Reconsidering Contrafacts

Free entry. No registration required.

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Looking at different repertories of monophonic song between 1150 and 1550, the aim of this workshop is to explore different approaches to the widespread spectrum of practices and concepts of contrafacture: composing new texts for pre-existing melodies. The fact of a song being a contrafact will not be taken as a result but as a starting point for further inquiries. In this workshop we will encounter similarities, analogies, and differences between different regions, languages, genres, and times between 1150 and 1550, looking at Trouvère, Sangspruch and Minnesang, religious song (geistliches Lied), Meistersinger and puy societies.
The schedule will be split into two parts: the first half is reserved for presentations of individual papers with a following discussion, in the second half we will collectively examine and interpret further selected case studies. Anybody interested is welcome to attend the presentations and take part in the discussions. If you want to attend or if you have questions, please email philip.wetzler@music.ox.ac.uk.

The workshop is generously funded by the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst e.V.
 

Programme for the day:

10:00 - 10:30 Coffee/Tea

10:30-11:00 Introduction

11:00 - 11:45 Joseph Mason, Satire, allusion, erasure: approaches to contrafacture in trouvère songs of war
11:45 - 12:30 Philip Wetzler, From Contrafact to Practices of Contrafacture: Middle High German Sangspruch and Practices of Contrafacture

12:30 - 13:30 Light Lunch Break

13:30 - 14:15 Anna Wilmore, Ludic Lyrics: Play and Piety in Marian Contrafact
14:15 - 15:00 Agnes Rugel, "geistlich lieder, doch in weltlichen weysen". How practices of contrafacture structure the landscape of religious songbooks in late medieval Germanspeaking areas

15:00 - 15:30 Tea/Coffee Break

15:30 - 17:00 Collective Discussion of Case Studies

17:00 - 17:30 Tea/Coffee Break

17:30 - 18:30/19:00 Collective Discussion of Case Studies

19:00 Dinner (self-paying)