Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380–1513

Christopher Alan Reynolds

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520309258
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520313675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

A new picture of music at the basilica of St. Peter's in the fifteenth century emerges in Christopher A. Reynolds's fascinating chronicle of this rich period of Italian musical history. Reynolds examines archival documents, musical styles, and issues of artistic patronage and cultural context in a fertile consideration of the ways historical and musical currents affected each other. This work is both a historical account of performers and composers and an examination of how their music revealed their cultural values and educational backgrounds. Reynolds analyzes several anonymous masses copied at St. Peter's, proposing attributions that have biographical implications for the composers. Taken together, the archival records and the music sung at St. Peter's reveal a much clearer picture of musical life at the basilica than either source would alone. The contents of the St. Peter's choirbook help document musical life as surely as that musical life—insofar as it can be reconstructed from the archives—illumines the choirbook. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One Before the Hiring of Northerners 1380-1447
• Chapter Two Northern Musicians at St. Peter’s 1447-1513
• Chapter Three Organs
• Chapter Four SPB80 and the St. Peter’s Manuscript Tradition
• Chapter Five The Patronage of Northerners at St. Peter’s
• Chapter Six Musical Connoisseurship
• Chapter Seven Faugues Attribution and Association
• Chapter Eight Caron Attribution
• Chapter Nine Martini Association and Attribution
• Chapter Ten Contrapuntal Allusions in Polyphonic Masses
• Chapter Eleven Northern Polyphony, Northern Composers, and Humanist Rhetoric
• Chapter Twelve The Changing Status of Northerners at St. Peter’s
• Appendix One Archival Records Pertaining to Music at St. Peter’s
• Appendix Two Musical Personnel at St. Peter’s, 1421-1508
• Appendix Three Nationality of St. Peter’s Singers (1447-1513), Known or Presumed
• Appendix Four Inventory of SPB80 and List of Manuscript Abbreviations
• Appendix Five Occurrences of the Motive d-f-e—a’ in Works from circa 1430 to 1470
• Bibliography
• Index