Cantors and Catafalques: Music and Death, c. 1300 - c. 1530

The universality of death for human beings made it particularly susceptible to the development of ritual cultures. A burgeoning inter- and cross-disciplinary field, that of death studies or thanatology, has developed in recent years to research and understand these ritual practices in different periods and contexts. Music, however, although it plays a significant role in these rituals, has not typically received the attention that it deserves in the field of death studies. The present project aims to fill this important scholarly lacuna by researching music and death culture from a variety of perspectives in the late medieval and early modern periods (c. 1300–c. 1530).
The role of music in death-rituals in three complementary areas of late medieval and early modern life will be researched: the individual, parochial communities, and institutions which followed a Rule. Each of these will be studied in two geographical areas: the Low Countries, and Germany. In so doing, the project aims to understand the diversity of musical practices related to dying at different social levels, and to understand how musical practices relate to, complement, or reinforce other, nonmusical practices related to death and dying. The project aims ultimately to bridge currently separated areas by introducing music into ongoing discourses in death studies as well as by drawing insights from death studies into the study of music.

Keywords:Requiem, medieval music, liturgy

Disciplines:History of religions, churches and theology, Study of Christianity, Medieval history, History of music, Musicology and ethnomusicology