[SCA-AS] [tmr-l@wmich.edu: TMR 06.10.07 Clark and Leach, Citation and Authority (Henze)]

Tue Oct 3 18:43:44 CDT 2006

This may be of interest to music researchers.

FORWARDED from THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW website.

Clark, Suzannah and Elizabeth Eva Leach, eds.Citation and Authority
in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture. Studies in Medieval
and Renaissance Music, vol. 4. Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2005. Pp.
288. $105.00. ISBN-10: 184383166X ISBN-13: 9781843831662.

   Reviewed by Catherine Henze
        University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
        henzec at uwgb.edu

Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical
Culture is a Festchrift ("Megschrift") in honor of Margaret Bent's
65th Birthday. Throughout, the essays are characterized by accessible
prose and meticulous scholarship. The book is particularly vital
because, while many of the essays had a former life as conference and
seminar papers, very little of the material here is available
elsewhere in print.

It is divided into three basic topic areas: "The Tradition of Music
Theory" (essays by Susan Rankin, Gilles Rico, Christian Thomas
Leitmeir, and Barbara Haggh); "Vitry and Machaut (essays by Leofranc
Holford-Strevens, Andrew Wathey, Keven Brownlee, Alice V. Clark,
Lawrence M. Earp, and Virginia Newes); and "Influence, Models, and
Intertextuality (essays by John Milsom, David Howlett, Reinhard
Strohm, Theodor Dumitrescu, Cristle Collins Judd, and Bonnie J.
Blackburn).

The book covers a vast topic, one that pervades much of early music,
examined from a wide variety of scholarly vantage points through
myriad ideological lenses. It contains specific and general
information about the use and transmission of knowledge as it impacts
Medieval and Renaissance music, with a particular focus on
florilegia, the Medieval and Renaissance equivalent of a
dictionary of quotations.

The specific practice of composition in this period receives attention
from virtually all of the writers-whether it be of melody lines, or,
as in the case of Bonnie Blackburn's insightful essay "The Eloquence
of Silence: Tacet Inscriptions in the Alamire Manuscripts," the use,
primarily by scribes, of myriad ways to fill blank space created by
the need for one line to be silent. Particularly important and
pervasive in Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance
Musical Culture is the practice of borrowing. As the editors
state, "As technology replaces the human mind in this endeavour, a
question that has always lurked in the shadows comes into sharp focus,
namely the degree to which the citations that are traced were intended
by the author" (xxiii).

Two of the essays provide nuanced information about the music of the
spheres: Susan Rankin's "Naturalis Concordia Vocum Cum
Planetis: Conceptualizing the Harmony of the Spheres in the Early
Middle Ages' and Gilles Rico's "Auctoritas cereum habet nasum:
Boethius, Aristotle, and the Music of the Spheres in the Thirteenth
and Early Fourteenth Centuries' While the base ideology of musica
mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis
remains unchallenged, the scholars present new material and creative
interpretations that reconcile conflicting ideologies of Boethius and
Aristotle.

Also of particular note are essays by Wathey and by Clark. Wathey's
"Authoritas and the Motets of Philippe de Vitry" provides a clear
explanation of florilegia and its explicit and implicit uses.
Clark's "Machaut Reading Machaut: Self-Borrowing and Reinterpretation
in Motets 8 and 21" offers a significant explanation not just of
borrowing, but of the extent to which the borrowing impacts
interpretation.

For scholars seeking research topics, several of the essays are an
excellent source, particularly (but not exclusively) those by Earp and
Milsom. In Earp's "Declamatory Dissonance in Machaut," the author
applies Graeme Boone's compositional model for Dufay to Machaut with
successful results, ones that have implications for the method's use
with other composers. Earp concludes, "I think that consideration of
declamation according to Boone's model ought to be part of our
analytical arsenal. He provides us with a general point of departure,
a horizon of expectation against which one can measure normal practice
and exceptional practice." Moreover, regarding "the possible emergence
of the model in repertories equally dependent on rhyme and syllable
count and yet not precisely measured in rhythm ?"a fresh look at the
question focusing on rhyme, syllable count, and patterns of
declamation may well provide a new refinement of our views of words
and number in medieval music and open a window on the establishment of
text-setting conventions"(122).

John Milson also provides a gateway for new scholarship, in his essay
"Imitatio, "Intertextuality," and Early Music," by focusing on
the changing connotations of "intertextuality." He concludes, "Armed,
then, with a suitable lexicon and the ability to read any musical work
against the "deep models" of its "grammar" and attendant procedures--
instead of (or as well as) against the "surface model" of any specific
antecedent--the analyst will be well equipped to evaluate not only a
work's intertextuality, but also its individuality" (151).

Overall, this is an outstanding volume, not only as a tribute to
Margaret Bent, but taken together, as an informative, provocative
study of a seminal topic in Medieval and Renaissance compositional
practice and analysis.

----- End forwarded message -----

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"History doesn't always repeat itself. Sometimes it screams
'Why don't you ever listen to me?' and lets fly with a club."