Practical and pedagogical intentions: new perspectives on the organ masses from the Tablature of Johannes of Lublin

The Tablature of Johannes of Lublin (1537-1548), originating from Krasnik, Poland, is the largest sixteenth-century organ tablature. Its liturgical and secular repertoire is a key to understanding the development of European keyboard music, which began to exhibit an idiomatic style around 1550. Prior research on liturgical organ music has largely neglected this Polish manuscript, although it contains the largest number of organ masses from any single extant sixteenth-century source. This study examines these organ masses from the practical (their use in worship) and pedagogical perspectives using primary sources—sixteenth-century liturgical books and the Tablature’s own treatise on improvisation and composition—to analyze liturgical aspects and musical style. This dissertation is organized around three topics: a distinct liturgical practice, a collaboration between two scribes, and a coherent musical style built upon the methods in the Tablature’s treatise. My findings offer new perspectives on the organ mass and musical transmission. The masses from the Tablature demonstrate a distinct, regional liturgical practice combining Central-European chant repertoire and Northern-tradition alternatim patterns. In the course of examining the original manuscript, I discovered that some of these organ masses contain the first documented collaboration by two scribes on the same musical work in a keyboard tablature. The treatise provides principles for improvisational composition on a chant; it is also the earliest extant instructional source on four-voice counterpoint at the keyboard. Its didactic approach is significant because it integrates techniques from vocal polyphony with the Fundamentum approach in ars organisandi treatises. The masses exemplify all the methods in the treatise, thereby enriching the pedagogical value of the entire Tablature. Interpreting the masses’ repertoire concordances with the treatise provides new information on musical transmission during the Renaissance. This study also includes tables that summarize, update, and resolve issues in past research. All the original chants used in the Tablature’s masses are now correctly identified according to sixteenth-century Polish sources. Scribal attribution of each folio in the manuscript is listed in appendix A. I supply the first complete table of alternatim patterns (musical exchanges between choir and organ) in all extant organ masses between 1500 and 1568. A supplement to this document provides a recording from a live performance of the three complete mass cycles with Flores Rosarum, directed by Dr. hab. Susi Ferfoglia, and cantor Lukasz Laxy at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Krakow, Poland on May 29, 2018. My findings indicate that the organ masses from the Tablature of Johannes of Lublin demonstrate a consistent liturgical practice and exemplify a coherent compositional style arising from the distinctive pedagogy of the treatise