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The Department has a strong research focus in medieval, Renaissance and early modern music. Particular areas of interest include
We all share an interest in musical genres and repertories of the late medieval and Renaissance eras, and therefore in their history and historiography. The same is true of composers and institutions. This is a musically exciting and productive era, and its dynamism is something which compels admiration and the desire to understand. Within this, however, different areas of emphasis and expertise allow a more critical and differentiated view of particular aspects within the larger field.
Our expertise embraces
and our research falls broadly into three categories:
Staff working in this area include:
Our shared view of early music traditions is that a full understanding can be achieved only by direct acquaintance with the notation of the time, as well as with editions and performances, but that the full richness and significance of the notation cannot be realised unless it is seen as part of a wider musical culture – something which was especially vigorous in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This musical culture involves not just composers and performers, but scribes, printers, publishers, audiences, patrons and the whole world of musical production.
The cultural demands on musicians were many and varied; and the need for patrons and consumers of music to feel that their musical appreciation was consonant with their social and intellectual status was an ever-present factor in the preferment and activity of musicians. This was especially true in the courtly environment of the princely chapel and chamber, but was by implication part of the ethos of all musical organisations and institutions.
The comparative study of style and the technical understanding of polyphony (and of the different polyphonic genres) are at the root of our view of the musical developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The density and sophistication of musical production in this era is driven by patronage and by cultural demand, on the one hand, but is also driven by the ongoing process of education and professional development of expert musicians, both singers and composers on the other. As twenty-first-century scholars and musicians, our perspective needs to reflect this breadth, embracing the full spectrum of approaches from detailed technical and historical knowledge to interpretive and ideological critique, cultural analysis, and performance studies.
The University of NottinghamLakeside Arts Centre University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD
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