Med-Ren: alive and well

Abstract

Although early music may seem to be somewhat embattled in certain academic quarters, continued and increasing interest among the scholarly community at large is evident from the splendid turnout to the 2005 Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference (hereafter, ‘Med-Ren’). Over 150 participants congregated at the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours, where the event was hosted by Philippe Vendrix. The large size of the conference necessitated three parallel sessions for much of the event: two were held in the Centre itself (the air-conditioned Salle Rapin and the charming, but swelteringly hot, Salle Saint-Martin), use being made additionally of the municipal Salle des Halles nearby, where plenary papers and other sessions of wide interest were given. With so much material from which to choose, I inevitably missed much of great interest. The first morning was a case in point, since in Salle Rapin Tallis and Byrd were under discussion, and in the Salle des Halles recent trends in Isaac scholarship. In the Tallis and Byrd session, several different analytical perspectives were explored: David Trendell examined Byrd's use of homophony, William Mahrt melodic traits in the 1589 and 1591 Cantiones sacrae, and Jeremy Summerly the difficulties of reconstructing Tallis's incomplete Missa Salve intemerata. Kerry McCarthy brought the two composers together in a reading of the 1575 Cantiones sacrae, touching on context and prefatory material, as well as the musical content of the collection.