Musical Life of the late Middle Ages in the Austrian Region

1. General aims and character Musical Life is a research project which aims to produce new evidence about the musical culture in the Austrian region in the period c. 1340- c. 1520. It is a scholarly investigation of the cultural significance of music, based on documents such as musical scores, archival documents, literary sources, images of art, architecture and material remains, which it embeds in a new historiography of musical life in the region. The text is written in a language that is understandable to non-specialists, and laid out in the guise of a museum catalogue; its 40 short chapters usually focus on selected significant pieces of music and/or documents. Musical sound examples are also offered. 2. Research status The main distinction of the project from earlier scholarship in this field is its focus on cultural history. The transmitted music will be placed in the context of the "musical life" of the people living at the time: their materiality and spirituality, daily life, artistic practices, popular and courtly cultures, ceremonial and intellectual traditions. Musical Life emphasises spatial aspects and regional differentiations, but also revaluates the cultural relations of music in the Austrian region with that of the rest of Europe. 3. Human resources The three main collaborators are: Prof. Dr. Birgit Lodes, a leading specialist of Renaissance music, chair of music history at the University of Vienna, Institute of Musicology; Prof. em. Dr. Reinhard Strohm, University of Oxford, a member of the advisory board of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and long- time researcher of late-medieval music in central Europe; Mag. cand. phil. Marc Lewon, musicologist and performer of early music, doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. Over 30 international experts of music history, cultural studies and other related disciplines have agreed to carry out contracted work or act as honorary advisors. Junior scholars (doctoral and diploma candidates of the University of Vienna) will also be involved through short-time contracts. 4. Strategies of production and dissemination In order to reach a wide readership, the project will be published both as a book and online. Specially- commissioned musical performances of the pieces described are offered as sound examples (online version) and CDs (book version). The results will be disseminated at international conferences, through individual publications, and in a lecture-concert in Vienna at the end of 2013. 5. Intended results and impact Musical Life aims to reveal the applicability of cultural studies to music history of this period, and to revaluate the significance of the music of this region in a European historical context. Its impact will thus be methodological - as a cultural historiography of music - and interpretative - as a new valuation of Austria`s position within European musical culture of the late Middle Ages.

The project http://www.musical-life.net (now freely available to the public) has been researched and edited in the years 2011-2016 and is being further updated. It contains 47 essays and 11 spotlights, c. 200 images and music examples, 112 newly-recorded sound examples, and another 24 existing sound recordings reproduced with permission. There is a cumulative bibliography, a searchable media gallery for the images, a searchable file of the sound examples for streaming, and an instruments museum illustrating 23 contemporary musical instruments with sound examples, images, and brief descriptions.In addition to the main editors, 25 specialists have contributed newly-commissioned essays and spotlights. The commissioned sound examples have been newly recorded by four specialised ensembles of late-medieval music. The images have been granted by over 60 museums, libraries and individuals. The project is supported by an interdisciplinary advisory board and by mutual partnerships with research institutes.Musical Life illustrates the cultural history of music in the Austrian region under the Habsburg rulers from Rudolf IV to Maximilian I (c. 1340-c. 1520). Its geographic purview also touches upon the musical histories of the Czech lands, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The musical repertory under consideration, known to specialist editors since the late nineteenth century, is here embedded in its contemporary cultural environments, and made accessible to a wide interdisciplinary readership. Ten large thematic units address the following musical practices and areas of life: musicians and their institutional backgrounds in monasteries, courts, cities, schools; sacred and secular ceremonies; instruments and musical writing; representations of music in art; song and poetry; music education and theory; processes of musical transmission; dancing and theatre; political practices, religious feelings and collective anxieties. The project has already uncovered or first described c. 12 unknown sources of polyphonic music from the region, re-interpreted the uses of known sources, identified relations between musical works and sources (also beyond the region), described local processes of music-making on the basis of archival sources, related little-known images and written testimonies to musical performances. All the texts of the project are annotated with source references, incorporating the most recent international scholarship.