MedRen 2010

Abstract

July 2010 saw music students, scholars and performers from across the world descend on Royal Holloway, University of London, for the annual Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference. A total of 177 delegates attended over the four days, a record figure in the conference's history. The event was organized and impeccably run by Helen Deeming and a team of her students. The conference reflected some of the leading research currently taking place in medieval and Renaissance music. Ninety-eight papers, most in English but with a small number in other European languages, were given by speakers from 21 countries. Subjects ranged from studies of pre-Gregorian chant, through to the considerations of song and gender in the Middle Ages and the present-day marketing of polyphony. The latter paper, ‘The production and marketing of Renaissance polyphony in the modern age’ was given by freelance conductor and performer David Allinson, who discussed the place of sacred polyphony within today's secular performance and recording contexts. Allinson's enlightening and entertaining paper was followed by a response from Matthew O’Donovan, a member of Stile Antico, who was able to share his first-hand experience of the promotion of early music. Allinson's paper was one of nine given on the topic of Music in Tudor and Stuart England. Other papers within this topic included discussions of Byrd, Browne, Sheppard, music for Queen Elizabeth I's Accession, Edward Paston's music collection, and a newly discovered portrait of Nicholas Lanier. In addition there were a number of panels devoted to music in 16th-century Italy, covering topics such as secular music, publishing in Counter-Reformation Rome, Willaert and Weerbeke in Venice, and courtly patronage and public performance. Also well represented was Iberia, with papers ranging from reflections of 15th-century Iberian chapels in the Vatican Archives, to Royal exequies in early 16th-century Spain and an anonymous Requiem Mass. Pierre de la Rue was given particular prominence, with seven papers dedicated to his motets.