TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Music inventories as important sources for the reconstruction of church
music repertory in the Southern Netherlands: five newly found catalogues
from churches in Ghent (c. 1600 - c. 1780)
Bruno Bouckaert
The study of musical life in the Low Countries has abundantly illustrated
the existence of a very intense activity in the production of music manuscripts
and the purchase of music prints. In the reconstruction of the repertory
from which musicians drew, the study of the surviving music collections
of ecclesiastical institutions was in the past quite rightly one of the
main preoccupations of musicological research. In this context the examination
of the surviving music inventories too must take pride of place. After
a survey of the existing inventories, attention will concentrate on the
situation in Ghent. In addition to two already attested inventories, five
hitherto unknown music catalogues has been unearthed. The situation in
Ghent may be regarded as representative for the whole of the Southern Netherlands.
The discussion of the identification process is followed by an evaluation
of what the contents of the Ghent catalogues tell us about the music performed
in the aforementioned churches, situated in the original context (functionality,
performance practice). In a second section these data will be viewed in
a broader perspective. Our aim is to extract from the all existing music
inventories any information which can enhance our understanding of the
musical repertory and its evolution from the early Baroque until about
1780. A crucial question is how and through which channels (manuscripts
or prints) music circulated in this area and whether any particular developments
can be pointed out.
Last updated on 21 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita