CFP: Valorizing Clemens non Papa: Towards a Polycentric Model for Renaissance Music, Boston Univ., Nov 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Valorizing Clemens non Papa: Towards a Polycentric Model for Renaissance Music”
An International Conference organized by the Center for Early Music Studies (Boston University) and the Alamire Foundation (Leuven)
Boston University, November 6-7 2015
CFP Deadline: 1 June 2015

The Renaissance composer Jacobus Clemens non Papa ranked among the most widely distributed and most influential composers of the sixteenth century. An astonishingly prolific composer of masses, motets, chansons, and vernacular psalms, Clemens demonstrates an inexhaustible imagination that seizes vividly on his texts to create soundscapes of drama and depth. In addition, his work was a staple for instrumentalists, who extended his fame through their arrangements of his music for keyboard, ensemble, and lute.

But even to specialists of the period, the composer remains a cipher. Like Gombert, Clemens belongs to the constructed “Post-Josquin” generation—a transitional period allegedly characterized not by innovation and craft, but by an extended, formalistic application of “pervasive imitation” and playing to the demands of the market. These composers are generally seen as a “lost generation” who essentially kept the seat warm for Palestrina and Lassus.

Confronting Clemens from new musicological, historical, and performance perspectives, this conference will question these conventional views of Renaissance music. It offers the chance to scrutinize such notions as “central” and “peripheral” traditions, “greater” and “lesser” composers, singular versus plural modes of performance, the relationship between models and adaptations, and editorial practice. Valorizing Clemens is only a re-evaluation of a too-often marginalized figure, but will plot new directions to understanding a major period in musical history.

For a full description of the conference aims, themes, and panels, please visit

http://www.bu.edu/cfa/valorizing-clemens-non-papa-nov-6-7-2015/

Abstracts for papers or panels by 1 June 2015 to:

Victor Coelho
Dept. of Musicology and Ethnomusicology
Boston University
cems -at- bu.edu

Committee
Victor Coelho
Joshua Rifkin
David Burn
Stratton Bull
Bart Demuyt