Tam in dictamine quam in cantu: A study of concepts and contexts in the rhymed offices of Orrigo Scaccabarozzi (d. 1293).
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780494219881
Description: This study explores the rhymed Offices of the Milanese composer-poet Orrigo Scaccabarozzi (d. 1293) from the point of view of broad concepts relating to style, culture, and artistic thought. In particular, it explores concepts of authorship and collection in the late thirteenth century, aspects of biography and politics in Scaccabarozzi's works, and the symbolic meanings of musical notation styles in late medieval Milan. The handful of personal letters that exist within Scaccabarozzi's musical collections, for instance, suggest much about his authorial self-perception, and they illuminate aspects of his own biography in his liturgical texts. The existence of a bi-notational Office for St Ursula likewise brings to light aspects of political and cultural context, as well as a host of biographical, paleographical, and performance issues.Features such as musical notation and textual orthography play a significant role in determining performance practices, which not only inform Scaccabarozzi's own songs but also the wider musical context of late medieval Milan and its surrounds. This work explores some of the details of performance, such as textual performativity and ceremony, and it begins to investigate issues of music's role in liturgy as drama, and the even more elusive topic of liturgical ceremony as dance.Findings in this study challenge the notion that, after the codification of Ambrosian plainsong in the twelfth century, the repertory had ceased to grow as a living tradition. Each of Scaccabarozzi's works, whether it involves an adaptation of a traditional melody or is a new composition, testifies to the flexibility of the traditional repertory and its potential for growth and change. They also bring some unique evidence of medieval compositional processes into focus. A large number of textual sketches and a handful of musical sketches exist in Scaccabarozzi's collections which verifiably emanated from his own quill. These not only enhance our understanding of how compositions were created, but they inform us of liturgical, theological, and political values that existed in a time of political unrest in the city of Milan.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: A, page: 0026.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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