| FA-57722-14 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | Karen Desmond | The Meaning and Importance of Novelty in 14th-Century European Music | 1/1/2014 - 12/31/2014 | $50,400.00 | Karen | | Desmond | | | | University College Cork | CORK CITY | | W23 F2H6 | Ireland | 2013 | Music History and Criticism | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 50400 | 0 | 50400 | 0 |
The literary theorist Terry Eagleton once observed: “All periods are modern, but not all of them live their experience in this mode.” Musicians and composers of the early fourteenth century did appear to live their experience in this way: their contemporaries labeled them as “the moderns” (“moderni”) and their compositional art as “new” (Ars nova) in opposition to that of the thirteenth century, which they called “old” (Ars vetus). I seek an NEH fellowship to write my book ‘Novarum rerum cupidus’: The Meaning of Novelty in Early Fourteenth-Century Music, which will explore novelty as a concept in music and other intellectual endeavours in Europe during the later Middle Ages, and identify the moments when fourteenth-century musicians sought out novelty, why they might have done so, and how their music was judged when they did. |