The court chapel of Maximilian I. between art and politics

This project will provide the first comprehensive account of the court chapel (Hofkapelle) of Maximilian I, one of the premier musical establishments in Europe around 1500. Previous essays on Maximilians Hofkapelle have dealt only with isolated aspects or limited bodies of archival documentation, or have failed to take full account of recent developments in the study of Maximilians reign or of early modern court culture. The proposed project will firstly consolidate previous musicological research into Maximilians chapel, and secondly take account of the work of scholars in other fields, such as that of political historians on the structures and processes governing life in the chapel as an administrative unit within the imperial court, and of art historians on Maximilians use of spectacle and ceremony to express his imperial power. One innovative aspect of the project is a prosopography (biographical database) encompassing all the singers, organists and composers attached to Maximilians chapel. This will include new and accurate transcriptions of all previously published documentation. (Transcriptions in older literature are often incomplete or inaccurate.) It will also include newly identified documentary material from archives in Western and Eastern Europe which have not yet been systematically exploited by musicologists. The available data on most individual singers are fragmentary, but the collection of large amounts of data on a circumscribed group should permit the researcher to detect general patterns and trends in the geographical and social origin of the chapels singers; their recruitment, training and career paths; their extra-musical education and employment within the imperial administration; the financial arrangements supporting the operation of the chapel; the fate of members of the chapel after Maximilians death in 1519, and so on. The systematic examination of descriptions and visual representations of the performance of the Hofkapelle in masses, coronations, state weddings and other high-profile events should suggest conclusions about the ways in which the chapel was deployed in imperial ceremonial and image-making, and will also provide valuable information about performance practice. To locate relevant documentation, the project will first use the Regesta imperii, a database of digests of documentation from the imperial court held in archives in Austria and Germany. Information gathered from other archives will subsequently be fed back into the online database of the Regesta imperii. The prosopographical data will also be fed into a larger database of singers, hosted at the Centre dÉtudes Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours). In this way, the data collected will be made available for reuse in different ways.

Maximilian I Habsburg (1459-1519), one of the most famous rulers of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire, has long been known as an important patron of music. However, surprisingly little has been published on the structures and personnel of Maximilian's "chapel," the group of clerical singers who provided the musical adornment for the daily liturgy, as well as guidance, comfort and absolution to the prince and his court. Fifteenth-century princes wanted to enjoy elaborate polyphonic music in their court chapels. Maximilian had the means to enjoy such music without having to pay too much for it. Many of Maximilian's predecessors had invested money or land to provide a perpetual income for a cleric of their choice to say prayers or celebrate masses that would, it was believed, help the souls of their loved ones escape sooner from Purgatory. Maximilian, legal heir to these founders, presented his chaplains to such "benefices" (endowed clerical offices) to provide them with an income, while he paid only for their food and accommodation at court. The chaplains then paid a "vicar" (substitute) to perform the liturgical services demanded by the charter of foundation, returning to the benefice only occasionally. While such arrangements were often criticised for draining collegiate or cathedral churches of money and talent, chaplains might also represent the interests of their "home" benefice before Maximilian, or act as his eyes on the ground. In the fifteenth century, princely chapels were thus not merely centres of musical innovation, but also a testing ground for the relationship between princes and the church. This project draws on archival material from across Europe to permit us to reconstruct the personnel of Maximilian's chapel. It examines the careers of its singers, organists and composers, from their recruitment as boys; their training in music, literacy and numeracy; their subsequent education at university; to their later careers, whether back in the chapel, in the wider court administration (as secretaries or financial officers), or beyond. It examines the chapel's musical stars - the singer Jean Cordier, the organist Paul Hofhaimer, the composers Antoine Busnois, Henricus Isaac and Ludwig Senfl - as well as chaplains who served as notaries, diplomats or even bishops. It also investigates the sometimes tense relationship between Maximilian and the popes, who sometimes criticised what they considered his overreach, while still wishing to keep him as a powerful ally against the advance of the Turks from the east or the French from the north. This project also examines the activity of Maximilian's chaplains when absent from court, back in their benefices, whether imposing administrative norms to enable more effective tithe-collection, providing for their illegitimate children, or even helping to disseminate the kind of music sung at court.