Call for papers – Textus & Musica

Visual sources might be artistic, representational, or iconographic, but also architectural or archaeological. Written sources might include musical or textual (historical/literary) sources in the official languages of the practiced religions (e.g. Latin, Greek, Slavonic, Hebrew, or Arabic) or also in vernacular languages. The multiple disciplinary perspectives should each ground interpretation in concrete historical examples and case studies.

Contributors may consider the following questions: How do texts and images represent singers, cantors and chantresses, troubadours and trouvères, Minnesänger, Meistersänger, etc.? How do visual media “describe” monophonic song, and what sorts of information can be derived from visual representations of performance? What can prescriptive sources (e.g. treatises, ordinals) truly reveal about historical practice? Are there commonalities of practice between different linguistic and cultural regions? What sorts of sources might record the practices of minorities or of insulated or autonomous communities (e.g. monasteries, beguinages, etc.) for preserving their cultures of song? Of interest might also be explicit comparisons of sacred and secular song, such as the warnings against musical genres that encourage drinking and dancing.

Approaches to the performance of medieval monophonic or monodic song might include attention to:

• the texts of the songs, whether liturgical, sacred or secular
• the rubrics of liturgical books or the ceremonial descriptions in ordinals, obsequials, or rituals (whether in Latin or in vernacular languages)
• accounts in chronicles or historical narratives
• illuminations and miniatures in music manuscripts
• descriptions or financial/legal records of the lives of singers accompanied performance with instrumental music
• or architectural spaces, sculpture, sculptural programs, painting, and other representational art