The Online Program of events for the 2023 AMS & SMT Joint Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Chair(s): Mary Channen Caldwell (University of Pennsylvania)
Discussant(s): Mark Everist (University of Southampton)
Presenter(s): Henry Drummond (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven), Rachel May Golden (University of Tennessee), Christopher Preston Thompson (NYU Steinhardt), Catherine Saucier (Arizona State University), Melanie Shaffer (Radboud University), Charles Brewer (Florida State University)
What is Latin song? Defining song by language might suggest the demarcation of linguistic or national boundaries (like the French chanson or German Minnesang). In the premodern world, however, Latin does not define one particular group of people, region, or nation, but instead is broadly associated with transregional religious, civic, and pedagogical domains. Latin-texted song is fundamentally mobile, adaptable, adoptable, and transferable; the mouvance that characterizes so many medieval texts also characterizes Latin song. And although melody and words are often considered constitutive of song, even these two elements do not fully capture the frequent expression of Latin song as an idea conveyed in text alone, a single refrain, an incipit in an index, a divine vision, or a brief, textless melody.
This roundtable explores the shifting boundaries of early Latin song through novel methodologies, theoretical and analytical perspectives, and interdisciplinary approaches. It questions the boundaries of Latin song traditions outside of and in relation to the chanted Latin liturgy and in doing so proposes new ways of understanding the circulation of Latin song. The roundtable recognizes the plurality of Latin song and is invested in what it means to sing songs in Latin as opposed to the vernacular, foregrounding historical and interpretive approaches that privilege cultural and social situatedness and the multivalence of Latin song. Participants will speak on a wide range of questions and issues that purposefully blur chronological, geographical, stylistic, and functional boundaries. For instance, participants will consider Latin song and the gendered expression of emotions; relationships between performance, intertextuality, and contrafacture; textlessness in song and its disruption of music/text binaries; civic devotional practices as performance contexts; associations between song, manuscript ordinatio, and liturgy; center and peripheries; and intersections between hagiographic Latin motets and sequences.
Roundtable participants represent established and up-and-coming voices in musicology and early music performance. The format will comprise introductory remarks by the chair, 5-minute pre-circulated response papers from each participant, and a short response from the respondent. This would be the first session in the history of AMS focused solely on early Latin song from transregional and transhistorical perspectives.
