Two grad students blogged their way through a monumental musicological work.
“L’Homme Arme Mass” Playlist
The secular tune “L’Homme Arme” (Man of Arms) served as the basis for an astounding number of mass ordinary cycles by all the leading composers of the late 15th Century. Moreover, setting the mass to this tune became an emblem of dynastic membership, and composers from Busnoys to Ockeghem, the elderly Du Fay to the youthful Josquin, used it to pay homage to the tradition (and to best their contemporaries). Here’s a playlist of “Kyrie” settings of the “L’Homme Arme” tune by the four masters listed above, respectively.
During the Challenge I was graduate student in musicology at UCLA (completed 2014). I am currently Assistant Professor of Music History at SMU in Dallas, TX, where I teach courses on cultural musicology, opera history, music perception and cognition, popular music, and research methods. My monograph project, "Nothing but Noise: Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge," is under contract with Oxford University Press.
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