Upon completing a dissertation, an entire chapter of a researcher’s life concludes—and a new one opens up. From the initial outlines to the presentation of my finished book last autumn, I’d spent nearly ten years studying how music for keyboard instruments was learned, practiced, and put to paper around 1500. To this end, I examined a group of manuscripts where musical pieces—some of them just a few seconds long—are grouped beneath the heading Fundamentum. Some of these collections run just a few lines, while others encompass many pages. Why were they compiled, and what exactly was done with them? A lengthy investigation led me to realise that no single answer to these questions exists. After all, writing down music was an integral part of that era’s everyday practice: people put things to paper in order to remember them, to communicate them to someone else, or perhaps to attain certainty about something—often while they were practicing, teaching, or studying at an instrument. Much like a shopping list that doesn’t necessarily indicate exactly who bought what when and where, these writings only ever depict a small part of the processes in which they were embedded. Over the course of my research, it was immensely helpful to investigate other writings of that era that had zero to do with music. For example, I looked at how 15th-century people learned Italian or techniques of armed combat. In doing so, I noticed parallels to the realm of music-making in that era—such as, for instance, the huge difficulties involved in writing down dynamic learning processes or bodily movements in connection with musical instruments or weapons.
Since completing my book, this type of interdisciplinary work has stayed with me. I’m currently writing essays on how people who lived during the 11th and 12th centuries learned music with help from their own hands—and on just how writings pertaining to music were situated amidst the abundance of the 16th century’s instructional and advice-related literature. I’ve also recently begun looking at sound recordings produced around 100 years ago in the colonies of the German Empire, a new topic that presents a number of fascinating challenges. And on top of it all, I’m continuing my work on the New Senfl Edition here at the mdw. The teamwork that this involves is a wonderful diversion from what’s often somewhat lonely research work, and I’m particularly fond of how varied it is: I find out which sources are especially well suited, transcribe the music from historical to modern notation, sing and play through the new edition as I correct it, and document it all in various texts—from blog posts about “Senfl’s World” to critical commentaries.
