Adelyn Peck Leverett, A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 91 (1378)(PhD, Princeton University, 1990)

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Abstract

This dissertation is an anaiysis of Trent 91, one of the series of fifteenth-century musical manuscripts known collectively as the Trent Codices. Trent 91 contains a large repertory of sacred music, most of it anonymously and uniquely preserved. The following study defines, for the first time, that repertory's pivotal place in the larger context of musical developments during the Renaissance. The first chapter, which centers on an extended account of Trent 91's physical formation, challenges seme widely accepted hypotheses concerning the genesis of Trent 91. While for many years scholars have viewed the later portions of the Trent collection as the work of a single scribe, Johannes Wiser, active in Trento itself from about 1455 to 1465, both the configuration and the contents of these manuscripts, including Trent 91, can be more coherently explained by analyzing them as the joint creations of a number of scribes working somewhat later (through most of the 1470s) and with ready access to a flourishing musical life at the Imperial Court at Wiener Neustadt, near Vienna. Specific support for this theory, set forward in Chapter Two, is to be found in the anonymous plainchant paraphrase compositions in Trent 91. Like Isaac's Choralis Constantinus from several decades later, these pieces use chant melodies and liturgical orders appropriate for the Diocese of Passau, and so may be from the Imperial Chapel at Wiener Neustadt, which lay within that Diocese's jurisdiction. Chapter Three next turns to the repertory contained in the first four fascicles of the manuscript. A close examination of the relations between Trent 91's readings of some of these works and their concordances in other manuscripts suggests, together with physical features of the copies themselves, that this first portion of Trent 91 may have entered the collection through the agency, direct or indirect, of the Flemish composer Johannes Martini, whose Missa Cucu heads this portion of the manuscript. The remaining two chapters cover a series of Mass Ordinary cycles previously considered to be, like the repertory of the first four fascicles, imported from Franco-Flemish circles. Both argue instead that these Masses, which represent two distinctive traditions of Mass composition, come instead from the circle of composers resident at the Imperial Court in Wiener Neustadt - chief among them Johannes Touront, whose work is known almost exclusively in manuscripts from Imperial territory. A concluding section assesses the possible impact of these Mass genres on Martini, who may have spent several years in or near the Imperial Court circle. Through Martini's later activities in Ferrara, these developments in supposedly provincial Austria may have come to influence a new generation of composers, such as Obrecht and Josquin, working in France and Italy.

Table of Contents

  • Abstractiv
  • Acknowledgementsvi
  • Volume One - Part I: Text
    • I. Introduction: On the Creation of Trent 911
    • II. Plainchant Paraphrase Compositions in Trent 91: Trent, Passau, and the Imperial Court73
    • III. Franco-Flemish Repertory in Trent 91: The Frontispiece Collection112
    • IV. Masses for Three Voices in Trent 91: The Case for a Regional Tradition170
    • V. Parody Masses in Trent 91: Tradition and Influence221
    • List of Manuscripts Discussed274
    • Bibliography277
  • Volume Two - Part II: Illustrations, Diagrams, Tables, and Examples
    • Chapter One
      • Illustrations1
      • Diagrams7
      • Tables16
    • Chapter Two
      • Illustrations29
      • Tables31
      • Examples54
    • Chapter Three
      • Illustrations59
      • Diagrams71
      • Tables72
      • Examples89
    • Chapter Four
      • Tables100
      • Examples119
    • Chapter Three
      • Illustrations134
      • Diagrams135
      • Tables138
      • Examples159
  • Part III: Transcriptions of Anonymous Compositions
    • 1. Missa Regina caeli laetare172
    • 2. Gloria197
    • 3. Benedicamus domino203
    • 4. Te deum206
    • 5. Credo213
    • 6. Missa sine nomine220
    • 7. Missa Zersundert ist das junge Herze mein235
    • 8. Introit Vultum tuum deprecabuntur254
    • 9. Introit Gaudeamus omnes256
    • 10. Introit Salve sancta parens (I)259
    • 11. Introit Salve sancta parens (II)264
    • 12. Introit Rorarte caeli267
    • 13. Introit Benedicta sit270
    • 14. Missa Gentil madonna mia272
    • Notes to the Transcriptions302

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