Text, music and gender in the Middle Ages

Abstract

For the fourth consecutive year, the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society combined its Annual General Meeting with a study day (26 April, 2008, University of Bristol), continuing a trend that points to the high levels of lively scholarly activity supported by the Society. This year's study day, ‘Ave/Eva: text, music and gender in the Middle Ages’, broke with (albeit short) tradition in several ways, however: it was the first to be held outside Oxford, and—unlike the previous years’ focus on parish churches, cathedrals and medieval song—was devised around a cultural theme, rather than a type of institution or a generic category. Co-ordinated by Lisa Colton (Huddersfield) and Emma Hornby (Bristol), the programme touched on a wide variety of medieval music under its topical umbrella of gender, and brought together studies of performance, music theory and music's historical contexts. Perhaps surprisingly, issues of masculinity were much more prominent than those of femininity throughout the day. Several papers explored the ways in which male–male cultural intercourse in the Middle Ages left its mark on musical repertory and on writings about music. Two papers (by Elizabeth Eva Leach and Yolanda Plumley respectively) focused on the poetic competitions engaged in by Guillaume de Machaut and his contemporaries, showing how such exchanges, mediated through clerical, legal and courtly circles, were akin to a ‘flexing of poetic and musical muscle’ in the face of their female dedicatees (whether worldly or celestial). Paula Higgins traced the early reception of Josquin's motet Planxit autem David in the light of contemporary homoeroticism, situating the discussion of Josquin's music alongside similar debates surrounding art—most prominently Michelangelo's David—in 16th-century Europe.