Abstract
Digital technologies can help scholars to navigate the vast quantities of musical data and source materials now available to them, but an imaginative leap is needed in order to conceptualize the kinds of musicological research questions we might ask of electronic corpora. In particular, our data-rich digital world offers enormous potential for the exploration of musical transmission and relatedness. In this article, we explore the 16th- and 17th-century instrumental battaglia (battle piece), a genre with a very distinctive collective identity arising from the use of numerous shared ingredients (including melodic, motivic, textural, harmonic and rhythmic features). However, a battaglia is not defined by the presence of a core set of essential features, and exact concordance between these pieces is often remarkably low. This kind of musical ‘family resemblance’ (formulated after Wittgenstein) poses a serious challenge to both traditional musicological apparatus (for example, finding aids such as thematic catalogues) and Music Information Retrieval (which has often privileged melodic similarity at the expense of other kinds of musical relatedness). This case study provides a stimulus for rethinking the complex nature of musical similarity. In doing this, we outline a set of requirements for digital tools that could support the discovery, exploration and representation of these kinds of relationships.
Highlights
Almost all musicological research relies in some way upon the use of catalogues and other finding aids, enabling users to discover, organize and filter their raw materials—usually the notated music itself
In order to explore these issues, we shall draw upon the instrumental battaglia, a descriptive genre which enjoyed widespread popularity across early modern Europe
These pieces are often lengthy collages of mimetic material, designed to evoke the sounds of trumpets, drums and fifes, the sonic dimensions of early modern warfare. These elements are rather simplistic, reflecting the inherent limitations of the instruments and ensembles being depicted: repeated rhythmic patterns, fanfare-like figures and snatches of diatonic melody, usually presented over a backdrop of static tonic harmony.[1]. Today such works are rarely heard on the concert stage or in the recording studio,[2] and their reception amongst musicologists has been largely negative
Summary
These pieces are often lengthy collages of mimetic material, designed to evoke the sounds of trumpets, drums and fifes, the sonic dimensions of early modern warfare These elements are rather simplistic, reflecting the inherent limitations of the instruments and ensembles being depicted: repeated rhythmic patterns, fanfare-like figures and snatches of diatonic melody, usually presented over a backdrop of static tonic harmony.[1]. The sheer number of battle pieces in extant 16th- and 17th-century sources points to their popularity amongst contemporaneous musicians, and they provide us with a rich seam of insights into both the processes of musical transmission and conceptions of musical relatedness These pieces are sometimes assumed to be derived directly from Clément Janequin’s famous chanson La bataille de Marignan (1528), this group constitutes a much more loosely defined genre, connected by various melodic, motivic, harmonic, textural and paratextual features; they are not merely the progeny of a single seminal work.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
