Webinar: Investigating Latin Biblical motet texts from the sixteenth century

Investigating Latin Biblical motet texts from the sixteenth century

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Abstract: The Latin sacred motet experienced an enormous wave of popularity in the sixteenth century. The texts of some motets are taken from prayers and other devotional texts; others are taken from the Bible. While most biblical motets are based on the Vulgate, partially translated and partially reworked by Jerome, others are not. This paper examines a group of those that depart from the Vulgate, and traces the influence of alternative sources, especially the philological work of Erasmus.

Bio:  Grantley McDonald is a researcher in musicology at the University of Vienna, where he is a member of the project Managing Maximilian. At the University of Vienna he was previously principal investigator of the FWF research project The court chapel of Maximilian I: between art and politics (2016–2023). He holds PhDs in musicology (Melbourne, 2002) and history (Leiden, 2011). Grantley has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours), KU Leuven, Trinity College Dublin, Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel) and Universität Salzburg, where he worked on the FWF project Early music printing in German-speaking lands. He has published two monographs, Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Trinitarian Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Marsilio Ficino in Germany, from Renaissance to Enlightenment: a Reception History (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2022), and has edited another six essay volumes, most recently a volume on the basse danse manuscript of Margaret of Austria and a collection of essays on fifteenth-century music. He has also produced one volume in the Complete Works of Paul Hofhaimer (Munich: Strube, 2014). Besides his academic work, he also performs with several ensembles specialised in music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including Cappella Pratensis and the Brabant Ensemble.