Pythagoras as Musician
MUSIC IN THE MAKING OF EUROPE 1000-1300
A series of five public lectures from December 2004 to May 2005, given by CHRISTOPHER PAGE sponsored by the Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London, supported by the British Library
Lecture 4, Tuesday 8 March, from 6 pm to 7 pm at the British Library Conference Centre:
*MUSIC AND COURTLINESS*
The elite civilisation of Europe in the central and later Middle ages is often spoken of as a ‘courtly’ one, where the ‘courts’ at issue include the households of secular magnates, bishops and abbots. Men and women of exalted station had always possessed courts in the West, since Roman imperial times, but after approximately 1050 writings from Western Europe refer with increasing frequency to a quality of ‘courtliness’, or curialitas. A music theorist of c1100, whom we know only by the name ‘Johannes’, is the first European writer to identify certain kinds of music as inherently ‘courtly’ (curialis) and therefore appropriate to courtliness. Since his treatise is a technical one, we can trace this courtliness in terms of actual musical procedures. We can also place him, with some confidence, exactly where other sources lead us to expect him, in the episcopal and indeed imperial milieux of ‘Germany’.
Admission is free, without ticket.
For further details and directions to the venue please visit
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Music/Research/Distinguishedlectures.html.