Session Constructing Musical Authorship between 13th-16th centuries at the 49th Medieval and Renaissance International Music Conference (MedRen 2021, Lisbon)

Description

Following decades of research in literary studies and musicology, it is a common idea that medieval literature and music functioned primarily through practices of oral tradition. Since a significant portion of the literature and music of this period is anonymous, scholars have gradually merged anonymity with orality and argued that the idea of authorship and composership were foreign to the Middle Ages. However, over the last decades, literary scholars have called this paradigm into question and begun to uncover the medieval author through analyses of texts, manuscripts, and
printed sources. This session contributes to such a reassassment in musicology by presenting four case-studies addressing the building of musical authorship through time, by analyzing the presence of names or attributions in musical manuscripts. This approach scrutinizes the act of adding a name alongside music, apart from issues in music creation. In all four papers, the musician’s name becomes a common denominator through which the gradual shaping of the idea of musical authorship and its several components can be traced and identified, in a variety of sources, periods, and regions. This session embodies the approach and research of a larger project on medieval composership launched with the help of the Fulbright Foundation.

Period	5 Jul 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	Lisbon, PortugalShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International