News Detail
Potsdam faculty member investigates Renaissance Music Manuscripts
10.01.09
SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music faculty member Dr. Rebecca L. Gerber will present an academic forum titled “Humanistic Tendencies in Renaissance Music Manuscripts” on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 5 p.m. at SUNY Potsdam’s Wakefield Recital Hall.
Renaissance music scribes took a unique approach to organizing compositions within sources. Unlike medieval repertories, where manuscripts generally conveyed singular types of material for functions that it served, 15th-century sources are often compilations of sacred and secular works, copied side-by-side with seemingly little purpose for such a repertory collection.
The period is well known for its Masses in which vernacular songs are woven into the ecclesiastical Latin texts in compositions like the “Missae L’homme armé” and “Se la face ay pale.”
“Understanding the function and relationships of these different types of compositions is rooted in the humanistic attitudes of musicians and patrons and allows for adjacent but incongruous compositions to be viewed in a new light,” said Dr. Gerber.
Dr. Gerber specializes in 15th-century music. Her edition of the “Sacred Music from the Cathedral at Trent: Trent, Museo provinciale d’ arte, codex1375, monuments of Renaissance Music XII” is the only complete edition from one of the seven Trent Codices.
Her volume, “Johannes Cornago: Complete Works in Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, v. 15” (Madison: A-R Editions, 1984) provided the score and inspiration for “Cornago: Missa de la mapa mundi” recorded by His Majestie’s Clerkes, directed by Paul Hillier.
Dr. Gerber’s articles appear in “Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie Blackburn,” “The New Grove Dictionary of Musicians,” “Trent Conference Proceedings,” “Revista de musicologia,” “Studi musicali” and “Musica Disciplina.”
She provides paper presentations at the International Musicological Society in Madrid, Spain; the Med-Ren Society in Tours National American Musicological Society; and Oxford University, as well as in Trent, Italy.
In 2006, she received a Newberry Library Weiss/Brown publication subvention award, a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2005 and a National Endowment of the Humanities fellowship in 1993.
The event is free, and the public is invited to attend.
Contact:
Rebecca Gerber
(315) 267-3228 | gerberrl@potsdam.edu