Controlling Voices in Fourteenth-Century Salzburg: Singing and Identity in the ‘MÖnch von Salzburg’ Songs

Abstract

ABSTRACT The songs attributed to the so-called ‘Mönch von Salzburg’ offer a vivid picture of the late fourteenth-century ecclesiastical court of Archbishop Pilgrim von Pucheim. Against the background of historical and legal documentation from Salzburg, this article explores the way these songs negotiate the desires and anxieties of a mixed clerical-courtly milieu with a particular concern for regulating the human voice in both artistic and social senses. Taking as my central example Dy trumpet, one of the earliest pieces of recorded secular polyphony in the German world, I examine how both the singing and composition of song at Pilgrim’s court offered ways to certify one’s vocal interventions as positive and thereby to assure curial kudos. In a final section, I consider how later, non-curial recipients of these songs were able to vehicularize these courtly voices to their own advantage.