(Stand: 25. Juli 2007) ANDERSON, Michael Alan ... - Universität Wien

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE MUSIC CONFERENCE 2007 – WIEN, 7.-11. AUGUST ABSTRACTS
In my paper, I address two sets of problems related to the lai: taking my cue from
Anne Robertson’s and Jacques Boogaart’s readings of the Hoquetus David and the Machaut
motets, I interpret Machaut’s lais as a product of a fourteenth-century sense of historicity
vis-à-vis the so-called ‘grand tradition’ of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; second, I
examine the treatment of the Love-and-Death theme within the poetic ‘lai mortel’ tradition
that lasted from the thirteenth until the fifteenth century. Using Machaut’s Un mortel
lay vueil commencier (L 12/8) as my starting point, I shall cast new light, on the one hand,
on three Arthurian lais mortel (with music) from the Vienna manuscript of the Tristan en
prose (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 2542; ca. 1300) and, on the other
hand, on Christine de Pisan’s Lay mortel from her Cent ballades d’amant et de dame (ca. 1410).
It is widely presumed that Christine de Pisan was influenced by Machaut’s lyric
works; there is good reason to assume that she knew Machaut’s Lay mortel. And even
though there is no positive evidence that Machaut knew the texts and the music of the
Tristan en prose lais, we cannot ignore that they were embedded in one of the most widespread
literary works of the thirteenth century that was in all likelihood familiar to most
anyone versed in French fourteenth-century courtly culture. In this way, the lai genre and
in particular the lais mortels offer new perspectives on the idea of ‘lyric tradition’ in the
Middle Ages.
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MARSHALL, Melanie (University College Cork)
The Gift of Music between Friends
Freitag/Friday, 10.8., 15.00 Uhr, KuGe, SR 1
In dedicating his Primo libro de villotte (Venice, 1550) to Girolamo Fenaruolo, Antonino
Barges mentions the role friendship played in its composition and publication. Barges publishes
the book in order to be a good friend rather than an ungrateful musician. Gratitude
points to a further element of the dedication: the circulation of the music as a gift between
friends. Martha Feldman places these songs within Domenico Venier’s social and literary
circle – Fenaruolo and Venier were close friends – and situates their sexually suggestive
content within the salon’s erotic literary output. Feldman suggests the dedication to Fenaruolo
might be a cover for the book’s ‘true’ dedicatee, Venier, because it would have been
improper to dedicate the work to a man of that stature. The book is likely to have found a
happy audience in Venier’s salon, yet Barges’s identification of Fenaruolo’s friends, and
his careful inscription of himself within Fenaruolo’s circle suggests that Fenaruolo may
indeed have been Barges’s intended dedicatee. Moreover, while it is common for a Cinquecento
music dedication to operate in the gift mode, it is less common for friendship to
be so carefully articulated. As Alan Bray has demonstrated, material gifts between friends
relate to the physical gift of the friend’s body constituted through shared physical intimacy
and public embraces. This paper examines the poetry and music associated with
Fenaruolo and his friends in this light, and considers the relationship between the material
gift of music between friends and the physical performance of that gift and friendship.
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