Women in Music
History shows that women were not as big of participants in music as men until later in the medieval era. This is due to many obstacles that faced women disabling them from singing, playing any instruments, or even composing music. Although barriers were present, many women and nuns were able to surpass them, and make use of their abilities and skills. In this paper, I will present the role of women as they interacted with polyphony, and as they became scribes, performers, composers, and patrons.
Women's involvement with medieval music took a variety of forms; they served at times as audience, as participant, as sponsor, and as creator. The evidence for their roles, like that for their male contemporaries, is sporadic at best. Many musical sources have been lost, and those sources that do survive only occasionally provide composer attributions. Information on specific performances is virtually non-existent, and the references to musical performances gleaned from literary allusions must be read critically. Similarly, a work of art portraying a woman musician may be representational or symbolic, or both. Yet despite these handicaps, modern scholarship reveals many ways in which medieval women were engaged with, and enriched by, the music that flourished around them.
Women and Polyphony
In at least some convents, women performed polyphony (an extensive discussion of this can be found in Yardley, pp. 24-27). Some of this repertory is preserved in the Las Huelgas codex which stems from the Carthusian monastery for women near Burgos in Northern Spain which housed approximately one hundred nuns and forty choir girls at its prime in the thirteenth century. The manuscript itself contains an extensive coll...
... middle of paper ...
...anuscript: Burgos, Monasterio de Las Huelgas. 2 vols. Gordon A.
Anderson, ed. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 79. N.P.: American Institute of Musicology, 1982
Page, Christopher. The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France
1100-1300. London: J.M. Dent and Songs, Ltd., 1989.
Page, Christopher. "The Performance of Songs in Late Medieval France: A New
Source." Early Music 10 (1982): 441-450.
Vox Feminae: Studies in Medieval Women's Song. John F. Plummer, ed. Studies in
Medieval Culture, vol. 15. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1981.
Yardley, Anne Bagnall, "'Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne': The Cloistered
Musician in the Middle Ages." In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, eds. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986, pp. 15-38.
Fiero, Gloria K. "The Medieval Synthesis in the Arts." The Humanistic Tradition Prehistory to the Early Modern World. 6th ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: McGraw-Hill College, 2005. 155-157, 309-16. Print.
The book begins with a prologue, in which a letter is sent from a musician working for a cardinal in 1347. It is sent from the papal court of Avignon and is received by some of the musician's ...
TitleAuthor/ EditorPublisherDate James Galways’ Music in TimeWilliam MannMichael Beazley Publishers1982 The Concise Oxford History of MusicGerald AbrahamOxford University Press1979 Music in Western CivilizationPaul Henry LangW. W. Norton and Company1941 The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Classical MusicRobert AinsleyCarlton Books Limited1995 The Cambridge Music GuideStanley SadieCambridge University Press1985 School text: Western European Orchestral MusicMary AllenHamilton Girls’ High School1999 History of MusicRoy BennettCambridge University Press1982 Classical Music for DummiesDavid PogueIDG Books Worldwide,Inc1997
Thiebaux, Marcelle. The Writings of Medieval Women: An Anthology. New York: Garland Publishing. 1994. Print.
Fantham, Elaine, Helene Peet Foley , Natalie Boymel Kampen, Sarah B. Pomeroy, and H. Alan Shapiro.Women in the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
John Warrack, author of 6 Great Composers, stated, “Any study of a composer, however brief, must have as its only purpose encouragement of the reader to greater enjoyment of the music” (Warrack, p.2). The composers and musicians of the Renaissance period need to be discussed and studied so that listeners, performers, and readers can appreciate and understand the beginnings of music theory and form. The reader can also understand the driving force of the composer, whether sacred or secular, popularity or religious growth. To begin understanding music composition one must begin at the birth, or rebirth of music and the composers who created the great change.
Ostlere, Hilary. “Taming The Musical.” Dance Magazine 73.12 (1999): 84. Expanded Academic ASAP. Westfield State College Library, MA. 15 April 2005.
Music has shaped the lives of people throughout history. Even in its earliest forms, music has included use of instruments. One of the oldest musical instruments known is a variation of the flute; the original flute is thought to date back nearly 67,000 years ago. Tonight we are going to move throughout the eras with a history of instrumental music. This concert will begin with the Renaissance Era and continue through time until we have reached modern instrumental music.
In the past of humanity, women's status have always been ambigious. Either they were worshipped as goddesses or despised as unworthy workers. In this research I will analyze closely what it means to be a female in our age and in medieval period by means of two sagas: The Saga of The Volsungs and The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"Women in the Middle Ages." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 May 2013. Web. 05 Nov. 2013.
1Fantham, E., with H. P. Foley, N. B. Kampen, S. B. Pomeroy, and H. A Shapiro, Women in the Classical World. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.
We have always been told from a young age that there is a big difference between men and women. First of all, they look different from their body structure, their views are different, and what’s expected from them is different. But since then, the world has changed so much, to a point where women are able to do things that men can do and vice verse. There are still things that both aren 't able to do just because of nature. As connecting to jazz music, it is considered american classical music, which can be used to describe as strengths of American diversity. Women that have been associated with jazz music have held much respect.
Desler, Anne. "History Without Royalty? Queen and the Strata of the Popular Music Canon." Popular Music 32.3 (2013): 385-405. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
The music trade in 16th Century Europe was an evolving and expanding business. The invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in 1440 and the subsequent improvements made by inventors and music publishers was essential to this expansion. The research presented in this essay examines the work of two music publishers, Ottaviano Petrucci and Pierre Attaingnant, who made significant contributions to the music trade of the mid and early 16th century in Europe. I will argue that their innovations were vital to the expansion of the music trade and influenced music printing methods centuries after their deaths. Their single greatest contribution to the music trade was their alterations to the process of music printing. By making it both