Universität zu Köln

Haggh-Huglo, Barbara (2018). Music and Migration as Opportunity: Examples from Ghent. In: Serendipia: migración como oportunidad, pp. 109-127. Köln: Arbeitskreis Spanien - Portugal - Lateinamerika.

Preview

PDF Haggh-Huglo_Music_and_Migration_as_Opportunity_Examples_from_Ghent.pdf Download (7MB) | Preview

Abstract

The history of Ghent and of its music before 1559 was marked by migrations. Its two abbeys, St Bavo’s and St Peter’s, were founded by the migrating missionary, St Amand. Their communities migrated south during Viking invasions in the ninth century, one returning with new music from Laon; then their competition during a period of restoration produced new chant for many new saints’ offices. In the early sixteenth century, the monks of the Benedictine community at St Bavo’s abbey became secular canons and migrated to a different church building, that of St John’s in the center of Ghent. In 1559, St John’s became the collegiate church of St Bavo, which was then elevated in rank to become St Bavo’s cathedral as it is today. This migration and transformation changed the community’s liturgical music from monastic chant with occasional parallel polyphony into the elaborate mensural polyphony by composers known throughout Europe. Finally, the migration of Pedro de Gante and his Franciscan companions to New Spain (Mexico) corresponds to the transfer of techniques of manuscript illumination found in the sixteenth-century Alamire codices from Mechelen and Antwerp to Mexico City, where they are found again in the choirbooks of Mexico City Cathedral.