Music about music – self-parodies in the early modern mass

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christiane Wiesenfeldt
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 524868931

The project is devoted to the hitherto unexplored phenomenon of composing polyphonic masses on one’s own models – a phenomenon first observed in the early 15th century, with increasing popularity in the 16th century. For this purpose, a corpus of about 130 mass compositions will be questioned about its techniques and concepts of translating own music into new, own music. Using the example of self-parody, the aim of the project is both to appraise translational approaches for musicological Renaissance research and to highlight the historical period from c. 1420 to 1600 as a significant era of changes in composing polyphonic masses. If these techniques of self-borrowing are understood as part of a cultural, discursive environment, the complex formation of the composer’s identity, which developed in the 15th and 16th century, can be discussed and deciphered from their objects, and thus in turn become interdisciplinary. In cooperation with the project Citations: The Renaissance Imitation Mass Project (CRIM), tools of computer-aided analysis will be used, which are ideally suited for the examination of intertextual references. The data obtained will also be entered into the Mainz MassDataBase (MDB) as part of a cooperative project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Richard Freedman