Dissertations
Born-digital dissertations are usually represented by a single pdf. Where an older typescript has been photographed the pdf is split into parts as these image-based files are considerably larger.
Luminita Florea Aluas, 'The Quatuor Principalia Musicae: A critical edition and translation, with introduction and commentary' (PhD, Indiana University, 1996)
[no abstract available]
Luminita Florea Aluas Dissertation (image-based PDF; slow loading)
Margaret Bent, 'The Old Hall Manuscript: a palaeographical study' (PhD, Cambridge, 1968)
Nearly everything that has been written about the organisation and origins of the Old Hall manuscript (OH) has rested upon certain assumptions about the quiring of the manuscript and the identity of the scribes. These assumptions originate in casual or unscientific descriptions in the writings of Barclay Squire, Ramsbotham and Dom Anselm Hughes, and while many other things have been questioned, new theories have been constantly re-erected on the same foundations. It seemed to me that the only way of testing any of these hypotheses and, should they be found wanting, of seeking substitutes for them, was to start afresh on the manuscript itself.
Margaret Bent Dissertation (image-based PDF; slow loading)
Jacques Boogaart, 'O Series Summe Rata'. The Motets of Guillaume de Machaut: The Ordering of the Corpus and the Coherence of Text and Music (PhD Utrecht, 2001)
The French isorhythmic motet of the fourteenth century may truly be called one of the most polyphonic – in the literal sense of many-voiced – genres in the entire history of European music. Text and music form a web of crossing and interacting sound patterns and significations that resounds for an extremely limited time-span. The central question of this dissertation is how such a complex and compact work of art was and is to be appreciated and which elements merge the diverging textual, melodic and rhythmic lines into a coherent and harmonic whole. Contemporary theorists who described the motet as a harmonic unity offer little help towards an explanation how this harmony was attained. Consequently, only an analysis of the works themselves can bring clarity to this aesthetic problem.
As subjects for this investigation works were chosen from Machaut's corpus of motets, the largest extant collection by a fourteenth-century composer which is transmitted in no fewer than six manuscripts. As the copying of part of these manuscripts was supervised by the author their reliability is exceptional. And it may be reasonably supposed that text and music bear a certain relationship within the oeuvre of an artist who was as great a poet as a composer.
The dissertation consists of two parts. Part I contains a synopsis of the corpus and a discussion of three analytical approaches. In Part II, eight works serve as case-studies of analysis and interpretation; a detailed discussion of all motets would have extended the study beyond reasonable length. In these interpretations a second question is broached, in addition to the above mentioned problem. Machaut, in his literary works, repeatedly stressed the importance of 'newness' as an aesthetic ideal. To which extent is it justified to speak of innovation in Machaut's motets, which manifestly follow the formal tradition of the genre? It is my assumption that his “newness” can be found especially in the detail of the compositions, as in the chanson-genres of which he fixed the forms, yet endowed each work with an individual and special character. In order to study Machaut's inventiveness and art of variation in this genre, eight motets have been chosen which display a very high degree of similarity in their formal structure. Thus, this dissertation is also a study of a composer's imagination.
BoogaartAppendix.pdf -- appendix of music editions
Roger Bowers, Choral Institutions within the English Church:- Their constitution and development 1340–1500 (PhD, University of East Anglia, 1975)
[Taken from Introductory notes:] This thesis deals with the history of English liturgical choirs between the years 1340 and 1500. It seeks to enlighten the history of pre-Reformation English church music by relating to it the history of the personnel to whom its performance was entrusted.
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Jessica Lynn Chisholm, Upon the Square: an ex tempore and compositional practice in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England (PhD, Rutgers University, 2012)
References to “sqwars,” “sqwarenote,” “square song,” and “bokys of squaris” appear in various English ecclesiastical archival records, but the precise meaning of the term and its practices has yet to be fully understood. Aside from these textual examples, the only source where the term appears specifically in connection with musical notation is LonBL 17802-5 (the Gyffard Partbooks) which includes three Masses entitled “Upon the Square,” one by William Whitbroke (c.1501-1569) and two by William Mundy (c.1528-1591). Based on these Masses and other fragmentary evidence, the term square has come to be defined by modern scholars as a melody in measured notation (usually for tenor voice range), that most likely originated as the lowest part of a previously existing polyphonic composition (usually for three-voices), and was extracted for use in one or more later compositions.
Extant compositional evidence further suggests that squares derived from the practices of formulaic improvisation and ex tempore performance as described in contemporary theoretical treatises; perhaps as an “intermediary” phenomena, between preexistent melodies such as chant, and complex polyphonic compositions that are in turn based upon the preexistent melody. In other words, squares seem to have involved extemporizing or composing upon a melody that was once extemporized or composed upon a melody.
This study explores the extent to which this practice was used within English preand post-Reformation sacred music. It concerns both the origin and creation of squares as an extension of the practical training used by period musicians, and the use of squares in further polyphonic settings throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In particular, this study aims to demonstrate the variety of uses for these melodies, including how some squares may have been tailored for the liturgical needs of individual parishes and churches; as well as provide a window into the general methodology of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century elaboration and composition.
Alice V. Clark, Concordare cum Materia: The Tenor in the Fourteenth-century Motet (PhD, Princeton University, 1996)
This study takes as its starting point the description of motet composition by Egidius de Murino, who says that the tenor should “concord with the matter” of the motet to be written. The repertory under consideration at this stage is the French tradition of the mid-fourteenth century, mostly transmitted in the complete-work manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut…
Clark.pdf (image-based PDF; slow loading)
James Cook, Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Mass Cycles in Continental Sources (PhD, University of Nottingham, 2014)
Fifteenth-century English music had a profound impact on mainland Europe, with several important innovations (e.g. the cyclic cantus firmus Mass) credited as English in origin. However, the turbulent history of the Church in England has left few English sources for this deeply influential repertory. The developing narrative surrounding apparently English technical innovations has therefore often focussed on the recognition of English works in continental manuscripts, with these efforts most recently crystallised in Curtis and Wathey’s ‘Fifteenth-Century English Liturgical Music: A List of the Surviving Repertory’. The focus of discussion until now has generally been on a dichotomy between English and continental origin. However, as more details emerge of the opportunities for cultural cross-fertilisation, it becomes increasingly clear that this may be a false dichotomy.
This thesis re-evaluates the complex issues of provenance and diffusion affecting the mid-fifteenth-century cyclic Mass. By breaking down the polarization between English and continental origins, it offers a new understanding of the provenance and subsequent use of many Mass cycles.
Karen M Cook, Theoretical Treatments of the Semiminim in a Changing Notational World c.1315–c.1440 (PhD, Duke University, 2012)
A semiminim is typically defined as a note value worth half a minim, usually drawn as a flagged or colored minim. That definition is one according to which generations of scholars have constructed chronologies and provenances for fourteenth- and fifteenth-century music and the people who created it. ‘Semiminims’ that do not match this definition are often portrayed in modern scholarship as anomalous, or early prototypes, or evidence of poor education, or as peculiarities of individual preference. My intensive survey of the extant theoretical literature from the earliest days of the Ars Nova through c. 1440 reveals how the conceptualization and codification of notation occurred in different places according to different fundamental principles, resulting not in one semiminim but a plethora of related small note values.
These phenomena were dynamic and unstable, and a close study of them helps to clarify a range of historical issues. Localized traditions have often been strictly bounded in scholarly literature; references to French, Italian, and English notation are commonplace. I explain notational preferences in Italy, England, central Europe, and the rest of western Europe with regard to these small note values but demonstrate that theorists educated in each of these places routinely incorporated portions of other traditions. This process began long before the ‘ars subtilior,’ dating at least to the time of Franco of Cologne. Rarely were regional traditions truly isolated; the various aspects of semiminim-family note values were debated and adapted for decades across these cultural and geographical boundaries. The central theme of my research is to show how and why the theoretical conceptualization of these myriad small note values is key to understanding the continual merging of these local preferences into a more amalgamated style of notation by the mid-fifteenth century.
KarenCook-Diss-Corrigendum.pdf
Andrew Cornall, The Practice of Music at Norwich Cathedral c. 1558–1649 (MMus, University of East Anglia, 1976)
Tracks the cathedral and diocese as a whole chronologically, with a teble of musicians that is a reference point for all information dealing with dates and positions. Extensive extracts from the Henrician, Elizabethan and Jacobean statutes. Lists of musicians and dates are carefully transcribed from city and cathedral documents.
DIAMM note: The dissertation is widely cited in other literature, but since the closure of the Music Department of UEA a copy is no longer available at the university library. Scanned from page images by the author.
Cornall_PracticeMusicNorwichCathedral
Ralph Patrick Corrigan, The Music Manuscript 2216 in the Bologna University Library: the copying and context of a fifteenth-century choirbook (PhD, University of Manchester, 2011)
The manuscript Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 2216 (BU) is one of three surviving manuscripts from the first half of the fifteenth century believed to have originated in the Veneto. Between them, these three sources contain the bulk of the surviving repertory from this period and location. However, BU has long been considered a subordinate source to the other two. In part this is due to its size, containing only a third as many works as each of the others. But it is also because of the date attributed to it. Since the publication of the facsimile edition of BU in 1968 and Alberto Gallo’s commentary the following year, the conventionally held date for the completion of copying has been sometime after 1440. This has led to BU being treated as a source distanced from the material it contains and its many variant readings being explained as a result of scribal editing or stemmatic drift.
The first part of this thesis examines the evidence behind this proposed date and concludes that it is not secure. There follows a fresh codicological examination of BU that explains how the manuscript was created and the music copied into it. This establishes that a more likely date for BU’s compilation is 1433 or shortly after, making the copying contemporaneous with the composition of some of the items contained. It also means that the copying of BU was completed around the same time as its closest concordant sources.
The second part then looks at the role of the scribe in editing and developing the works he copied, before examining the relationship between BU and its concordances.
Gareth R. K. Curtis, The English Masses of Brussels, Biblioghèque Royale, MS. 5557 (PhD, University of Manchester, 1979)
This thesis falls into two parts, the first mainly concerned with problems associated with the preparation of an edition of the English Masses from the first layer of the Brussels manuscript, and the second consisting of an edition of the works in question. In Volume 1, I have dealt with the following topics:
I: A background discussion of the manuscript itself. A description of its physical structure, a brief characterisation of each layer, and an attempt at establishing the chronology of its compilation. Its provenance and subsequent history as far as these can be determined.
II: The constructional techniques used by Frye to compose his cantus firmus Masses, and a brief account of how this relates to methods used by other English composers of the period. The relationship between the anonymous motet Salve virgo mater (I:TRmn88 No. 240) and Frye's Missa Summe Trinitati. The constructional techniques used by Cockx and Plummer, and a brief comparison of these works with other so-called freely-composed English cyclic Masses.
III: The problem of fitting the words to the music. Whether given parts should or even can be texted. An examination of possibilities for underlay in the light of what little theory survives. The problem of telescoping and text omission as it applies in the 15th-century English Mass repertoire.
IV: The problem of manuscript accidentals. An attempt to establish what are the practices of the Brussels scribe. A discussion of such theory as relates to signatures and mid-stave accidentals which function as signatures.
An appendix has been added to Volume 1 which sets out to show that the Brussels manuscript transmits a partially retexted version of Dufay's Missa Ave regina celorum, and an edition of the work in the light of this report has been added to Volume 2.
Curtis_VOL1 (image-based PDFs; slow loading)
Julia Craig-McFeely, English Lute Manuscripts and Scribes 1530–1630 (DPhil, University of Oxford, 1993)
An examination of the place of the lute in 16th- and 17th-century English society through a study of the English lute manuscripts of the so-called ‘Golden Age’, including a comprehensive catalogue of the sources.
Michael Scott Cuthbert, Trecento Fragments and Polyphony Beyond the Codex (PhD, Harvard University, 2006)
This thesis seeks to understand how music sounded and functioned in the Italian trecento based on the examination of all the surviving sources, rather than only the most complete. A majority of surviving sources of Italian polyphonic music from the period 1330-1420 are fragments; most, the remnants of lost manuscripts. Despite their numerical dominance, music scholarship has viewed these sources as secondary…
post-dissertation discovery_dates.pdf
Karen Desmond, Behind the Mirror: revealing the contexts of Jacobus's Speculum musicae (PhD, NewYork University, 2009)
This study addresses the general question of how medieval music theory participated in the discourse of the related disciplines of philosophy, natural science and theology. I focus on a specific instance of scientific inquiry: the fourteenth-century music treatise Speculum musicae, written by an author known to us as Jacobus. A detailed analysis of Speculum musicae reveals an aesthetic system whose elements are assigned meaning and value through the anagogical relationships that the author posits (either explicitly or implicitly) with systems articulated in philosophical and theological treatises at the turn of the fourteenth century.
My central concerns are uncovering the impetus behind the production of this treatise, determining where Jacobus’s philosophies fit within particular schools of medieval thought, as revealed through his vocabulary choices, supporting sources, and methods of reasoning, and then extrapolating from these philosophies which rationale (ratio) most informs his positions on particular issues, such as his classification of music, or his defense of the ancient art of singing against the modern art.
I hope to present a fresh perspective on one of the most important yet one of the most mysterious ages in the history of music. The turn of the fourteenth century was a fascinating time for music: we find musical systems in a pronounced state of flux with various theoretical solutions proposed in response to the problems of notating this increasingly complex music. Analyzing the background of these theoretical formulations, and assessing the various judgments of “good” practice, and the kinds of arguments used to bolster these judgments, will uncover reasons for the overturning of musical systems and go some way toward explaining the nature of musical change.
Desmond_Behind_The_Mirror_Dissertation.pdf
Lawrence M. Earp, Scribal practice, manuscript production and the transmission of music in late medieval France: the manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut (PhD, Princeton University, 1983)
This dissertation is a study of the seven principal MSS transmitting the musical works of Guillaume de Machaut. The first chapter refines our knowledge of the complex of musical and textual MSS, and the theoretical citations that witness Machaut•s works, as well as the evidence of lost MSS. In chapter two, new observations about the structure and internal. organization of the contents of the larger MSS have revised the current picture. MS Par. fr. 1584 (A} has an index prescriptive of an order not consistently carried out as the MS was copied, usually due to spacing requirements. The index order is compelling chronologically for a group of rondeaux, supporting Hoepffner•s thesis that Machaut•s works follow each other more-or-less chronologically in the MSS. On art historical grounds, Fran~ois Avril has recently placed the MS Par. fr. 1586 (C), formerly thought to be from the 15th century, in the early 1350s. The early date helps to bridge the chronological gap in sources for the polyphonic chanson. Scribal indications and literary evidence now suggest that polyphonic chansons by Machaut were first composed in the 1340s.
Chapter three focuses on the copying of text and music-in the MSS. Regardless of the style of the music, text was always entered first. This was a guiding principle in French MSS throughout the 14th and early l5th century, and bears upon questions of texting in 15th-century sources. Chapter four considers aspects of the transmission of the works, both evidence from the texts of the narrative poems, and readings for musical works. Mechanical copying errors are distinguished from notational problems. Some notational irregularities can be tied to chronological developments, others seem to be designed to facilitate performance by less literate musicians. Particularly interesting are variants in many lais in the MS Par. fr. 9221 (E), copied in the 1390s. Radical rearrangement of the disposition of text and music suggests the intervention of someone actively interested in their performance.
An appendix supplies information on the physical makeup of the principal MSS, and information on the disposition of miniatures among the HSS.
Earp-diss.pdf (image-based PDF; slow loading)
Warwick A. Edwards, The sources of Elizabethan consort music (PhD, Cambridge University, 1974)
The main part of the dissertation is concerned with a detailed investigation of all known sources which contain consort music estimated to have been written during the period 1550 to 1600 approximately. These are over eighty in number (mainly manuscripts) and range in date from c1570 to the mid-seventeenth century. A second volume is devoted to a thematic catalogue in which the entire repertory, listed under individual sources in Volume One, is collected together and classified.
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David Fallows, Robert Morton's Songs: a study of styles in the mid-fifteenth century (PhD, Berkeley, 1973)
[opening of Preface:] This dissertation started life as an attempt to clear the ground on two English composers of songs in the mid-fifteenth century, Robert Morton and John Bedyngham. The twelve songs ascribed to Morton, which initially seemed to offer fewer problems, were to be studied first to present an outline of a method and a terminology for discussing fifteenth-century song, and also because they belong firmly in the “Burgundian” tradition whose style was evidently known throughout the continent and regarded as classic during the years in which Bedyngham, for instance, wrote in a more identifiably provincial style. With Morton’s songs described and explained, it would then have been easier to approach the more intriguing problems of Bedyngham’s songs with a clearer view of their context. But Morton soon became so large a subject in itself that Bedyngham had to be lopped off: the results of my work on Bedyngham have gone into an article on that composer for The New Grove and into various spoken and written presentations.
The dissertation, then, is centered on the song tradition at the court of Burgundy during the years of Charles the Bold. 1457 is not only the year in which Morton is first recorded there, but also the year which began with a terrible disagreement between Charles, then count of Charolais, and his ailing father, Philip the Good and ended with Philip formally handing over most of the executive power to his son at a meeting of the Estates General in Ghent. Morton disappears from the records in 1476, a few months before Charles; and though it is unlikely that the composer came to the same unpleasant end as his Duke, it seems that his surviving songs probably all come from these years 1457 to 1476.
Fallows_Morton.pdf (image-based PDF; slow loading)
May Hofman, The Survival of Latin Sacred Music by English Composers 1485–1610 (DPhil, University of Oxford, 1977)
Volume 1: Thematic catalogue of Tudor church music in Latin with a checklist of continental Latin pieces in Tudor MSS. Vol II Commentary. As these files are page images they are large, particularly vol. II.
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Peter Martin Lefferts, The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century (PhD, Columbia University, 1983)
The history of polyphonic music in late medieval England is difficult to reconstruct on account of the paucity of intact sources, the concomitant lack of a substantial number of complete pieces, and the difficulty with which the surviving repertoire can be associated with any specific institutions or social milieu. Nonetheless, there are significant scattered remains, and this study endeavors to examine in detail one important genre, the motet…
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Irmgard Lerch, Fragmente aus Cambrai: Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion einer Handschrift mit spätmittelalterlicher Polyphonie (PhD, University of Göttingen, 1985)
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John Milsom, English Polyphonic Style in Transition: a study of the sacred music of thomas Tallis (DPhil, Oxford, 1983)
This study is concerned with the style (as opposed to the function) of English vocal polyphony during the period *ca.*1525 – *ca.*1575. It focusses on the sacred works of Thomas Tallis (*ca.*1505 – 1585); but the aim is as much to come nearer to a full understanding of mid-Tudor stylistic evolution as it is to define the place of Tallis' music within the broad context. Tallis is therefore viewed both as an individual and as a representative of his time, and his music is assessed analytically rather than critically.
The study takes as its premise the view that English music of the period is too often examined according to useful but unrealistic categories – sacred or secular, Catholic or Protestant, institutional or domestic, Henrician, Edwardian, Marian or Elizabethan – and that a sympathetic understanding of the evolution can only be reached when the period is considered in a broad, comprehensive and chronological sweep. It also argues that the evolution was largely stimulated by influences from abroad (the place of foreign music and musicians in mid-Tudor England is studied in detail), and that these influences can be sensed first and most deeply in secular music of the second half of Henry VIII's reign, rather than in contemporary liturgical music (the study includes a detailed discussion and full transcription of the late Henrician partsong repertory).
The close stylistic identity between secular chamber style and that of Edwardian church music is emphasized, in particular their common reliance upon stretto lattices of declamatory imitation. Using Tallis' works as a touchstone, subsequent developments in musical substance and structure are investigated; and the study closes by demonstrating how Tallis' imitative practice changed rapidly and radically during the third quarter of the century, again almost certainly under the influence of foreign music.
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Adelyn Peck Leverett, A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 91 (1378)(PhD, Princeton University, 1990)
This dissertation is an analysis 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.
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Gilles Rico, Music in the Arts Faculty of Paris in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (DPhil, University of Oxford, 2005)
In the thirteenth-century, the city of Paris witnessed the birth of the University, the gradual penetration of the new philosophical paradigm of Aristotelianism and the emergence of a new theoretical discourse dealing with the measurement and notation of musical time. Scholars have attempted to find correlations between these three distinct phenomena. Focusing on music theory sources and on other indirect testimonies, they have never satisfactorily approached the central question of the teaching of music in the Arts faculty of Paris. The objective of the present study is precisely to explore this terra incognita.
Nicholas Sandon, The Henrican Partbooks Belonging to Peterhouse: A Study, with Restorations of the Incomplete Compositions Contained in them (PhD, University of Exeter, 1983)
This dissertation examines Cambridge, University Library, Peterhouse mss 471–474, four partbooks from a set of five copied late in the reign of Henry VIII, which contain seventy-two pieces of Latin church music.
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Uri Smilansky, Rethinking Ars Subtilior: Context, Language, Study and Performance (PhD, University of Exeter, 2010)
This dissertation attempts to re-contextualise the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century musical phenomenon now referred to as the Ars subtilior, in terms of our modern understanding of it, as well as its relationship to wider late medieval culture. In order to do so I re-examine the processes used to formulate existing retrospective definitions, identify a few compelling reasons why their re-evaluation is needed, and propose an alternative approach towards this goal.
Robert Snow, The Manuscript Strahov D. G. IV. 47 (PhD, Illinois, 1968)
[No abstract; opening of chapter 1:] The codex Strahov D.G.IV.47 is a late fifteenth-century music manuscript written in white mensural notation and preserved in the library of the former Strahov monastery. Once a house of the Praemonstratensian order, the monastery is now a cultural institution devoted to the preservation and cultivation of Czech arts and letters and is administered by the National Literary Academy.
The manuscript was first brought to the attention of the musicological world well over fifty years ago by Dobroslav Orel, who examined it during the preparation of his doctoral dissertation on the so-called Speciálník Codex, Ms. II.A.7 of the Museum at Hradec Králové. The Strahov manuscript has, however, remained almost totally unknown despite the fact that Orel later dealt with it in two published articles, one in Czech and one in German, and the only other attention it has received is that accorded it by Dragan Plamenac, who discussed the German songs in it in a paper delivered at the International Musicological Congress in Cologne, in 1958, and certain other aspects of it in an article published in 1960.
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Jason Stoessel, The Captive Scribe: The context and culture of scribal and notational process in the music of the ars subtilior (PhD, University of New England, 2002)
The extant scribal record of the music of the ars subtilior is considered in terms of the reception of this musical style within particular cultural contexts. The first part of this study re-examines the two principal sources (F-CH!564 and I-MOe5.24) of a partially shared ars subtilior repertoire and concludes that, despite the presence in part of a repertoire ostensibly composed north of the Alps (c. 1380-1395), these manuscripts were compiled in or close to major centres on the Italian peninsula (Florence and Pisa/Bologna/Florence respectively). These conclusions form the background to the second part of this study that identifies cultural tendencies/influences in the notation of musical rhythm in the ars subtilior repertoire.
Brian Trowell, Music under the later Plantagenets (PhD, University of Cambridge, 1960)
[Caveat: photographed from the author's secondary carbon copy. Some parts of the pages are quite pale and difficult to read. No abstract provided.]
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Jean Widaman, The Mass Ordinary Settings of Arnold de Lantins: A Case Study in the Transmission of Early Fifteenth-century Music (PhD, Brandeis University, 1988)
Arnold de Lantins, a composer widely represented in the musical sources of the 1420s and 1430s and a singer in the papal chapel from 1431 to 1432, stood at the forefront of stylistic developments of the early fifteenth century, yet his music is hardly known among music historians and performers today. Although he was one of the first composers to link the Gloria and Credo by motto beginnings and to write a complete, musically unified Mass cycle, few of his Ordinary settings are available in modern transcription and little has been written about them.
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Magnus Williamson, The Eton Choirbook: Its Institutional and Historical Background (DPhil, University of Oxford, 1997)
The Eton Choirbook (Eton College Library, MS 178) is one of the most important English musical codices surviving from the century before the Reformation. Its significance derives from its size and quality; from its value as a source of unica; and from its unbroken association with its host institution, one of the foremost royal foundations of the late Middle Ages.