FARLS #4: Gerard Weber

Wednesday, January 22 12:30pm-1:30pm

Quance Theatre, Education Building, U of S - Free Event!

Gerard Weber: "At the Intersection Between Music, Love, Devotion and Sexuality: Musical Settings of the Song of Songs in the Late Middle Ages"

My presentation will focus on musical settings of the Old Testament Song of Songs to examine the intersection between music, love, devotion and sexuality in the Middle Ages. Simply put, the Song of Songs is an intimate dialogue between two lovers—a bride and bridegroom—and its far-from-simple interpretative literature from the Middle Ages represents an anthology of diverse spiritual attitudes toward erotic love in Christianity.

The repertory I will discuss is a distinct collection of antiphons from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries preserved in manuscripts from primarily German-speaking regions of late- medieval Europe. These antiphons bear many hallmarks of extraordinary virtuosity: vocal ranges that exceed two octaves, frequent acrobatic leaps of an octave or more, and melismatic excursions that exceed seventy pitches, to name a few. Around the same time and in the same region, an intense literary response to the Song of Songs emerged in the form of Christian exegesis, gender-bending mystical experiences from monks and nuns and, surprisingly, pedagogical literature on the spiritual guidance of women in convents. By tying these overlapping artistic responses together, I will demonstrate that these musically indulgent antiphons functioned as a sonic medium for both women and men to personify the bride of the Song of Songs, the allegorical bride of Christ.

I believe that my presentation will be of interest to music students and the broader University of Saskatchewan and Saskatoon community as a unique and interdisciplinary study of medieval music situated within complex issues of gender and sexuality.

Gerard Weber is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of Western Ontario, with a specialization in early music. He has given paper presentations at past annual meetings of the American Musicological Society on topics including J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion and musical settings of the Old Testament Song of Songs. Gerard's dissertation topic on late-medieval plainchant settings of the Song of Songs received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council doctoral award in 2023.