4 results
25 - Resonance
- Edited by Elizabeth Emery, Richard Utz
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- Book:
- Medievalism: Key Critical Terms
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 October 2022
- Print publication:
- 20 November 2014, pp 215-222
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Summary
WHILE THE METAPHOR of resonance can be applied beyond sound, this essay limits itself to discussing the idea of the resonance of medieval music and ritual in modern music and ritual practices. Depending on one's understanding of the notions of music and ritual (and the Middle Ages), it must first be acknowledged that modern practices directly access neither medieval music nor medieval rituals; at most they can sometimes be found to resonate. Any attempt to reconstruct a medieval ritual practice or musical performance encounters fundamental obstacles that make the reconstruction as much a creative as a scholarly effort. Even the most reliable and detailed sources (musical scores, liturgical manuscripts, narrative sources, or combinations of such documents) provide only vague notions of tempo, timing, sound, or of movements and gestures in the performative event constituted by the ritual or musical performance. Therefore, musicians and musicologists do not assume or expect authenticity of modern performances of medieval or other so-called “early” music (this may include music up to the time of Mozart, Beethoven, and the early Romantics). Today, in the so-called early music revival, the term “historically informed performance practice” characterizes modern attempts to implement current knowledge about earlier practices of music in contemporary performances.
The problems concerning medieval ritual are of a similar order. Not only is it difficult to get close to details about how specific rituals were actually carried out (for similar reasons as medieval musical performances), but as with “music,” it is not clear how to define or delimit the notion of the “ritual.” Nevertheless, the problems become less daunting when one leaves behind abstract discussions and focuses on specific and well-defined areas. Looking at medieval music connected to medieval liturgical practices like the mass or the Divine Office provides a framework for discussing the impact of such rituals and their music on modern composers and even on modern liturgical practices. Furthermore, the chant of medieval liturgical ceremonies has traditionally been understood as the beginning of Western music history in academic musicology.
In this article I shall deal with resonances of medieval chant and hymns in three areas of music performance: 1) within modern Protestant Lutheran mass liturgy; 2) among composers of so-called avant-garde music; and 3) within modern performance practice of medieval liturgical music. I shall do this by way of three short case studies.
Theological construction in the offices in honour of St Knud Lavard
- NILS HOLGER PETERSEN
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- Journal:
- Plainsong & Medieval Music / Volume 23 / Issue 1 / April 2014
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 February 2014, pp. 71-96
- Print publication:
- April 2014
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This article discusses the theology of the late twelfth-century offices in honour of the Danish patron saint Knud Lavard, asking to what extent this theology can be seen to have been underlined in musical representations. Altogether, there is surprisingly little war imagery in the offices. Although Knud Lavard was a military leader, a dux, and is presented in the offices as a miles Christi, and although some formulations in the office can be read to construct him as a crusader, his mildness and his passive suffering are much more emphasized. Indeed, the theological tenor is that of a Christ-like martyr being slaughtered without resistance. The emphasis is thus on suffering as a consequence of evil and unprovoked aggression, verbally as well as musically. This will be underscored by textual as well as musical analysis of central parts of the offices, focusing on the relationship between the responsories and the homiletic readings of the last Nocturns of Matins, which so far have not been much discussed in scholarship, taking also the sequence for the Translation Mass, Diem festum veneremur, into consideration.
Medieval Resurfacings, Old and New
- Edited by Karl Fugelso
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- Book:
- Studies in Medievalism XX
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 February 2023
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2011, pp 35-42
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Summary
The purpose of this essay is to respond to recent attempts to define the notion of neomedievalism as distinct from (more traditional) medievalism. In the following I shall try to raise questions concerning categories of medievalism and concerning the general historiography of the Middle Ages.
To begin with, I shall reconsider the well-known definition (or characterization) of medievalism given by Leslie Workman, focusing in particular on a specific formulation to which several authors in the discussions published in volumes of Studies in Medievalism during the last few years have referred. In its briefest form, Workman’s definition states that “Medievalism is the continuing process of creating the Middle Ages.” A brief discussion of this idea is also found in Workman’s essay “The Future of Medievalism”:
medieval historiography, the study of the successive recreation of the Middle Ages by different generations, is the Middle Ages. And this of course is medievalism.
Since Workman considers scholarly studies and “uses” of the Middle Ages (the latter including artistry as well as social reform) to be “two sides of the same coin,” his understanding clearly emphasizes the intimate connection between historical scholarship and “creative” (artistic) approaches to the Middle Ages. And, as cited by Carol L. Robinson and Pamela Clements and emphasized by Elizabeth Emery, the statement makes it clear that his notion of the Middle Ages refers to something that changes with the investigating (and interpretative) eye and that a certain circularity is therefore involved in the process. Scholars as well as artists aiming to recreate the Middle Ages give rise to a process that in itself is deemed to constitute the Middle Ages and medievalism. This would seem to establish (or refer to) a hermeneutical circle of the traditional kind in which a pre-understanding and some intellectual (or artistic) process leads to a renewed understanding, a new version, as it were, of (a part of) the Middle Ages. In Workman’s account, there is seemingly no well-defined object for these intellectual or artistic attempts, for as he points out in this context, “The Middle Ages quite simply has no objective correlative.”
Medievalism and Medieval Reception: A Terminological Question
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- By Nils Holger Petersen, University of Copenhagen
- Edited by Karl Fugelso
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- Book:
- Studies in Medievalism XVII
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 12 September 2012
- Print publication:
- 18 January 2009, pp 36-44
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Summary
In this paper I would like to address a question that is absolutely central to the definition of “medievalism”: namely, should this term be used for everything that derives from the Middle Ages, or should it be reserved for post-medieval interest in the revival of phenomena belonging to the period or notion of the Middle Ages? The importance of this question has been underscored by its great relevance to many of the conferences and publications sponsored by Studies in Medievalism over the years. Moreover, I am convinced that in limiting the possibility of conclusively theorizing about or mapping medievalism, the ambiguity addressed by this question has significantly hampered scholarly interest in the field. I therefore believe we must tackle this question directly and stake our position(s) in relationship to it.
Of course, I have no illusion that I can give anything near a definitive answer to it, but I would like to contribute to the debate on it by taking up Leslie Workman's classic position that medievalism is the continued construction of the Middle Ages. In one of his editorial introductions, which also observes that the term “The Middle Ages” was a Renaissance humanist creation that has “been elaborated and reinforced from different perspectives from the sixteenth century to the present,” Workman wrote: “[…] medieval historiography, the study of the successive recreation of the Middle Ages by different generations, is the Middle Ages. And this of course is medievalism.”
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