Subproject 1: Religious Musicking at Night, 1500-1800
Sub-project 1, dedicated to “Religious Musicking at Night (c.1500-1800),” focuses firstly on music practices in the monastic daily schedule: The canonical hours prescribed prayer and, by implication, liturgical music, at seven times a day - including in the evening (vespers), at bedtime (before the first sleep), and at midnight (after the first sleep). Secondly, the question of musicking in the context of domestic piety will be reconsidered: For the early modern population, who worked from sunrise to sunset, the question arises as to the time when the devotional songs printed for home use from the early 16th century onwards were actually sung?
Individual Projects
Jan Temme
Nocturnal Piety: The Musical Performance and Theological Background of the Compline and Matins, and the Nightly Prayer in Leipzig between 1650 and 1800
In pre-industrial societies, the waking phase in between the first and the second sleep during the night was a time dedicated to many activities – amongst others to prayer. Nine canonical hours organized the Christian day as well as the night in pre-reformatory times. The Compline closed the day, while the Matins were sung at its opening forming the two nocturnal hours. During the reformation though, the liturgy of the hours underwent drastic changes. Even though certain Protestant theologians initially intended to keep its forms, others reduced the number of canonical hours increasingly. Slowly, the practice of the liturgy of the hours decreased and made room for a rather free form of prayer with hymns dedicated to the morning and the evening. Still, until the end of the 18th century, the Matins was sung in Leipzig every Sunday before the main service in St. Nicholas Church. Being one of the intellectual centres of German Protestantism as well as a fair city, Leipzig is especially suited for a study of the liturgical development regarding the canonical hours. Why did the practice of the liturgy of the hours decline? At which point is it more useful to speak of a nocturnal prayer rather than a canonical hour? And how did the people of Leipzig perform these prayers? How did performers harmonise the hymns they played and sang?
To answer these questions, a thorough social analysis based on a range of sources will be undertaken. Amongst others, diaries as much as letters and of course hymnals and chorale books like the one by Gottfried Vopelius (1682) and the annotations within these books deliver the source material used in my dissertation. My research intends to shed new light on a daily practice and thus to illuminate a soundscape so far neglected within musicological research.
CV
I studied Musicology (M.A.) and Theology (Mag. Theol.) at the universities of Freiburg, Vienna, and Oslo. During my studies, I worked as research assistant in dogmatics and liturgical science and as tutor for historical notation. I also published academic articles on church music and reviews on academic publications, scores and recordings. As a guest researcher at the Center for Grundtvigforskning in Aarhus, the Fryske Akademy in Leeuwarden, and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen I gained first experiences in academia.
My research interests are hymnology and liturgical music mostly in protestant areas in Central Germany, the North Sea coast, and Scandinavia during the 16th – 19th centuries as well as Old Germanic philology and the overall connections between religious belief, culture, and music.
Dr. Federico Lanzellotti
“Because Night is Perfection”: Sacred and Devotional Musicking During the Night in Seventeenth-Century Secular Contexts
What did religious and devotional musicking at night look like in 17th century secular contexts? What repertoires, musical behaviours, topics, instruments and styles were associated with the sacred representation of the night in the age between the completion of the Council of Trent (1563) and the epilogue of the War of the Spanish Succession (1715)?
In order to address these questions, in my project I will focus on a series of emblematic case-studies and new paths of research employing interdisciplinary innovative and transversal methodological approaches to sources from the past. In light of the intricate political, economic, cultural and religious panorama that constitutes Modern Europe, the cities of Bologna, Modena and Vienna, strongly linked but highly different with regard to their political, socio-economic, artistic and cultural background, offer the ideal setting for a comprehensive multi-perspective study, which can be contextualised within the broader Italian and European panorama. The reconsideration of musical activity as marked and influenced by day and night, and an overall view of music as a complex cultural and sociological phenomenon will allow a multifaceted outlook on musicking in the seventeenth century.
CV
After receiving my PhD in Musicology (Bologna – Madrid, 2022) I was a research fellow at the University of Padua and a contract researcher at the Conservatory of Venice. I am editor of two volumes for the opera omnia of Giovanni Bononcini (Fondazione Arcadia – Milan) and Giuseppe Tartini (University of Padua – Bärenreiter) and I wrote a monograph on the life and works of Carlo Ambrogio Lonati (forthcoming). I combine my interest in philology and musical dramaturgy with my work as a harpsichordist and organist in concerts and recordings.
My main research interests are the 17th- and 18th-century serenata and Italian violin sonata as well as contemporary music, particularly the harpsichord works of György Ligeti and the musical theatre of Silvia Colasanti. I usually collaborate with various national and international cultural institutions and associations that promote music, including the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi of Venice and the International Baroque Festival “Grandezze e Meraviglie” of Modena.