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- Title
Sweet singing in three voices: a musical source from a South German convent?
- Authors
Eichner, Barbara
- Abstract
While documentary evidence widely attests to polyphonic music in South German monasteries and convents in the decades around 1600, the musical repertory of nunneries is largely elusive and few musical sources have come to light that can be traced to a specific religious house. This article suggests that a set of three partbooks of tricinia, kept today in the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg (Tonkunst Schletterer 543 and 544) and in the Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek Regensburg (b.259–67), may have originated in a Franciscan convent. The majority of the 251 short settings are based on texts attributed to the Franciscan St Bonaventure, while others take up imagery particularly relevant to religious women. The stylistic features, leaning towards traditional three-part polyphony, the systematic ordering and the frequent word painting are consistent with compositional tendencies in the early 17th century. This musical source is contextualized in the sphere of convent music in the ‘Age of Confessionalization’ on the one hand and the practice of tricinia singing— usually associated with Protestant Latin schools—on the other. Two potential places of provenance tentatively emerge for the partbooks: the convent of the Poor Clares in Regensburg or—more likely—the Franciscan Tertiaries of Maria Stern in Augsburg, where a rich musical culture unfolded in the first decades of the 17th century.
- Subjects
GERMANY; SACRED vocal trios; SACRED music -- History &; criticism; SONGBOOKS; FRANCISCAN convents; 17TH century music -- History &; criticism; COUNTERPOINT
- Publication
Early Music, 2011, Vol 39, Issue 3, p335
- ISSN
0306-1078
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/em/car051