Interpreting the Mensural Notation of Music: An Expert System Based on the Theory of Johannes Tinctoris
Dr Jeffrey J. Dean: Principal Investigator
: Researcher
Dr David Lewis: Researcher
Interpreting the Mensural Notation of Music听is a 48-month interdisciplinary collaborative research project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (2017鈥�2021) that brings together experts in music history, music theory, and digital musicology to develop a twenty-first-century response to a challenge posed by the notation of late-medieval music and addressed by the fifteenth-century music theorist Johannes Tinctoris (1435鈥�1511).
As part of this project, Christian is preparing digital critical editions and associated contextual studies of听Antoine Busnoys鈥檚听Missa L鈥檋omme arm茅, and Johannes Tinctoris鈥檚听Missa primi toni听补苍诲听Missa Quinti toni irregularis. This forms part of a more general investigation of changing music-notational practices in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Johannes Tinctoris and Music Theory in the Late Fifteenth Century, ed. Christian Goursaud and Ronald Woodley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020)
Christian is Lead Editor of this forthcoming book, which听unites听contributions from world-leading specialists and Early Career Researchers听in a resource that is broadly focused on Tinctoris's theoretical works, and which听explores their relevance to a wide range of issues in late-fifteenth century music including polyphonic and modal theory, improvisatory practices, and manuscript source studies. It also presents a conspectus of recent researches in Tinctoris's biography, accompanied by transcriptions and facsimiles of previously unpublished documentary material.听The publication听features audio examples听specially recorded by The Clerks (dir. Edward Wickham), and听Uri Smilansky听& Randall Cook.
Christian鈥檚 research concerns the aesthetically beautiful and intellectually stimulating body of choral music created by European composers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He seeks to illuminate how and why this music was composed, written down, published, and performed. Christian has a particular fascination with the collecting-together of music in manuscript books and how such acts contextualise music in time and place. Documentary records of the activities of musicians, scribes, and their patrons also provide exciting and challenging opportunities to flesh out the world these pieces of music inhabited
As an active professional singer of music as well as an academic, Christian believes that performance should form an important part of our modern engagement with renaissance music, and he would like to invite audiences into the experience of reading and singing from the mensural music notation of the time. This is an activity that perhaps brings us closest of all to the reality of renaissance music making and thought. His continuous engagement with the music theory of Johannes Tinctoris (c.1435鈥�1511) underpins such exploratory research; though his importance to our modern understanding of early renaissance music has been appreciated for some time, only now are the full ramifications of his extensive writings beginning to be explored.
听Grants and funding
- Arts & Humanities Research Council: Research Grant, 鈥業nterpreting the Mensural Notation of Music: An Expert System Based on the Theory of Johannes Tinctoris鈥�, 2017鈥�2021 (拢837碍).
- Arts & Humanities Research Council: Doctoral Studentship, 鈥楾he Neapolitan Presentation Manuscripts of Tinctoris鈥檚 Music Theory: Valencia 835 and Bologna 2573鈥�, 2012鈥�2015 (拢42K).
PhD Dissertation Outline
鈥楾he Neapolitan Presentation Manuscripts of Tinctoris鈥檚 Music Theory: Valencia 835 and Bologna 2573鈥�, is a detailed codicological and palaeographical study of two important textual sources of Tinctoris鈥檚 music theory. Treating the manuscripts as historical artefacts that encode information about the priorities and concerns of those who brought them into existence, the thesis presents their first complete physical descriptions, and employs detailed palaeographical, iconographical, and historical analysis to establish the likely circumstances of, and reasons for, their production.
Research Supervision
Christian is available to supervise graduate research projects to doctoral completion, and welcomes enquiries from potential students with interests in his areas of research:
- Fifteenth and sixteenth-century music and music theory.
- Codicology/manuscript studies.
- Palaeography.
- Modern performance of mensural music notation.
- Medieval and Renaissance cultural and intellectual history.
Print & Online
听to听Thomas Tallis: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, The Gentlemen of HM Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, dir. Carl Jackson (Resonus Classics compact disc RES10229, 2018).
Johannes Tinctoris and Music Theory in the Late Fifteenth Century, ed. Christian Goursaud and Ronald Woodley (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming in 2020).
鈥楾he Production and History of Valencia 835鈥�, in听Johannes Tinctoris and Music Theory in the Late Fifteenth Century, ed. Christian Goursaud and Ronald Woodley (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming in 2020).
With Ronald Woodley, 鈥楤ologna 2573 and the Naples鈥揌ungary Axis鈥�, in听Johannes Tinctoris and Music Theory in the Late Fifteenth Century, ed. Christian Goursaud and Ronald Woodley (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming in 2020).
Conference Papers
- 鈥楽cribal Process in the Presentation Manuscripts of Tinctoris's Music Theory鈥� Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Sheffield, 2016.
- 鈥榁isual Decoration in the Presentation Manuscript Sources of Tinctoris鈥檚 Theoretical Works鈥�: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Brussels, 2015.
- 鈥楽cripts and Scribes of the Neapolitan Sources of Johannes Tinctoris鈥檚 Theoretical Works鈥�: Johannes Tinctoris and Music Theory in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, London, 2014.
- 鈥楯ohannes Tinctoris and the Order of the Ermine鈥�: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Certaldo, 2013.
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