Courtly collectors: Instrumental music for the fifteenth-century Italian nobility. (Volumes I and II).

Italian manuscripts of polyphony copied before 1450 primarily contain texted pieces, while those copied after the middle of the century include many pieces without text. Did the scribes of these manuscripts omit the texts, or did they have no texts to copy? Some scholars have identified a few of these pieces as instrumental, basing their conclusions on particular musical characteristics. Others have rejected the notion that they were conceived for instruments because the musical evidence remains inconclusive. Yet if we consider the cultural setting as well as the musical evidence, the hypothesis that the textless pieces were written for instruments gains strength. I examine both the musical and cultural contexts of these pieces, the former to determine certain musical traits of the genre, the latter to explore the cultural factors contributing to their development. The eleven Italian manuscripts under consideration contain not only untexted pieces, but also a few texted ones, as well as some with texted concordances. In the first half of my study, I separate the texted from the untexted pieces and then analyze and compare certain features in an effort to identify musical differences. While some untexted pieces resemble texted ones, many are different, and these differences suggest that numerous untexted pieces are indeed a separate genre. I then discuss the cultural setting of this music to account for the development of the new genre of music composed for instruments. The particular manuscripts of textless music were connected to courts that boasted large artistic establishments where the nobles patronized and perceived art in new ways that set them apart from earlier practices. Archival pay records, household inventories and contemporary letters show that attitudes about artistic production and consumption changed during the fifteenth century, and they suggest that the new cultural ambience at these courts was consistent with an emerging new concept of music. The implications of a new type of consumption, art collecting, indicates that the audience was receptive to a new aesthetic ideal also implied by the performance of instrumental music. While compositions in textless manuscripts have been viewed by some only as incomplete examples of the older style of song, a study of the cultural context of the textless manuscripts suggests that they may reflect a new style of patronage and the changing aesthetic values of their milieu.Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsCultural anthropologyMusicSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128863/2/9226834.pd