Pierre De La Research Articles

Amenability of finite energy path and loop groups

It is shown that the groups of finite energy (i.e., Sobolev class H^{1} ) paths and loops with values in a compact Lie group are amenable in the sense of Pierre de la Harpe, that is, every continuous action of such a group on a compact space admits an invariant regular Borel probability measure. To our knowledge, the strongest previously known result concerned the amenability of groups of continuous paths and loops (Malliavin and Malliavin 1992).

A Kind of Chemistry

The author explains that 'A kind of chemistry' was the way the authors of The Gifts of Comus (1739) described the new cookery of the European courts, a cookery that had begun to take shape a century earlier with Pierre de la Varenne's Le Cuisinier François (1651). This essay takes their metaphor at face value. It was indeed chemistry, a chemical cookery inspired by a radical group of chemical physicians who treated and advised the aristocracies of northern Europe. The author thanks Alan Davidson who accepted a preliminary sketch of this essay for 'A Mini-Symposium on New Publications' PPC 53 (1996); 47-50, and the organizers and audiences of the Horning Lecture Series in History of Science at Oregon State University and Dibner Lectures in History of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology who bore with successive versions. The present version won the Sophie Coe Prize 1998.

A short presentation of the original Jones polynomial

This text is a brief description of the Jones polynomial as it appears in the announcement in [9], together with Jones’ comments in the letter he addressed to Joan Birman on 31st May 1984 [8]. As much as possible I have followed the author’s initial notations. I add comments about the history of the events as I remember them, with the help of several testimonies of the “actors”. Among them: Didier Hatt-Arnold, Pierre de la Harpe, Cam Van Quach Hongler. It took me nontrivial efforts with my memories to get the chronology right (I hope so). The help of Eva Bayer was decisive. My warmest thanks to her. One may disagree with some of my statements which express a personal opinion. On purpose I have adopted a candid style.

Aurel Stroe: 3. Klaviersonate, En Palimpseste. 2. Satz Hommage à Pierre de la Rue im Musikunterricht „nach Corona“

This paper represents three music lessons of june 2022 concerning the second movement (Hommage à Pierre de la Rue) from Aurel Stroe’s Piano Sonata No. 3, En Palimpseste. The main focus is on professional communication and social interaction between the adolescents, after the lockdowns and corona-restrictions in school. In the comparison of biographical stations by Aurel Stroe and Pierre de la Rue, the pupils open up aspects of the historical-cultural context of Renaissance and contemporary music. The method “sound walk” offers different perspectives on the composition, for example on redundancies, discrepancies, incisions, fractures. The results are questions concerning Stroes compositional personalities, intentions and our own perception.

Zarlino’sComporre di fantasiaand Canon

AbstractIn the Istitutioni harmoniche, Zarlino describes a compositional process in which a countermelody that is introduced against a principal soggetto can itself become a soggetto for the next phrase, and the process can be repeated in subsequent phrases. This study shows how comporre di fantasia functions in passages from Martini, Févin, Isaac, and Josquin. The technique can also inform our understanding of canon composition, which is illustrated with two examples by Pierre de la Rue. For the study of canons at different time intervals, I also invoke the neglected theories of Robert Morris, Robert Gauldin, and Immanuel Ott. Comporre di fantasia is a structural category that provides insight into compositional process in Renaissance polyphony.

Embedding ℚ into a finitely presented group

We observe that the group of all lifts of elements of Thompson’s group T T to the real line is finitely presented and contains the additive group Q \mathbb {Q} of the rational numbers. This gives an explicit realization of the Higman embedding theorem for Q \mathbb {Q} , answering a Kourovka notebook question of Martin Bridson and Pierre de la Harpe.

Order and Finality in the Agnus Dei of Pierre de la Rue’s Missa L’homme armé

Pierre de la Rue’s Missa L’homme armé survives in four sources: BrusBR 9126, VienNB 1783, Petrucci 1503, and JenaU 22. The movement consists of three sections: a section in O; a 4-ex-1 mensuration canon; and a section in sesquialtera. The Brussels and Vienna sources, choirbooks prepared by the early sixteenth-century copyist known as ‘Scribe B’, place the canon second, and the sesquialtera section last. Petrucci reverses the canon and sesquialtera sections, while Jena omits the canon entirely. Stemmatic and notational considerations suggest that Petrucci preserves La Rue’s original conception. This is surprising considering Scribe B’s presumed proximity to the composer, on the one hand, and Petrucci’s presumed distance, on the other.

Ruby’s Oyster Dressing, or Edible Nostalgia

Ruby’s Oyster Dressing, or Edible Nostalgia

Cosmographical Novelties in French Renaissance Prose (1550–1630): Dialectic and Discovery by Raphaele Garrod

Reviewed by: Cosmographical Novelties in French Renaissance Prose (1550–1630): Dialectic and Discovery by Raphaele Garrod Véronique Duché Garrod, Raphaele, Cosmographical Novelties in French Renaissance Prose (1550–1630): Dialectic and Discovery (Early European Research, 9), Turnhout, Brepols, 2016; hardback; pp. x, 389; 12 b/w illustrations, 7 b/w tables; R.R.P. €100.00; ISBN 9782503550459. This impressive book explores how cosmological and cosmographical 'novelties' were explained and presented in early modern France—at a time when Tycho Brahe discovered new stars, Copernicus and Kepler observed comets, and Galileo invented the telescope, we can understand the epistemic 'trouble' it created. Situated at the intersection of intellectual history and the history of science, this book investigates 'the role of dialectical invention in the textual shaping and popularization of some of the major epistemic changes of the early modern period' (p. 14). Focusing on cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole), and cosmography, 'the description of the earth within the greater system of the world' (p. 212), the author studies the 'rhetorical and poetic fabric' of five French Renaissance prose texts. She shows how language shaped the scholarly view of the natural worlds and describes how 'the loci of dialectical invention actually contributed to the articulation, dissemination, and assessment of new cosmological and cosmographical representations' (p. 10) not only in scientific but also in vernacular genres. After a copious introduction ('Cosmographical Novelties: Unravelling the Dialectical Fabric of French Prose', pp. 1–36), the first chapter ('Dialectic and Natural Philosophy: An Early Modern Panorama' pp. 37–97) outlines the history of dialectic—'the art of debating about probable issues' (p. 38), according to Aristotle—and its links with natural philosophy, the study of the heavens, from antiquity to the sixteenth century. It also explores the loci—or argument structures—used to construct a probable demonstration, such as 'from similars', 'from testimony', and 'from description'. After this introductory chapter, the book is divided in two parts, Part I covering the cosmological ('Natural-Theological, Sceptical, and Revolutionary Subversions', Chapters 2 and 3) and the cosmographical novelties ('Inventing the New World and National Geographies', Chapters 4 to 6). All the texts quoted in French are carefully translated. Chapter 2 ('Natural Theology and Cosmological Novelties: The Huguenot Encyclopaedia and the Jesuit Miscellany', pp. 101–50) [End Page 221] focuses on a Protestant encyclopedia (Pierre de La Primaudaye's Troisième tome de l'Académie Françoise, 1590) and a Jesuit textbook (Étienne Binet's Essay des merveilles de nature et des plus nobles artifices, 1621), highlighting in particular how the use of the loci 'from similars' and 'from authority' informed the discussion of novelties about the heavens. Chapter 3 ('Cosmological Fictions: Sceptical and Revolutionary Uses of the Loci', pp. 151–207) examines Montaigne's Essais, ii. 12—the 'Apologie de Raimond Sebond' (written between 1572 and 1592)—and Descartes's heliocentric cosmological fable Le Monde, ou Traité de la lumière, written between 1630 and 1633. Garrod shows how both thinkers, while openly critiquing dialectic and condemning 'the excessive reliance on arguments "from authority" though in different ways' (p. 153), still rely on the use of rhetorical loci in their essays in their efforts to comprehend the heavens. After these works dedicated to cosmology, the author turns to cosmography. Chapter 4 ('Early Modern Cosmography: Definitions and Tensions in Contemporary Scholarship', pp. 211–24) briefly offers some background, clarifying for instance the terms 'cosmography', 'geography', and 'chorography'. Chapter 5 ('The Locus from Authority in Cosmography and Geography', pp. 225–57) and Chapter 6 ('Loci in Cosmography and Geography: Probable Disciplines. Defining Novelties, Inventing National Geographies', pp. 259–311) explore François de Belleforest's Cosmographie universelle de tout le monde (1575), 'a patriotic geographical summa' (p. 5), translated into French from Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia universalis (1550). Through a close study of text and illustrations, the author analyses the use of the loci 'from the parts' and 'from authority' as well as of 'from notation', and how they 'inform the debates of the cosmographical revolution in a variety of ways' (p. 310). She shows how Münster and Belleforest build a political 'consensus about national identity' (p. 260). The short conclusion ('Dialectical...

La trasmissione dell’'ars dialectica' tra i secoli XV e XVI: Lorenzo Valla e Pierre de la Ramée

This essay addresses the theme of the transmission of knowledge starting from the process of traslatio studiorum. Such phenomenon – which occurred between the ancient Greece and occidental Europe since the medieval period – was intended as the triggering phenomenon of a whole series of transmission processes, persisted untill the Renaissance. It is my intention to propose a double riding, considering the Mediterranean area as a transient space, where different current of thoughts have been screened by speculative and linguistical filters, represented by the overlapping of commentators and translators. 
 On first place, I intend to identify this phenomenon of knowledge's transmission, understood as transcultural process, taken in his historical connotation, that is as a process that commutes from one century to another. Secondly, considering the Arabic intervention concerning the translation and comment of Aristotelian auctoritates, I would like to analyze the delicate process of transmission and contamination between different systems of thought. Within these coordinates, it is my intention to focus on the contact between two systems of thought that applied such approaches in the Dialectic field, namely Lorenzo Valla's and Pierre de la Ramée's, better known as Petrus Ramus. I will take the cases of Valla and Ramus as examples of this phenomenon of translation: first, in the historical sense, since there is a shift of approach from century to century; secondly, in a geographical sense that affects the Mediterranean area, as both Valla and Ramus dealth with the linguistic problems linked to dialectic received from the Arabic heritage. I argue that these speculative currents might have come into contact, first, as the product of a long process of translatio studiorum, and then, as heirs of a tradition that had been influenced by the transmissions that had taken place in the Mediterranean.
 In conclusion, the purpose of this note is to show the preliminary and little debated issue of the possible contact between two paradigms of thought which justified a change in the approach of the study of Dialectic between the major Italian centers of knowledge of the XV century and XVI century Paris. This creates the space for some hints of acclimatization of Valla's dialectic at the Ramus paradigm, thanks to the shifting of attention from the perfectly solid linguistic practice in Valla's logical philological method to the correct procedures of reasoning that were completely detached from the metaphysics dimension and projected towards the institution of the Methodus.
 

Salve Jhesu summe bone: a recovered motet of Pierre de la Rue?

The 1597 inventory of manuscripts of Philip II of Spain lists, among its many entries, a music book opening with a six-voice motet Salve Jesu by Pierre de la Rue. Unfortunately this manuscript no longer exists, and as the motet could not be located in any of the Alamire manuscripts or in other sources containing La Rue’s works, it figures as a lost composition in lists of La Rue’s works. This article argues that the motet may not be lost, but is rather preserved as an anonymous work in one of the manuscripts of Johannes Heugel. The six-voice Salve Jhesu in manuscript 91 of the former State Library at Kassel, which sets part of a well-known text that was long attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, is clearly a work from the early 16th century and shows interesting parallels with La Rue’s six-voice motet Pater de caelis.

Review: Tributes to Pierre du Prey: Architecture and the Classical Tradition, from Pliny to Posterity, edited by Matthew M. Reeve

Matthew M. Reeve, ed. Tributes to Pierre du Prey: Architecture and the Classical Tradition, from Pliny to Posterity London: Harvey Miller, 2014, 288 pp., 129 b/w illus. €100, ISBN 9781909400122 “The classical tradition meanders in and out of the history of architecture, sometimes looping back upon itself as if to suggest that time has stood still,” Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey notes at the opening of Hawksmoor's London Churches: Architecture and Theology .1 In that book, du Prey explores how the buildings of the early Christians, although known to Nicholas Hawksmoor only through texts and drawings, inspired the idiosyncratic Anglican churches that Hawksmoor designed in the early eighteenth century. The question of renewed relevance that underpins du Prey's Hawksmoor study, as well as much of his other work, also ties together the sixteen essays of Tributes to Pierre du Prey , edited by Matthew M. Reeve. One of the strengths of this Festschrift is its coherence. An opening essay by Mark Wilson Jones lays out the stakes by posing a dual question: Why do the orders have the forms that they do, and why has that problem proven so intriguing for writers from Vitruvius to the present? He then surveys the various possible origins of three architectural elements—fluting, the Ionic capital, and the Doric frieze—to argue for a multivalent understanding of the orders. Although no single justification for the architectural form of the orders has been produced, Wilson Jones asserts that contradictory explanations can reinforce each other rather than cancel each other out. The title of Guy P. R. Metraux's essay, “Some Other Literary Villas of Roman Antiquity besides Pliny's,” recalls du Prey's book The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity , a magisterial examination of the influence of Pliny the Younger's letters on country house design.2 Metraux supplies context for Pliny's letters, which describe Tuscan and Laurentine villas, by describing the letters of Seneca the Younger, written about forty years before Pliny's, and of Sidonius …

Commentary on the Kervaire–Milnor correspondence 1958–1961

The extant letters exchanged between Kervaire and Milnor during their collaboration from 1958–1961 concerned their work on the classification of exotic spheres, culminating in their 1963 Annals of Mathematics paper. Michel Kervaire died in 2007; for an account of his life, see the obituary by Shalom Eliahou, Pierre de la Harpe, Jean-Claude Hausmann, and Claude Weber in the September 2008 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The letters were made public at the 2009 Kervaire Memorial Conference in Geneva. Their publication in this issue of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society is preceded by our commentary on these letters, providing some historical background.

Abstract P2-05-06: Identification of specific gene signatures and alternative splice variants using exon array in Inflammatory breast Cancer

Abstract Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) is a rare form of breast cancer with a particular phenotype and aggressiveness. Although significant progress has been made in the management of IBC, the prognosis remains poor. Intensive research on IBC has allowed identification of several candidate genes and pathways, but molecular findings unique to IBC have yet to be identified to improve treatment and survival. Transcriptomic studies have revealed a marked heterogeneity of IBC with limited gene overlap between studies, preventing the identification of a sensitive and specific signature in IBC. In order to detect both gene expression levels and alternate RNA splice isoforms, we chose to perform splice-sensitive array profiling using Affymetrix Exon Array in a well-defined series of 33 IBC (core biopsies from previously untreated T4d carcinomas) compared with 28 stage I to non-inflammatory stage III breast cancers. Gene expression analysis allowed the identification of classical molecular subtypes in both IBC and non-IBC, with overrepresentation of basal-like (17/33 vs 9/28) but no luminal A in IBC (vs 11/28). Based on Fold-Change (FC) > 1.5 and p-value < 0.05, 495 genes were significantly dysregulated between IBC and non-IBC, including in particular up-regulated hemoglobin genes and down-regulated ER-related genes in IBC compared to non-IBC. Most activated pathways were hematopoeitic cell lineage, cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, chemokine signalling pathway and complement and coagulation cascade. We defined a 21-gene signature discriminating IBC from non-IBC with 8% error rate. To get rid of genes associated with molecular subtypes like ER-related genes, an analysis restricted to basal-like BC (17 IBC compared to 9 non-IBC) was performed allowing the definition of a 29-gene signature discriminating the whole groups of IBC from non-IBC with 3.3% error rate. Validation of this signature in the gene expression datasets from the World IBC Consortium will be presented. Specific exon expression analysis revealed that when based on FC splicing-index and p-value, 266 exons representing 177 distinct genes were differentially regulated between IBC and non-IBC. After manually curation of results, 13 splice events representing 12 distinct genes were retained as good candidates for alternative splicing in IBC (EVL, RPL10, MYH10, HSPA8, DOCK7, DIDO1, RPL4, TRAK1, RGS1, LMO4, SMARCA4, ZNF337). To confirm gene-signatures specific to IBC, altered pathways and major splice variants, we are performing a validation study using quantitative RT-PCR in the screening set (n=33) and in an independent series of 140 IBC compared to 200 non-stage-matched non-IBC. Finally the most dysregulated genes will also be studied at the protein level using immunohistochemistry. Citation Format: Florence Lerebours, Sophie Vacher, Marie Le Cann, Sophie Rondeau, David Gentien, Steven Van Laere, François Bertucci, Pierre de la Grange, Ivan Bieche. Identification of specific gene signatures and alternative splice variants using exon array in Inflammatory breast Cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2014 Dec 9-13; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(9 Suppl):Abstract nr P2-05-06.

Riemannian metrics on an infinite dimensional symplectic group

The aim of this paper is the geometric study of the symplectic operators which are a perturbation of the identity by a Hilbert–Schmidt operator. This subgroup of the symplectic group was introduced in Pierre de la Harpe's classical book of Banach–Lie groups. Throughout this paper we will endow the tangent spaces with different Riemannian metrics. We will use the minimal curves of the unitary group and the positive invertible operators to compare the length of the geodesic curves in each case. Moreover we will study the completeness of the symplectic group with the geodesic distance.

Sur les origines du concept de méthode à l’âge classique : La Ramée, Bacon et Descartes

Our contemporary concept of method, as a formal discourse that comes before science itself and aims at directing scientific inquiry, prescribing several steps and checking-procedures, is not the concept of method that was familiar to educated 17th-century minds. In the 16th century, the French scholar Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée) was instrumental in importing the notion of “method” from rhetoric into logic. In his French Dialectic (1555) method is described as an art of disposition, which comes after “invention” and “judgment”, and explains how teachers should present and impart their (already acquired) knowledge. This pedagogical meaning was still dominant in the 17th century, even when people, in the wake of Bacon and Descartes, started to consider the notion of a “method of invention”, an expression which would have rung as an oxymoron to anyone schooled in the Ramist tradition. This paper carefully considers Descartes’s and Bacon’s use of the term “method” or “methodus”. Bacon never used it to name his own way of invention (for which he has terms such as “via”, “ratio” or “induction”), and he carefully restricted “method” to the old meaning of an art of transmission. Descartes, even though he may be considered as the inventor of the modern acceptation of method as an ars inveniendi, modelled on geometrical analysis, still retained the old pedagogical connotation – it is quite clear that, for him, acquiring new knowledge methodically was the result of some sort of self-education rather than the application of formal rules. Finally, this study may contribute to revising our standard approach to the contrast between the Baconian and the Cartesian “methods”. It is perhaps not as much epistemological as it is anthropological and maybe religious, revealing important differences in their approaches to human capabilities and the progress of science.

Plus oultre, Pierre de la Rue, and the Emperor’s Music

The manuscript Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Handschriftensammlung, Ms. 9814 includes a section compiled under the supervision of Petrus Alamire that contains five motets and one anonymous chanson, Plus oultre. The works are anomalous within Alamire’s output, copied as they are on a series of separate paper folios. The essay demonstrates that the anonymous chanson, inspired by the motto adopted by Archduke Charles at the age of sixteen, is unlikely to be by the recently retired court composer Pierre de la Rue. It further documents how most of the non-Alamire works included in the manuscript are directly connected to later members of the Habsburg dynasty, strengthening the likelihood that the Alamire portions of the manuscript were not transmitted through the Fugger family, as usually assumed, but via imperial channels. The texts of the Alamire motets are shown to reflect the image of the young Charles and to mirror the sentiments of the Plus oultre chanson, thereby unifying the collection.

A Virgin, a Lineage, and an Elector: Ancestry and Imagery in Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Ms. 22

Created between 1500 and 1505 and acquired by Elector Frederick the Wise, Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Ms. 22, an early Habsburg-Burgundian manuscript, is distinguished for its large collection of masses by Pierre de la Rue. Manuscripts that left the Habsburg-Burgundian workshops often boasted impressive artwork, including splendid borders, inked calligraphic initials, and intricate miniatures. The artists who painted the miniatures frequently offered a stunning visual portrayal of the music’s theme. At first glance, JenaU 22 appears slighted in this respect, since the choirbook contains only one miniature. Furthermore, this miniature, which accompanies Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Sicut spina rosam, is placed unusually late-on fol. 102-seemingly as an afterthought. Despite much commentary on the cantus firmus, musical structure, date, and origin of the Missa Sicut spina rosam, the miniature accompanying this mass has been overlooked. Yet by examining the intricate correlation between the miniature and the themes in Obrecht’s mass, this paper suggests that the image/mass combination reflects upon the doctrine of the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception, one of the most contentious theological debates of the early sixteenth century. The subtle aural and visual theological clues found in JenaU 22 point almost prophetically to important themes that run not only throughout Frederick’s impressive collection, but the entire corpus of Habsburg-Burgundian manuscripts.

Abstract C174: Establishment of luminal breast cancer patient-derived xenografts with acquired resistance to both hormonotherapy and everolimus.

Abstract The addition of everolimus (Rad) to endocrine therapies (ET) in luminal advanced breast cancers has shown to increase overall survival in randomized studies. However drug resistance is an emerging problem and most patients eventually experience progression of disease. We aimed to establish and characterize patient-derived xenografts (PDX) of luminal breast cancers with acquired resistance in vivo to both ET and Rad. Two PDX xenografts (HBCx22 and HBCx34), established from early stage ER+ breast cancers, were treated in vivo with different ET (tamoxifen, fulvestrant, ovariectomy and letrozole) during 12 months and tumors escaping to therapies were re-engrafted and maintained under treatment. Four hormono-resistant (HR) xenografts were established, 2 resistant to Tamoxifen (HBCx22TamR and HBCx34TamR) and 2 resistant to ovariectomy (HBCx22OvaR and HBCx34OvaR). Expression of estrogen receptor (ER) was maintained, while expression of several ER-controlled genes (MYB, PS2 and PR) was decreased in HR tumors indicating modifications of ER transcriptional activity. The expression of ER co-regulators was additionally studied: GREB1 was reduced specifically in TamR, while FOXA1 were increased specifically in TamR. Expression analysis of P-AKT, P-mTOR and P-S6 showed similar levels of PI3 kinase pathway activation between parental and HR xenografts. Gene expression profiling, performed with Affymetrix Gene Expression Arrays, showed that genes differentially expressed in TamR and OvaR tumors were only partially overlapping, suggesting treatment-specific mechanisms of hormono-resistance. In addition, TamR and OvaR signatures were tumor-specific. Gene ontology enrichment and pathway analyses of gene expression datasets will be presented at the meeting. HR xenografts were then treated with Rad alone and combined to ET. In HBCx22OvaR and TamR, resistant to all ET, treatment with Rad arrested tumor growth in vivo but did not show any additive effect when combined to ET. Conversely, the HBCx34TamR model was still responding to fulvestrant, and the combination Rad+Fulvestrant resulted in tumor regressions. In the HBCx34TamR xenograft, tumor escape to Rad treatment occurred in one mouse after 8 months of continuous treatment. The tumor was re-engrafted and maintained as tumorgraft resistant to both tamoxifen and Rad (HBCx34Tam-RadR). Western blot and IHC studies showed that mTOR signaling was still inhibited in this tumor, but it was associated to MAP kinase activation and increased IGF-1R expression. In conclusion, we have developed PDX models of luminal breast cancer with cross-resistance to ET and everolimus in vivo. These models provide a valuable preclinical tool to investigate molecular mechanisms of acquired resistance and to test new targeted therapies and new combinations in patients’ tumors. Citation Information: Mol Cancer Ther 2013;12(11 Suppl):C174. Citation Format: Rania El Botty, Paul Cottu, Franck Assayag, Pierre de la Grange, David Gentien, Aurélie Thuleau, Sophie Vacher, Sophie Chateau-Joubert, Ivan Bièche, Elisabetta Marangoni. Establishment of luminal breast cancer patient-derived xenografts with acquired resistance to both hormonotherapy and everolimus. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2013 Oct 19-23; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2013;12(11 Suppl):Abstract nr C174.

Tristre plaisir et douloureuse joie. Die Stimme der Melancholie in der französischen Chanson des 15. jahrhunderts

In the late Middle Ages, melancholy was often regarded as a pathological disease to which music provided the cure; music, by its very nature, being exhilarating and of a convivial nature. Even Marsilio Ficino, who almost single-handedly re-evaluated the state of melancholy as being the sign of a great genius, used music only to soften his melancholic mind, not to conjure melancholy up. But in the literary and musical practice of the French chanson during the fifteenth century, melancholy was regarded as a kind of idolorous joy long before Ficino published his influential treatises — and music served as a means of the first importance to cultivate (and relish) one’s own melancholy. This is shown by a discussion of texts by Guillaume de Machaut, Alain Chartier, Jean Froissart or Rene d’Anjou, but primarily through an analysis of some of the most important chansons of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century: Gilles Binchois’ Tristre plaisir (on a text by Alain Chartier); Pierre de la Rue’s Pourquoy non and Josquin Desprez’ Plaine de deuil and Nimphes, nappes/Circumdederunt me. Not only the texts by themselves but the specific ways in which their musical settings ›tune‹ them, give voice(s) to their lyrical subjects, are analysed in various ways.