The Angevin Struggle for the Kingdom of Naples (c.1378–1411) and Politics of Repertoire in Mod A: New Hypotheses
The inner gatherings of the music manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS. α.M.5.24 (Mod A II-IV ) contain a tangle of politically-charged songs, mostly in French, referring to the tumultuous Great Schism of the Western Church (1378–1417) and the prowess of several princes of ascendant Italian states during the same period. Some scholars have connected the repertoire of Mod A II-IV with Petros Filargos, sometime Archbishop of Milan and then the short-lived conciliar pope Alexander V. Yet art-historical evidence now strongly suggests that Mod A II-IV was completed during the pontificate of Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, between September 1410 and March 1411 in Bologna. During the first two years of John’s pontificate the influential and wealthy prince of France, Louis II of Anjou, prosecuted his claim for title of the Kingdom of Naples in Italy, simultaneously supporting John XXIII’s military campaign to reclaim Rome. This article explores a new hypothesis that part of the repertoire of Mod A II-IV —and possibly the manuscript’s very structure—reflects the presence of the Angevin prince at the court of John XXIII in Bologna in the second half of 1410. It considers how other political threads running through this manuscript render it an unlikely candidate for a source connected with the pro-Visconti Alexander V.
Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century in Aragon: Reassessing a Panorama of Fragmentary Sources
: This takes a further step in identifying the patterns of prove- the fragments ars nova polyphony, thus recalibrating the way we think about the connection between the original manuscripts and local institutions and individuals. Most of the manuscripts’ provenances curiously coincide with court itineraries in royal cities such as Barcelona, Gerona and Vilafranca del Penedès, while a number of fragments were recovered from par- ish in small villages within the area between the Monastery of Poblet and city of Cervera. While none of the surviving fragments can secure- identified with the polyphonic books I (b. 1350, and (r. archival suggests the was indeed a major force behind the dissemination of ars nova po- lyphony in late Catalonia. late owes much publi- (hereinafter organised the not only made contents large but also shaped largescale picture the polyphonic styles that in French , thus contributed ing notion of liturgical polyphony. 2 Its are the Ivrea, Biblioteca
A Hopewellian Burial Site in the Lower Republican Valley, Kansas
The senior author has for a number of years worked on the problem of the numerous and virtually unknown burial sites on the bluffs bordering the valley of the Republican River in Geary and Clay Counties, Kansas. This work has been a matter of some urgency, owing to the prevalence of unsystematic amateur excavation on the more prominent stone cairns found in the area. Fortunately, the complete excavation of the larger cairns involves too much labor for the merely curious, and it has often been possible to salvage material and information despite disturbance.