Exploring the Musical Links Between the Troubadours and Medieval Iberia

Lecture by Verónica da Rosa Guimerães

This lecture will use computational methods to explore the role of the poetic-musical culture of medieval Islamic Iberia (or al-Andalus) in the development of the troubadour tradition. Due to the paucity of musical sources both from al- Andalus and from the first generation of troubadours, all scholarship on the topic to date has been speculative, using isolated case studies of the lyric texts to extend conclusions drawn from textual analysis into the musical domain. Da Rosa Guimarães will use results of a computer-aided comparison to explore if there is in fact a connection between the music of the Moroccan nūba (a suite-like genre than can be traced back to al-Andalus) and that of the troubadours, clarifying historical questions about the heritage of Moroccan Andalusi music and the musical exchange between the troubadours and al-Andalus along the way.

This event is being co-sponsored by the Department of Music and the Medieval Studies program.