compiled in Italy and Germany as well as in France and the Low Countries during the 15th century, but no matter where they were written, they contain mostly French polyphonic chansons. Obviously French culture was foremost in courtly circles everywhere in western Europe at the time, at least as far as secular music was concerned. The chansonniers are true miscellanies, however, and also reflect local tastes and customs. Along with chansons they include song motets in Latin, compositions with Italian, German, Spanish, English or Dutch texts, and even a few compositions apparently originally conceived for instruments. Summary lists of the principal 15th-century chansonniers appear in a number of studies (see Droz and Piaget, Atlas, and Fallows), and in various modern editions of complete chansonniers (e.g. Perkins and Garey, and Brown)....

The preparation of music for publication, performance or study, usually by someone other than the composer. ‘The ideal edition need not have all the answers but should control all the questions so that users can feel themselves in possession of the best available knowledge about this music’, wrote Joel Sheveloff (1986) about the keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti; his comment is readily extrapolated to the wider problem of editing art music in the Western tradition. This article attempts to outline the questions editors might ask about the music they edit, and by so doing address two goals: to unmask some of the ‘critically based assumptions and perceptions that usually go unacknowledged’ in editing (Brett, 1988), for the benefit of users of editions, and to outline a generalized theory for the editing of Western art music, most of which is closely linked with a written tradition. Musics of other cultures, especially those in which an oral tradition predominates, pose different problems for the editor. Editors in ethnomusicology have developed conventions of their own, particularly in regard to notation, that establish their work as an independent field....

(Lat. fac simile: ‘make similar’)

Name given to a genre of book publishing based on photo-mechanical printing techniques that attempts to recreate the appearance of an original handwritten manuscript or printed edition. Facsimile reproductions employ a wide range of photographic methods and materials. The most sophisticated try to be as faithful to the original as possible by replicating its size, colours, paper, binding and, sometimes, physical condition. It is important to note that facsimile editions are not fakes or forgeries. They are produced, conceived and used as tools for study or investigation by scholars, researchers, teachers and others who might not have access to the original material, although they occasionally become collectable in their own right owing to instances of exceptional craftsmanship or rarity.

The invention of photography and the related development of photo-mechanical printing in Europe during the first half of the 19th century produced the technology that made it possible to make photo-realistic reproductions of original documents on a relatively large scale. This was the first time in the 400-year history of printing that grey-scale images could be passed to paper via the printing press. Using a camera device, an image of the original was first recorded on a photo-sensitive negative and then transferred to a glass or metal plate that had also been treated with a photo-sensitive material. The plate, ‘tanned’ by light and now capable of attracting greasy ink, was then mounted in a press to produce identical prints. The first facsimile copies found in printed books of that time were glued on to pages, tipped-in, or included as loose sheets. Publishing an entire facsimile manuscript, however, was a revolutionary idea; it led to the emergence of a new genre in music publishing: the facsimile edition....

The study of visual representations, their significance and interpretation.

The terms ‘iconography’.and ‘iconology’ were created by 16th-century humanists for the study of emblems, portraits on coins and other pictorial evidence from ancient archaeology. They referred to the description (Gk: graphein) or interpretation (Gk: logos) of the content of pictures as regards both visual symbolism and factual research. When, in the 19th century, art history became established as an academic discipline, a comprehensive analytical method was developed in which content and form became the main subjects of analysis. From then on, scholars used the terms ‘iconography’ and ‘iconology’ when they referred to the study of content as opposed to the study of form or style. In musicology, however, both approaches continued to exist, side by side. The twofold meaning remains an obstacle to the unequivocal usage of the term. Some treat the visual arts as supplier of special information pertinent to musical facts, using musical iconography as an ancillary tool for research in the pictorial documentation of instruments and performance. Others consider an image with musical subject matter as a work of art in its own right, using musical iconography towards research in the vision and visualization of music....

(Ger.: ‘songbook’)

A term applied to certain 15th- and 16th-century German collections of polyphonic songs or short lyric poems that were usually sung. F.W. Arnold was perhaps the first to use it in an article, ‘Das Locheimer Liederbuch nebst der Ars organisandi von Conrad Paumann’ (Jahrbücher für musikalische Wissenschaft, ii, 1867, pp.1–234), although the term ‘Liederhandschrift’ was more common, particularly when referring to the sources of Minnesang. It is not at all clear, however, the extent to which the term ‘Liederbuch’ was used during or before the 19th century. It does not appear in the manuscripts of those collections most commonly associated with it such as the Lochamer Liederbuch and the Glogauer Liederbuch; moreover, 15th- and 16th-century manuscripts and publications frequently use in their titles ‘Lied’, ‘Liedlein’, ‘Gesänge’, ‘geistliche Gesänge’ etc., but not ‘Liederbuch’.

The term is also applied to collections of poetry that could be sung or were likely to have been sung (e.g. Das Liederbuch des Jakob Kebitz) or collections that contained some poetry with music and some without (e.g. Das Liederbuch des Hartman Schedel)....

Ludomusicology is the study of music and sound in, or related to, games. Broadly speaking, the term may apply to any type of game or sport, or to the relationship between music and play more generally (see Moseley, 2016; Fritsch, 2018). In practice, however, ‘ludomusicology’ has most commonly referred to the study of music and video games, or interactive media.

The study of video game audio presents unique challenges. Games themselves, which are typically the objects of study, are often unstable. This instability may emerge because of the interactive nature of the medium, in which each user’s experience may differ; because games exist in multiple formats or versions; or because they are constantly evolving, as in updates to online games (see Summers, 2016; Reale, 2019). Furthermore, copyright restrictions, regionally restricted releases, and/or technological obsolescence sometimes render archival materials – even entire games – inaccessible to scholars. As a result, overviews of game music history and style have by necessity focused on readily available ‘canonic’ titles that were released widely in North America, Western Europe, and (to a lesser extent) Japan....

(Fr. musicologieGer. Musikwissenschaft MusikforschungIt. musicologia)

Vincent Duckles and Jann Pasler

The term ‘musicology’ has been defined in many different ways. As a method, it is a form of scholarship characterized by the procedures of research. A simple definition in these terms would be ‘the scholarly study of music’. Traditionally, musicology has borrowed from ‘art history for its historiographic paradigms and literary studies for its paleographic and philological principles’ (Treitler, 1995). A committee of the American Musicological Society (AMS) in 1955 also defined musicology as ‘a field of knowledge having as its object the investigation of the art of music as a physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon’ (JAMS, viii, p.153). The last of these four attributes gives the definition considerable breadth, although music, and music as an ‘art’, remains at the centre of the investigation.

A third view, which neither of these definitions fully implies, is based on the belief that the advanced study of music should be centred not just on music but also on musicians acting within a social and cultural environment. This shift from music as a product (which tends to imply fixity) to music as a process involving composer, performer, and consumer (i.e. listeners) has involved new methods, some of them borrowed from the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, sociology, and more recently politics, gender studies, and cultural theory. This type of inquiry is also associated with ethnomusicology. Harrison (...

(Fr. parties séparées; Ger. Stimmbücher)

Manuscripts or printed books that contain music for only a single voice (whether human or instrumental) of a composition, as opposed to those sources (scores, choirbooks, table-books etc.) that supply the complete music. The Shrewsbury fragment (Shrewsbury School, MS VI, c 1430) is probably the lone survivor of a set of three partbooks (S. Rankin, PRMA, cii, 1975–6, pp.129–44), but otherwise the format seems to date from the late 15th century, becoming standard for the dissemination of ensemble music in the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the earliest surviving partbooks are the three known as the ‘Glogauer Liederbuch’ ( D-B Mus.ms.40098), which date from about 1480; the earliest printed partbooks extant are the four books comprising the Misse Josquin issued by the Venetian printer Ottaviano Petrucci in 1502. With the increasing use and availability of scores from the late 17th century onwards the role of partbooks was to some extent pre-empted, although the practice of performing from separate parts has survived for certain types of music (e.g. chamber and orchestral music) to the present day. This is partly because of the considerable expense involved in providing every performer with a score containing much material not strictly necessary for his individual need....

(It., Lat.)

In its strictest sense partitura means simply ‘score’, and as such is the equivalent of partition (Fr.), Partitur (Ger.) etc. It is more specifically used, however, to describe sources of keyboard music of the 16th to the 18th centuries notated in open score (usually four staves), as opposed to those in keyboard score (on two staves) or one of the types of keyboard tablature. In many of the earliest uses of this notation, most of which are Italian, the word ‘partitura’ and its most common derivatives (spartiti, partite etc.), were used on title-pages to describe music that had originally been written for voices or other instruments but had later been ‘scored’ for solo instrumental performance, usually on a keyboard instrument. Some scholars consider that early partiturae of this nature may have been issued for study purposes rather than for performance, although the two functions are not mutually exclusive. The use of the term ‘partitura’ was later extended to include collections of works conceived originally for keyboard instruments. The earliest surviving source in ...

A written commentary in a concert or opera programme intended to inform the listener about the music to be performed. Similar commentaries included in most commercial recordings are usually referred to as disc (or sleeve) notes.

The earliest kind of introductory note commonly employed was the ‘argomento’ (usually a brief synopsis of the plot) printed in early opera librettos ( see Libretto ). Some librettos, for example Lorenzo Da Ponte's first libretto for Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786), included preliminary remarks of considerable interest, but these are exceptional. Opera librettos of the early 19th century seldom offered more than a plot summary, but a few included a short commentary on the music. The libretto for the 1837 production of Rossini's Moïse at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, offered brief ‘prefatory remarks’ on the score and on the work's compositional and performance history. 19th-century opera audiences in Italy and elsewhere were usually supplied with either a single-sheet cast-list or a printed libretto, to be followed during the performance. It was not until well into the 20th century that these regularly contained historical and critical comments on the music....

(It.)

A term used in opposition to Prima pratica.

Artusi, Giovanni Maria, §2: Principal theoretical works

Canon (i), §4: 1600 to 1750

Theory, theorists, §10: The Baroque period

Fontanelli, Alfonso, §1: Life

Madrigal, §II, 11: Italy: 16th century: The 1590s: the rise of the ‘seconda pratica’

Lutheran church music, §3: Confessionalism and Orthodoxy (1580–1680)...