Abstracts Category : Other

Veil and Tonsure: Stuttgart 95, Devotional Music, and the Discursive Construction of Gender in Thirteenth-Century Double Houses

by Lauren Purcell-Joiner

This dissertation provides the first full-scale musicological study of Stuttgart 95, a thirteenth-century song book, formerly thought to be from the abbey of Weingarten. Upon further examination, it is clear that rather than a single unified corpus of Latin songs, the musical portions are composed of three separate layers. Furthermore, I argue that these layers were best understood as separate entities. This delineation between writing campaigns indicates that the original musical project likely constitutes a mostly intact collection, with only one or two folios missing from the beginning of the codex. Moreover, the song repertoire in the first layer is partially comprised of addenda entered into other Engelberg liturgical manuscripts, mainly at the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, shortly before the manufacture of Stuttgart 95. I focus, in particular, on the first layer of its musical corpora, arguing that the earliest stratum in this composite manuscript points to the double cloister of Engelberg as a likely provenance. As a collection of addenda, it demonstrates that musicians in Engelberg actively collected pieces that addressed Mary, the communitys patrona. I first discuss the consistent use of majuscule and rubrication to visually highlight the name of Mary amidst its surrounding text. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Mary along with each of these additional saints had liturgical ties to the double house of Engelberg; Mary was the monasterys patrona, and the additional figures were either especially venerated at Engelberg or were the namesakes for dedicated altars or chapels in joint communitys churches.Advisors/Committee Members: Kruckenberg, Lori (advisor).