Regensburg, 13–14 May 2027

At the Threshold: Sound and Music in Sickness, Death, and Commemoration in Early Modern Europe

Organisation: Katelijne Schiltz (University of Regensburg) and Antonio Chemotti (University of Leuven / Alamire Foundation / Royal Library of Belgium

Bonhoeffersaal im Evangelischen Bildungswerk Regensburg (Am Ölberg 2)

Concept

In early modern Europe, the experience of illness and death was profoundly mediated by sound. Music and other sonic practices accompanied the rites surrounding the sickbed, structured burial ceremonies, and shaped acts of commemoration for the deceased. Musicologists have long made art music for the liturgy for the dead a topic of research, but by focusing on major settings by prominent composers – particularly of the Requiem Mass – they have often overlooked this broader range of practices.

This conference seeks to remedy this lacuna by exploring the human experience at the passage between life and death as a process, rather than focusing on a given musical genre alone. It aims to map a wide range of sonic and musical practices and to investigate their functions and meanings. Attention is given to both institutional and private perspectives, considering settings such as confraternities and hospital chapels, as well as more intimate or domestic experiences of illness, dying, and mourning. In doing so, the conference seeks to highlight how ritualised sound and music operated not only as an ornament of liturgical practice, but also as a social, emotional, and even therapeutic force at the threshold between life and death.

Thanks to the collaboration with the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, on May 15 participants will have the opportunity to hear the ensemble Cappella Mariana, directed by Vojtěch Semerád, perform early modern music for the dead from the chapel of Santo Spirito in Sassia, a Roman confraternity hospital whose choirbooks are now preserved at the Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek Regensburg. A highlight will be the performance of Jean Richafort’s six-voice Missa pro defunctis.

The conference is organized within the framework of troja: Kolloquium und Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik (troja-online.eu), in collaboration with the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg and the research project Funeral soundscapes: Hearing Death Rituals in the Age of Confessionalization (c. 1550–c. 1650) (KU Leuven / Alamire Foundation, funded by FWO).

Programme

Thursday 13 May

09.00–9.30: Katelijne Schiltz (University of Regensburg) and Antonio Chemotti (University of Leuven / Alamire Foundation / Royal Library of Belgium), Welcome Address and Introductory Remarks

Dynastic Memory in Bavaria

09.30–10.00: Bernadette Nelson (Lisbon, Centre for Music Studies): At the Threshold of the Seventh Age: La Rue’s Requiem, Visual Staging, and Habsburg-Wittelsbach Commemoration in a Sixteenth-Century Bavarian Choirbook

10.00–10.30: Matthias Guschelbauer (University of Vienna): Death between the Confessions: The Funeral and Commemoration of Susanna of Bavaria

10.30–11.00: Coffee Break

Death and Commemoration in Venice

11.00–11.30: Michael Klaper (University of Jena): Commemorations of the Dead and Tradition-Building at St. Mark’s, Venice, During the 16th and 17th Centuries

11.30–12.00: Ilaria Contesotto (University of Bologna): When the Musician Can No Longer Perform: Sickness, Mutual Aid, and Commemoration in the Venetian Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia, 1685–1691

12.00–12.30: Andrea Angelini (Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Music, Venice): At the Scaffold’s Threshold: Music, Ritual, and the Scuola di San Fantin in Early Modern Venice

12.30–14.00: Lunch

Illness and Healing

14.00–14.30: David Merlin (German Historical Institute, Rome): At the Threshold of Death: Post-Tridentine Liturgical Practices for the Sick and Dying

14.30–15.00: Naomi J. Barker (The Open University, UK): Celebrating Christus Medicus: Music for Corpus Christi and the Quarantore at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome

15.00–15.30: Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna): “A Sad Tune in the Air”: Imagined Funeral Music as Plague Omen in Vienna, 1679–1680

15.30–16.00: Coffee Break

16.00–16.30: Concetta Pennuto (Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours): Is There such a Thing as Music for the Melancholic? Or Rather, How to Counter Thoughts of Death with Sound

16.30–17.00: Claudius Hille (University of Augsburg, University of Tübingen): Therapeutic Music in Eighteenth-Century Spa Towns

19.00: Conference dinner

Friday 14 May

Angels and Saints

09.00-09.30: Katarina Šter (Ljubljana, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts): Singing for a Safe Passage: St Barbara and Female Intercession at the Hour of Death

09.30–10.00: Daniele Filippi (University of Turin): Music and the Transitus of Saints in the Early Modern Era

10.00–10.30: Anna Steppler (National Gallery, London): Consolation from Angels’ Wings: Music, Death, and Devotion in the Thirty Years War

10.30–11.00: Coffee Break

Instrumental Music

11.00–11.15: Minna Hovi (Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki): Tombeau and Silence: Commemoration and Social Networks in the Early Tombeau Tradition

11.15–11.30: Edward Campbell-Rowntree (Girton College, Cambridge): Paroles (non) muettes: Audible Grief in Early Modern French Instrumental Music

Rituals

11.30–12.00: Mattias Lundberg (Uppsala University): “Singing out the dead” – Sound and Beliefs in the Funerary Processions of Scandinavian Cathedral Schools c. 1520–1686

12.00–12.30: Paolo Belli (University of Florence / University of Leuven): Representing Sound and Music from Agony to Burial: the Accounts in Early Modern Funeral Books

12.30–14.00: Lunch

Repertory and Performance

14.00–14.30: Owen Rees (University of Oxford): Performing Polyphonic Requiems / Performing Exequies

14.30–15.00: Nicolò Ferrari (Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences) and Riccardo Pintus (Uppsala University): From the Library to the Stage: Reconstructing a Funeral Mass at Santo Spirito in Sassia, c. 1600

15.00–15.30: Katharina Preller (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich): Music and Mourning in East Slavic Baroque Polyphony

15.30–16.00: Coffee Break

Visual Cultures

16.00–16.15: Philip Wetzler (University of Weimar-Jena): Printed Parodies and Musical Crosses for Contemplation: Georg Quitschreiber’s Funerary Cross-Riddles

16.15–16.30: Christiaan Clement (University of Leuven): “Dan is ‘t; als alles: Eidelheid”: Music, Mortality and Eternity in the Works of Jan Luyken

16.30–17.00: Bartłomiej Gembicki (Warsaw, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences): Recording Death

17.00: Katelijne Schiltz and Antonio Chemotti, Closing Remarks

Saturday 15 May

Concert

19.00: Concert Introduction by Antonio Chemotti – Melanchthonsaal im Evangelischen Bildungswerk Regensburg (Am Ölberg 2)

22.30: Concert Cappella Mariana: “Requiem in Rom – Begräbnismesse einer römischen Bruderschaft um 1600” – Dominikanerkirche St. Blasius

Poster Presentations on 13 and 14 May

David Nivarlet (University of Leuven / Alamire Foundation) and Clara Viloria Hernández (University of Leuven / Alamire Foundation), “Funeral Soundscapes: Hearing Death Rituals in the Age of Confessionalization”