The midway assessment is organised in two parts, and starts with a two-hour public seminar, followed by a closed meeting.
The purpose of the midway assessment is to evaluate the progress of the PhD project at a point when it is still possible to make small or more substantial changes.
Programme:
10:15 - 10:40 Welcome, and Presentation by Candidate Johanna-Pauline Thöne
10:45 - 11:45 Comments by, and discussion with Giuliano Di Bacco
11:45 - 12:00 Plenary discussion with the public
Following the public event, there will be a closed meeting between the candidate, invited opponent, and supervisors (12:00 - 12:30).
Summary:
My doctoral project scrutinises polyphonic music associated with the papal court(s) between the Great Western Schism and the Council of Basle (1378–1449), a period of immense controversy in ecclesiastical and secular politics. There are about forty extant musical compositions, whose newly created, mostly Latin, poetic texts refer to the papacy in various ways. In the form of selective case studies, I aim to elucidate how the repertory engaged with current events in order to delineate its performance contexts and audiences. Central questions of the music-textual analyses are: what inspired the poems and who could understand their message? How and with what effect were they set to music? And how, when, and why did this music circulate in society?
In my midway assessment, I shall demonstrate how a single – barely legible – parchment fragment can provide starting points for answering these questions. Concretely, I will exemplify how palaeography, manuscript studies, and music analysis help establish a diachronic connection between the origin and reception communities of ‘papal’ polyphony.