Collaborative Composing in the Early Modern Period
Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Period: 2023–2026
Motivations, Contexts and Models of Compositional Collaboration (1470–1620)
Due to the paradigm of individual authorship, artistic production is still generally interpreted through the lens of individual poetics. Cultural artefacts, whether literary, visual or musical, are never, however, the result of the efforts of individuals alone; they always arise from the interplay of various actors and diverse factors relating to tradition, communication and reception. The processes and practices of collaboration in the context of early modern music production represent a field of research that has so far been inadequately explored. Collaborative contexts are indeed ubiquitous in the musical life of the early modern period: it is well known that copyists worked with illuminators, Kapellmeisters with singers or instrumentalists, and composers cooperated with both patrons and printers or publishers. Yet collaborations between composers in particular have not yet been comprehensively researched.
Different models of collaboration give the phenomenon of collaborative composition a multi-dimensional character: From minor revisions and proofs by fellow composers to the joint setting of larger bodies of text to music, from anthologies published once as co-authored works to multiple performances as a cohesive collective of composers – within the context of early modern music production and distribution, composers utilised a wide variety of spaces for interaction and strategies for collaboration.
PrOject goals
The project examines the various motivations, contexts and models of collaboration involved in the production of musical texts during the ‘long’ 16th century. Through case studies, collaboratively produced works and collections of works from various repertoires—primarily from the sphere of German- and Italian-speaking musical institutions—are situated within their historical-discursive and textual-cultural contexts. Collaborations will be examined for their didactic, social and identity-forming dimensions at both the individual and institutional levels, as well as for their functions in the development of early modern authorisation, representation and musical authorship, and, not least, for their role in the formation and consolidation of compositional conventions, norms and aesthetics.
Project Team
Interdisciplinary Conference
As part of the project, an interdisciplinary conference on collaborative practices in the arts of the early modern period took place at the International Science Forum Heidelberg from 9 to 11 November 2023. The conference was organised in collaboration with the Forschungsforum troja: Kolloquium und Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik and Nicole Schwindt.