Trouver et partir: the meaning of structure in the old French jeu-parti

In their songs, trouvères referred to their own acts of composition in various ways, not least as ‘finding’ (trouver) or ‘dividing’ (partir). Both terms had a wide and varied usage in medieval French culture and carried meanings that shape the way that the melodic structure of trouvère songs might be analysed. Invention, and its sister art of memory, played a key role in rhetorical practices. The process of ‘finding’ a melody and adorning it with memorable musical figures is performed in the structure of some songs. Division was used for intellectual work, as found in the classificatory models of medieval encyclopedic works, but it also signified socio-political animosity and strife. Through close readings of text–music relationships in four jeux-partis, the cultural significance of the musical acts of invention and division in thirteenth-century Arras is assessed in order to explore why trouvères performed acts of invention and division through their songs

From Sin to Sensation: The Progression of Dance Music from the Medieval Period Through the Renaissance

This research paper explores how dance music has been part of the foundation for musical art in world history and the key to unlocking information concerning societal atmospheres throughout history. With each age and progression of music came new genres, instruments and social beliefs that were woven through religious and secular culture, each of which impacted the production of dance throughout the centuries. As dance music infiltrated the social and religious scenes of the medieval period, the sacred value of dancing was questioned which are presented through historical sources on pagan culture in the medieval period. Further research on improvements of instrument mechanics in dance music and dance forms are presented through medieval to Renaissance manuscript publications and writings of Guillaume de Machaut, a historically acclaimed figure. Dance forms, instruments, and choreography sought much revision between the two periods, and with the invention of the printing press and common access to publications, drastic innovations in dance culture and music literature were made moving into the Renaissance period. Therefore, the art of music has seen much diversity and change throughout history, causing each individual dance genre to be created and shaped into a product fitting for the time. Because dance music gained historical importance since the medieval period, its rapid progression through oral tradition, religious tradition, and social environments reached new heights in the social and musical life from Medieval times though the Renaissance period

The Copying and Collection of Music in the Trouvère Chansonnier F-Pn fr. 24406

F-Pn fr. 24406 is a codex of 155 folios containing, along with two Old-French prose works and a series of religious lyrics, 301 vernacular songs, all but one with notation. Despite its rich contents, fr. 24406 rarely receives mention in lists of the most important trouvère chansonniers. The majority of its contents are held in common with several of the other twenty chansonniers with notation. Editors consistently prefer other manuscripts’ musical and textual readings to those of fr. 24406, because of the uniqueness of its readings and its supposed inaccuracy. In this thesis, I argue that modern editorial principles have biased scholarship against perceiving what fr. 24406 has to offer and that both its history and its contents are to be valued. Its music scribes, by their very individuality and even their mistakes, reveal much about the notated transmission of the songs, about the previous existence of now-lost sources, and about the craftsmanship displayed by notators of vernacular monophony. I propose to view what has been seen as sloppiness in fr. 24406 as its flexibility. The medieval songbook, sometimes seen as an obstacle to scholarly access to authored originals or to medieval performances, is treated as in itself a worthy work of art. The thesis traces the themes of flexibility and scribal intelligence through the history of fr. 24406. My point of reference is the moment of copying and thus the thesis divides naturally into three parts: before, during and after copying. I begin after, with the combination shelf-mark’s two component manuscripts. The question of their relationship offers an occasion to trace the book’s usage since its compilation and changing scholarly opinions since its first notice. The task of manuscript description is thus largely accomplished through the lens of secondary scholarship. For the manuscript’s prehistory, I mine codicological evidence and apply musical comparison to demonstrate the existence of multiple lost, notated exemplars for fr. 24406. The final part of the thesis is then devoted to describing the notators against this backdrop. Comparison of notational techniques between sources lets us pinpoint the decisions of fr. 24406’s notators and describe their adaptability, their intelligence, and their craft.This PhD was funded by the Cambridge International Trus

The Poets, the Popes, and the Chroniclers: Comparing Crusade Rhetoric in the Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères with Crusade Literature, 1145-1291

abstract: The call to crusade in 1145 prompted a movement fueled not only by religious writings and sermons, but by calls to arms in secular song. During the mid-twelfth to thirteenth centuries, French Trouvères and Occitan Troubadours wrote over one hundred crusade songs, the majority of which are rife with propaganda and support for the crusades and the attacks against the Saracens and the East. The crusade song corpus not only deals with sacred motivations to go overseas, such as the crusade indulgence present in papal bulls, but also summons biblical figures and epic persons as motivation to crusade. Previous scholars have not adequately defined the genre of a crusade song, and have overlooked connections to the crusading rhetoric of the genre of crusade literature. I offer a precise definition of crusade song and examine commonalities between crusade literature and song. During the crusades, troubadours and trouvères wrote crusade songs to draw support for the campaigns. The propaganda in these songs demonstrates that the authors had an understanding of current events and may have had some knowledge of other crusading literature, such as papal calls to crusade, crusade sermons, the Old French Crusade Cycle, and various crusade chronicles. These documents show how the themes and allusions present in crusade song have broader connotations and connections to crusade culture in Medieval Europe.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Music 201

Random vector generation of a semantic space

We show how random vectors and random projection can be implemented in the usual vector space model to construct a Euclidean semantic space from a French synonym dictionary. We evaluate theoretically the resulting noise and show the experimental distribution of the similarities of terms in a neighborhood according to the choice of parameters. We also show that the Schmidt orthogonalization process is applicable and can be used to separate homonyms with distinct semantic meanings. Neighboring terms are easily arranged into semantically significant clusters which are well suited to the generation of realistic lists of synonyms and to such applications as word selection for automatic text generation. This process, applicable to any language, can easily be extended to collocations, is extremely fast and can be updated in real time, whenever new synonyms are proposed.Comment: 10 pages,5 figures, 7 tables, 17 reference

The Kemp Foundation’s Teaching Excellence Award Ceremony (2021 Program and Video)

Selected by the faculty Promotion and Tenure Committee and nominated by members of the campus community, the Kemp Award recognizes a faculty member who brings spirit, passion and scholarship to the art of teaching. Recipients are seen as indispensable to their discipline, enriching the University’s intellectual life within and beyond the classroom. The current Kemp Award winner, Professor of History Tom Lutze, gives an address during The Kemp Foundation\u27s Teaching Excellence Award Ceremony, which replaces the traditional Honors Day Convocation. Retiring faculty are also honored

Les voies/voix de la vengeance à l'opéra au XIXe siècle

" [...] ici chacun se venge ", proclame Ruy Blas au dénouement, sanglant, du drame de Victor Hugo. La déclaration vengeresse pourrait s'appliquer au champ lyrique, dans son extension historique, culturelle et esthétique tant les mots " vengeance ", " vendetta ", " Rache " ou " revenge " ponctuent, amplifiés par l'hyperbolisation du chant, duos, airs ou finales d'opéras. " Poursuivons jusqu'au trépas l'ennemi qui nous offense ", décrète Armide chez Quinault et Lully en 1686 (acte I, scène IV). " Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen ", chante la Reine de la Nuit chez Mozart en 1791 (" Mon cœur est tout brûlant de vengeance infernale ", acte II, scène VIII). " Si, vendetta, tremenda vendetta / Di quest'anima è solo desio ", martelle Rigoletto chez Verdi, d'après Hugo, en 1851 (" Oui, vengeance, terrible vengeance, / C'est le seul désir de mon âme ", acte II, scène VIII). " Here my tragedy began, here revenge begins ", déclame sur un mode hypnotique Miss Jessel, dans The Turn of the screw, Le Tour d'écrou de Benjamin Britten, d'après Henry James, en 1954 (" Ici a commencé ma tragédie, ici commence ma vengeance "). C'est comme si l'opéra s'était donné pour mission d'explorer les zones obscures du déchaînement passionnel et de baliser les territoires archaïques des cultures humaines, un monde d'avant la retenue imposée au sujet ou au clan par la morale du pardon ou par l'institution de la justice - du moins serait-ce la leçon délivrée par une approche anthropologique. Sans doute la vengeance possède-t-elle, comme sujet et comme donnée dramatique, - selon cette fois une approche dramaturgique - une charge spectaculaire auquel les enchantements lyriques, pas plus que la fable tragique, ne sauraient renoncer. Sans doute aussi la vengeance trouve-t-elle une voie d'expression privilégiée dans le chant, dont l'expressivité (hauteur de son, intensité, couleur, accents) transcende la communication commune pour laisser entendre, stylisée ou métaphorisée par la musique vocale, la brutalité quintessenciée des affects qu'aucune civilité ni socialité ne contrôleraient plus