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.

[In the interest of saving time recent additions to this resource have not been provided with an abstract. If you would like to type up an abstract and submit it please do.]

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

Jacques Boogaart, 'O Series Summe Rata'. The Motets of Guillaume de Machaut: The Ordering of the Corpus and the Coherence of Text and Music

For abstract please see the summary in English.

Boogaart.pdf

Boogaart_EngSummary.pdf

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.

Bowers_pre.pdf

Bowers 1-3

Bowers4.pdf

Bowers5.pdf

Bowers6.pdf

Bowers_Appendices.pdf

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.

Chisholm PhD Squares.pdf

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


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.

JamesCook_1.pdf

JamesCook_2.pdf

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.pdf

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)

Corrigan-thesis.pdf

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.

JCM_dissertation.pdf

JCM_Appendices.pdf

JCM_corrigenda.pdf

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…

Cuthbert_diss.pdf

post-dissertation discovery_dates.pdf

dissertation_large.pdf

Karen Desmond, Behind the Mirror: revealing the contexts of Jacobus's Speculum musicae (PhD, NewYork University, 2009)

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

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.

1Edwards.pdf

2Edwards.pdf

3Edwards.pdf

4Edwards.pdf

5Edwards.pdf

David Fallows, Robert Morton's Songs: a study of styles in the mid-fifteenth century (PhD, Berkeley, 1973)

Fallows_Morton.pdf

FallowsAppx.pdf

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.

Hofman 1.pdf

Hofman 2.pdf

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…

LeffertsChaps.pdf

LeffertsAppen.pdf


Irmgard Lerch, Fragmente aus Cambrai: Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion einer Handschrift mit spätmittelalterlicher Polyphonie (PhD, University of Göttingen, 1985)

Lerch1.pdf

Lerch2.pdf

John Milsom, English Polyphonic Style in Transition: a study of the sacred music of thomas Tallis (DPhil, Oxford, 1983)

Milsom-1.pdf

Milsom-2.pdf

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.

PeckPart1.pdf

PeckPart2.pdf

PeckPart3.pdf

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.

RicoFull.pdf

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.

Sandon12.pdf

Sandon34.pdf

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.

Smilansky.pdf

Robert Snow, The Manuscript Strahov D. G. IV. 47 (PhD, Illinois, 1968)

Snow-Strahov.pdf

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.

Stoessel_v1.pdf

Stoessel_v2.pdf

Brian Trowell, Music under the later Plantagenets (PhD, University of Cambridge, 1960)

Caveat: some parts of the pages are quite pale and difficult to read. We hope to replace this with a better copy taken from Prof. Trowell's personal annotated copy at some time in the near future. These are images of the pages so the files are large.

Trowell1.pdf

Trowell2.pdf

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.

WidVol1.pdf

WidVol2.pdf

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.

WilliamsonChaps.pdf

WilliamsonAppen.pdf

List of dissertations

Author Title University Degree Year
Bent, Margaret The Old Hall Manuscript: a palaeographical study University of Cambridge PhD 1968
Bowers, Roger Choral Institutions within the English Church:- Their constitution and development 1340–1500 University of East Anglia PhD 1975
Clark, Alice V Concordare cum Materia: The Tenor in the Fourteenth-century Motet Princeton University PhD 1996
Cook, James Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Mass Cycles in Continental Sources University of Nottingham PhD 2014
Cook, Karen M. Theoretical Treatments of the Semiminim in a Changing Notational World c.1315–c.1440 Duke University PhD 2012
Corrigan, Ralph Patrick The Music Manuscript 2216 in the Bologna University Library: the copying and context of a fifteenth-century choirbook University of Manchester PhD 2011
Craig-McFeely, Julia English Lute Manuscripts and Scribes 1530–1630 University of Oxford DPhil 1993
Cuthbert, Michael Scott Trecento Fragments and Polyphony Beyond the Codex Harvard University PhD 2006
Desmond, Karen Behind the Mirror: revealing the contexts of Jacobus's 'Speculum musicae' NewYork University PhD 2009
Earp, Lawrence M Scribal practice, manuscript production and the transmission of music in late medieval France: the manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut Princeton University PhD 1983
Edwards, Warwick The sources of Elizabethan consort music Cambridge University PhD 1974
Fallows, David Robert Morton's Songs: a study of styles in the mid-fifteenth century Berkeley PhD 1973
Hofman, May The Survival of Latin Sacred Music by English Composers 1485–1610 University of Oxford DPhil 1977
Lefferts, Peter M The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century Columbia University PhD 1983
Milsom, John English Polyphonic Style in Transition: a study of the sacred music of thomas Tallis University of Oxford DPhil 1983
Peck Leverett, Adelyn A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 91 (1378) Princeton University PhD 1990
Rico, Gilles Music in the Arts Faculty of Paris in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries University of Oxford DPhil 2005
Sandon, Nicholas The Henrican Partbooks Belonging to Peterhouse: A Study, with Restorations of the Incomplete Compositions Contained in them University of Exeter PhD 1983
Smilansky, Uri Rethinking Ars Subtilior: Context, Language, Study and Performance University of Exeter PhD 2010
Snow, Robert Joseph The Manuscript Strahov D. G. IV. 47 Illinois PhD 1968
Lerch, Irmgard Fragmente aus Cambrai: Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion einer Handschrift mit spätmittelalterlicher Polyphonie University of Göttingen PhD 1985
Chisholm, Jessica Lynn Upon the Square: an ex tempore and compositional practice in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England Rutgers PhD 2012
Stoessel, Jason The Captive Scribe: The context and culture of scribal and notational process in the music of the ars subtilior University of New England PhD 2002
Trowell, Brian Music under the later Plantagenets University of Cambridge PhD 1960
Widaman, Jean The Mass Ordinary Settings of Arnold de Lantins: A Case Study in the Transmission of Early Fifteenth-century Music Brandeis University PhD 1988
Williamson, Magnus The Eton Choirbook: Its Institutional and Historical Background University of Oxford DPhil 1997
Boogaart, Jaques 'O Series Summe Rata'. The Motets of Guillaume de Machaut: The Ordering of the Corpus and the Coherence of Text and Music University of Utrecht PhD 2001