Medieval Christmas Music

In this episode, Ieva Gudaitytė talks to James Tomlinson about Christmas music in late medieval England. The conversation involves aspects of medieval book production and the transmission of polyphony within England and abroad. It introduces music written for the Christmas period and contexts in which these elusive musical survivors might have been performed. They chat about the ephemerality of medieval polyphony, how popular musical settings were worked and reworked over time, and the challenges of working with the paucity of surviving sources.

References:

• Bowers, Roger. "Obligation, Agency, and Laissez-Faire: The Promotion of Polyphonic Composition for the Church in Fifteenth-Century England." In Iain Fenlon, ed. Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts. Cambridge University Press, 1981: 1-19.
• Harris, Max. Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools. Cornell University Press, 2011.

What is The Music Talkshow?

“Music Talkshow” is a musicology dissemination show by our local University of Oslo early career music and sound researchers – PhD’s and postdocs. How do we communicate our research to the “outside” world? How do we maintain our relevance to society as academics? People who write about music, but not the music itself? In other words, how does our work relate to the real world, and how does the real-world manifests in our work?

In this show, we tackle these unanswerable questions with a light-hearted approach: through informal conversations, sound and music examples, and perhaps some experiments. We hope to bridge the gap between those who wonder about music casually and those who do that professionally – from prospective students to lifelong music fans, fidelity nerds, and helpless cheesy romantics. By doing so, we will leave our own comfort zones to show the diversity of the academic community to showcase new voices and sounds, encourage participation, and take an alternative turn on the University.