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Syllabus | |||||||||||||||||||
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Speculum Musicae can be translated "The Mirror of Music." This course is designed to deepen your understanding of the Middle Ages through encounters with some of the music that was heard on the European subcontinent between 900 and 1500 CE. Music reflects life in any given era, including our own. Our goal will be to speculate on what life was like for different classes of society in the Medieval period, and to understand the role music played as an outlet for spiritual, intellectual and emotional expression.
Although the primary focus of the course is music, a reading knowledge of music is not necessary for success in the course.But you will learn to manipulate musical materials (known in the trade as "composing"), using Medieval neumes and clefs to compose a plainchant. These will be performed by Millsaps music students in class so that you can hear your creativity.
The course is divided broadly into three units:
UNIT 1 - SPIRITUALITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES: The Creative Force of Christianity
- Background to the Middle Ages: Writings of Boethius, St. Augustine, others
- Gregorian chant and the creative force of Christianity’s musical rituals
- Christian mysticism: Hildegard, the first great ‘unknown’ composer in the West: How she was co-opted by feminists, lesbian activists, Catholic mystics, and the New Age movement
- What happened in Paris at Notre Dame Cathedral that changed music forever
UNIT 2 - LOVE AND WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES: Chivalry, Love, and War against the 'Infidels'
- Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères in Medieval France: Songs of heroic deeds, pilgrim songs, Crusade songs, and the Carmina Burana
- Arabic Music: the modes and rhythms of Arabic music; Qur’anic chant,
- Islamic mysticism: Sufism and the poetry of Rumi; Qawwali music
UNIT 3 - THE MEDIEVAL INTELLECT IN MUSIC, in spite of the calamities of the Fourteenth Century
- Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A look at literary clues about music, life, and the Black Death
- The Roman de Fauvel: Scandal and Corruption in the Church!
- Avant Garde music in the Middle ages-- The Ars Nova
- Dufay’s Nuper rosarum flores and Brunelleschi’s great Duomo in Florence: How architecture inspired a fulfillment of Medieval musical ideals even as it ushered in the Renaissance