Lucrezia Borgia's Daughter : Princess, nun and musician
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
: A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - Music
- Output identifier
- 38
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- Obsidian Records
- Month
- March
- Year
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Lucrezia Borgia’s Daughter presents repertoire discovered by Stras, Musica quinque vocum motteta materna lingua vocata (RISM 1543<2>), which pushes back the date of published convent polyphony by fifty years. While the historical and analytical research was published by Stras in the Journal of the American Musicological Society in 2017, the research underpinning the recording by Stras and Roberts’ ensemble Musica Secreta addressed three questions: what issues arise in the preparation and performance of this largely unexplored (practically and musicologically) repertoire for five equal voices? What information useful to performers can the works reveal about intentional dissonance and ficta resolution? How might the works respond to conventual performance practices documented in later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources? The project establishes the feasibility of female-voice performance of the repertoire and provides a foundational reference point for the performance of later female-voice polyphony. The research process involved transcription and comparative analysis of three primary sources alongside investigation in performance. Preliminary transcriptions were included in concert programmes by both Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens, Stras and Roberts’ amateur choir. The performing editions were then developed over a series of workshops: a preliminary performance survey of draft transcriptions; three days of score preparation working on text underlay and ficta; and two further two-day rehearsals to proof the editions and establish appropriate accompaniment, transpositions, tempi, and approaches to phrasing and timbre. Finally, a selection of the motets was recorded in concert, to facilitate further refining of the editions before making the CD. The research was supported by Arts Council England (£7k) and the Ambache Charitable Trust (£3k), and received the 2016 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society. The CD reached No. 2 on the UK Official Classical Charts and No. 24 on the Billboard Classical Charts; it also received a 2017 Gramophone Critic’s Choice award.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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