Communion with the Audience: Encores taken from Bach’s Solo Cello Suites

M    any movements from Bach’s unaccompanied string works contain implied polyphony. Although earlier approaches describe this technique as a way of using arpeggiation to embellish a melodic line, to disguise an otherwise unacceptable melodic progression, to delay the resolution of dissonance, or to create underlying voice-leading patterns, these descriptions cannot account for the variety and complexity of the implied polyphony in these pieces. ...[using analysis based on auditory stream-segregation techniques, I come to the conclusion that—] Bach did not treat implied polyphony as solely a melodic feature. He instead used implied polyphony to apply irregular accent patterns to the otherwise ‘isochronous’ surface of the music, thereby creating perceived rhythmic variety at the fastest levels of the metric hierarchy.”
  — Stacey Davis.

I n the sarabandes of Bach’s cello suites, the second beat can be risky, easy to miscalculate. If you start the bow at the frog, instead of towards the middle, you’ll run out of bow on the two-beat upbow. The planning about distribution or budgeting of the bow is critical. You must maintain the pulse on the larger beats... this is far harder to do if you’ve chosen too slow a tempo. Difficult for the cello to maintain a steady pulse because of the many stops in these movements, especially the D major sarabande!

D ouble and triple and quadruple stops: a single part expressing several voices—and the registral placement of these voices doesn’t necessarily duplicate their placement in the underlying voice-leading. Dissonant, tension-creating intervals come from octave displacements in the voice-leading; notes out of the key of the piece to invoke/allude-to/tonicize another key before returning to the home key. And the bass line is not continuous! There are gaps, suspensions, and resumptions that take an eternity to arrive. The continuity of the voices the cello is speaking is tenuous, vulnerable, intermittent, waiting to be confirmed—even if the vulnerability only lasts a few beats. So much risk!

I n the D major sarabande, keep the high C in measure 13 in your mind throughout this and the following measure. The C returns in measure 14, and must sound as if it had been held throughout both measures, like loving parent returning to worried child left briefly alone.

Y o-Yo Ma’s beautiful sarabande-as-encore: dark; warm; transparent. Cello emulates the human voice; proposes spiritual communion between people. Communes with them—as close as a single body; reaches out and touches with sound. Generously melds with the strangers; friends them; speaks as if you and they had known each other for a long time—like kin, like lovers. Remember that small actions that may be heard clearly in a small venue may not communicate to an audience in a larger auditorium. You must not worry that large actions are maybe likely to be construed as ‘false’ or ‘suspicious’ ones. Acting is believing! Honest human behavior is sometimes enormous! And so long as you conduct yourself truthfully in imagined circumstances, no matter how large your expressions, the audience will believe you.

S uch intimacy and risk-taking and bigness-of-spirit are surely the essence of a perfect encore, whether from a student or from a master! And that—a perfect encore—is precisely what we received on Saturday night...

• Yo-Yo Ma website
  
• Butt J. Bach Interpretation. Cambridge Univ, 1990.
  
• Carrington J. Trills in the Bach Cello Suites: A Handbook for Performers. Univ Oklahoma, 2009.
  
• Cohen D, Wagner N. Concurrence and non-concurrence between natural and learned schemata: The case of J.S. Bach’s Sarabande in C minor for Cello Solo. J New Music Res 2000;29:23-36.
  
• Davis N. The Baroque violoncello and the Unaccompanied Cello Suites of J.S. Bach, BWV 1007-1012. Ph.D. dissertation, NYU, 1986.
  
• Davis S. Stream segregation and perceived syncopation: Rhythmic effects of implied polyphony in Bach's unaccompanied string works. MTO 2011;17(1).
  
• Egoyan A. Bach Cello Suite No. 4: Sarabande (Rhombus, 1997.)
  
• Harnoncourt N. Baroque Music Today: Music as Speech. Amadeus, 1982.
  
• Ledbetter D. Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works. Yale Univ, 2009.
  
• Lim J-M. A performance guide to J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 5 for violoncello solo: The interpretation of ornaments, rhythm, bowing and phrasing, and polyphonic texture. DMA dissertation, Univ Cincinnati, 2004.
  
• Little M, Jenne N. Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach. Indiana Univ, 2001.
  
• Ma Y-Y. Inspired by Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites. (Sony, 1998.)
  
• Ma Y-Y. Unaccompanied Cello Suites Complete. (Sony, 2010.)
  
• Marckx L. French Baroque influence on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Suites for Violoncello Solo with an emphasis on French court dance and Suite V. DMA dissertation, Univ Washington, 1998.
  
• McDonald T. Yo-Yo Ma, Symphony combine for unforgettable night. Kansas City Star, 21-JAN-2012
  
• Mellers. Bach and the Dance of God. Oxford Univ, 1981.
  
• Minsky A. Ten International Cello Encores. Oxford Univ, 2009.
  
• Siblin E. The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. Atlantic, 2009.
  
• Todd R. The sarabandes from J.S. Bach’s six Suites for solo cello: An analysis and interpretive guide for the modern guitarist. DMA dissertation, Univ North Texas, 2007.
  
• Tschofen M, Burwell J, eds. Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan. Wilfred Laurier Univ, 2006.
  
• Whitman D. When Slava met Yo-Yo [in 1976]. Punditwire, 28-JUN-2011. [“No, your real name.”]
  
• Winold A. Bach’s Cello Suites: Analyses and Explorations. Indiana Univ, 2007.
  
• Video of Yo-Yo Ma performing Bach Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011, “Sarabande”, on PBS.org
  
• Bach scores at IMSLP.org
  
• cello.org
  
• Kansas City Symphony

Chanticleer: Orlando di Lasso’s ‘Optics’

C   ultural acts, the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms, are social events like any other; they are as public as a marriage and as observable as agriculture.”
  —  Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, p. 87.

T he program notes for last night’s chamber performance by Chanticleer of works by Orlando di Lasso mention the paintings of Hans Mielich, including the one above from about 1570 which depicts Lasso leading an ensemble of chamber singers and other musicians.

• Psalmus Poenitentialis ‘Miserere mei Deus’ LV 727, Ps. 51
  
• Laudate Dominum de caelis LV 954, Ps. 148
  
• Laudate Dominum in Sacris ejus LV 953, Ps. 150
  
• Missa ‘Tous les regretz’ LV 626

E ach beautiful and each iconographically very different, all of these seem intended to assert specific assets of the singers and of the composer and the patrons: good will, generosity, purity of intention, piety, and nobility.

A ccretions from centuries of use and custom must have constrained the mass; here in this missa and laudates and other pieces, Orlando di Lasso’s flowing vocal arcs are freed-up, liberated like sunbeams, spreading light and exposing minute details... inviting the Divine to examine in detail the hearts of those who are offering these sounds. The shiftings from major to minor and back again, again and again—these evoke an ‘optical’ quality not unlike 16th Century Flemish and French and Venetian paintings or even German art like Dürer’s. Individual voices are drawn with truth and utter simplicity. Chanticleer members’ voices ascend in the spiral sanctuary, permeating it, inhabiting it by dint of truth and simplicity.

A  Jan van Eyck painting from the same period shows Canon van der Paele, canon of the Church of St. Donatian in Bruges, Belgium (not far from where Lasso was born) kneeling before the Virgin and Child, next to St. George and St. Donatian. They are in the dark interior of the Bruges cathedral, illuminated by a light source coming from the upper left.

T he canon’s manuscript and eyeglasses—a narrative indication that van der Paele has quit reading from his book and turns his attention to Virgin and Child. The canon’s illuminated manuscript and eyeglasses parallel the props held by Christ and His mother—a bouquet and a parrot. To 15th Century viewers these must’ve been symbolic. But it is clear the props are also incidental; transitory; ‘of this world’. The singing of Chanticleer is ‘of this world’ as well, but it propels our minds and hearts beyond it.

T he interweaving voices activate colors and tones—the counter-tenors pick up the gold threads of St. Donatian’s brocade; the tenors catch glints from St. George’s shining armor; the baritones and basses reveal the draping and textures of the rich fabrics—as they are reflected, re-reflected, and refracted from different surfaces... In the painting, just so with the sound in this peculiar architecture.

T he frames of van der Paele’s eyeglasses cast shadows onto the book. The refraction of the lenses distorts the text underneath. Chanticleer 4-, 5-, and 6-part harmony... parts refracting against each other, at times shadowing or occluding each other; with beat-frequencies among the pitches and re-reflections and meta-refractions against the texts.

T he visual intentions of the painting and its descriptive language control or inform our interpretation of symbolic meaning. The sonic intentions of these pieces and their descriptive language similarly control or inform how we parse their symbolic meanings. Minimalist/literalist interpretations hold that, when normative explanation for an object is sufficient to explain its presence, symbolic meaning is both unnecessary and improbable—an application of Ockham’s Razor. But hearing these tunes and reading these eyeglasses in a literal, nonsymbolic way runs counter to the way in which this painting and these Orlando di Lasso compositions encourage us to recognize far more fluid relationships between objects of this world and symbolic, transcendent ideas. This was a winter evening to remember... really wonderful.

• Chanticleer website
  
• OrlandoDiLasso.org
  
• Armstrong M. The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers During the Wars of Religion, 1560-1600. Univ Rochester, 2004.
  
• Berquist P, ed. Orlando di Lasso Studies. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
  
• Freedman R. The Chansons of Orlando Di Lasso and Their Protestant Listeners : Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France. Univ Rochester / Eastman, 2001.
  
• Geertz C. The Interpretation Of Cultures. Basic, 1977. [Religion as a Cultural System, Ch. 4]
  
• McDonald T. Chanticleer at Community of Christ Temple. Kansas City Star, 06-FEB-2011.
  
• Mormando F, Worcester T, eds. Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque. Truman State Univ, 2007.
  
• Raquin V, ed. Art, Piety and Destruction in the Christian West, 1500-1700. Ashgate, 2010.

Artemis Quartett: Dissonance, Forensic Evidence, and Knowing

L   et’s make nonfiction that is more thrilling than fiction. Let’s use the best of what fiction has to offer and make it more exciting because what happened was real.”
  —  Ellen Windemuth, founder, Off_the_Fence Productions, Amsterdam.

A rtemis Quartet’s performance in Kansas City last Friday night received a warm reception here.

• Natalia Prischepenko, violin
  
• Gregor Sigl, violin
  
• Friedemann Weigle, viola
  
• Eckart Runge, cello

T he all-Beethoven program consisted of Op. 95 (F minor) “Serioso”, Op. 127 No. 12 (E-flat major), and Op. 59 No. 3 “Razumovsky” (C major): supple interpretations throughout, without excesses of any kind, either radical or conservative. In this way, what the Artemis are doing sounds perpetually spontaneous, as though each member is reconsidering the ‘evidence’ that is expressed in her/his part—considering it anew each time they play.

I n fact, one of the qualities that impressed me especially was Artemis Quartett’s emphasis on the dramatic tensions between the parts—discourse between the instruments, yes, but as though the instruments (and the scores) have long-lasting disagreements, and express points of view that are founded on different evidence, profoundly different life-histories, irreconcilably different politics, and so on. Each player/part is not about to renounce what he/she ‘knows’.


    [50-sec clip, Artemis Quartett, Beethoven, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 II, ‘Allegretto ma non troppo’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he exciting (and thought-provoking) result is a durable refractoriness to “nice” conclusions—a richness of trans-indivdual tension and dramatic complexity, even in works that are very familiar to us from repeated listening or performances.

T he encore, Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Suite del Ángel: Milonga del Ángel – Melancólico’, was another 6.7-min illustration of this.

T his Piazzolla suite is part of his series of “ángel” compositions from the 1950s and 1960s, usually performed with bandoneon or other instrumentation instead of this gorgeous arrangement for string quartet. Piazzolla had studied with Nadia Boulanger and famously alleged that his unusual counterpoint methods, for better or worse, could be blamed on her insidious pedagogy. In the “ángel” movement that the Artemis performed as an encore, we have lyrical elements that are passed among the quartet members, some of whose musical ‘testimony’ is corroborative of others’ testimony and some of whose testimony is discorroborative or contradictory. The scordatura-governed dissonance is earnest but not fierce; laconic, not agitated and verbose; and, as noted above, its rhetoric is serious, not whimsical or anecdotal.

T his peculiar Piazzolla suite is similar in narrative technique and orchestration methods to the 1949 ‘Sonata for Double Bass’ by Paul Hindemith. In that work, the bass player uses scordatura, tuning up a whole-step, which lends an unsettling, destabilizing effect to the sonata. In this Piazzolla movement, the cello’s C-string is tuned, I think, a whole-step down. In both works, the parts conjure a song in the form of a dialogue between the instruments. Hindemith: creator of ‘disharmonious counterpoint’ in which traditional combinatorial rules are subverted by a ‘decoupled system’ of tonality, or, maybe more accurately, a novel with an “unreliable narrator” point-of-view character. Piazzolla: creator of ‘testimonial dissonance’, with similar “unreliable” point-of-view characters.

T he same melody can be sung either alone or together with other players/characters, or entirely different melodies can be enunciated at the same time, or with variations that substantially alter the sense that the melody makes—the very embodiment of subjectivity and multiple, unstable points-of-view.

W hile we can recognize that the point of view of the “ángel” cello is constitutionally dour or sometimes irritable/unsympathetic, the subtlety and the disputes among the other parts’ responses prevent us from deciding that the cello-narrator, for all his vividness and probity, is more than just a figment of Piazzolla’s imagination. Our drive for certainty is flouted again and again, but we continue to listen, and there arrive more clues. We continue our listening with feelings of prolongèdly heightened suspense. Or ‘suspense-mingled-with-poignant-sense-of-loss-plus-optimism’.

T he result is that we get a riveting, realistic depiction of what may happen to human psyches when they are self-styled and unrelenting. They each know what they know; they each agree to disagree. Such complexity is emotionally engaging and believable, not confusing. In other words, read the quartet as you would read a good novel—as though it were real.


    [50-sec clip, Artemis Quartett, Piazzolla, ‘Milonga del Ángel-Melancólico’, 1.6MB MP3]

T   he Beethoven the Artemis offered was remarkably cogent and organic. The group dispatched the agitated, mercurial first movement of the Quartet in F minor (Op. 95) with a deft combination of rhapsodic vigor and cool control.”
  —  Anthony Tomassini, New York Times, 02-MAR-2010.

• Artemis Quartett website
  
• Artemis Quartet. Piazzolla Project. (Virgin, 2009.)
  
• Artemis Quartet. Beethoven: String Quartets Opp. 59/2 & 18/4. (Virgin, 2008.)
  
• Artemis Quartet. Beethoven: String Quartets Opp. 95 & 59/1. (Virgin, 2008.)
  
• Bateson G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Univ Chicago, 2000.
  
• Hoefer B, Pintrich P. Personal Epistemology. Erlbaum, 2002.
  
• Huemer M, ed. Epistemology: Contemporary Readings. Routledge, 2002.
  
• Kieran M, Lopes D, eds. Knowing Art: Essays in Aesthetics and Epistemology. Springer, 2007.
  
• Lackey J, Sosa E, eds. The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford Univ, 2006.
  
• McDonald T. Artemis String Quartet Review. Kansas City Star, 13-MAR-2010.
  
• Olsson E. Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification. Oxford Univ, 2005.
  
• Roberts R, Wood W. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. Oxford Univ, 2010.
  
• Rounds D. The Four and the One: In Praise of String Quartets. Lost Coast, 1999.
  
• Smith M. Understanding Unreliable Narrators: Reading Between the Lines. NCT, 1991.
  
• Sosa E. A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. Oxford Univ, 2009.
  
• Tomassini A. Beethoven that is robust, if a little strange. New York Times, 02-MAR-2010.
  
• Vaihinger H. The Philosophy of ‘As If’. Routledge, 2008.

Perfect Halloween Music: The Aesthetic Realism of Josquin Desprez’s ‘Mille regretz’

S ingers in brown or black, in an austere chamber, cold beyond the capacity of their clothing to keep them warm.

F aded Renaissance landscape with fields now harvested and frost well on the pumpkin...


    [50-sec clip, Paul Hillier & Hilliard Ensemble, Josquin Desprez, ‘Mille regretz’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he singers’ gestures are Brueghel-like—some threading their way in the foreground and others in the distance. Denuded woods; hunting; dogs; countertenor; pensive magpies.

V alley of ponds, river meandering through it abjectly. Steeply-roofed houses and steepled churches—unremitting sharpness, pointiness.

H ills upon hills, ruthlessly sharp mountain crags, desolate gray sky. Down below, there’s the mill with its wheel iced-in...

M any people skating, so many as to render us inconsequential, anonymous. We could die! We could vanish and they surely would not notice or miss us. They would forget us.

T he aesthetic ‘continuity’ of Brueghel (and of Josquin?) is, I think, not “reassuring” in the way that poet-aestheticist Eli Siegel once claimed. The continuity is instead terrifyingly indifferent to our existence and passing. Ghosts cannot bear dwindling...

Mille regretz de vous abandonner	A thousand regrets at deserting you
Et d'eslonger votre fache amoureuse.	and leaving behind your loving face.
J'ai si grand dueil et peine douloureuse	I feel so much sadness and such painful distress
Qu'on me verra bref mes jours définer.	that it seems to me my days must soon dwindle away.

T he singers continue, plying their musical craft... classical singers evoke a monkish existence, lives governed by the demands of Art.

O r is it instead a ghostly one, this singing existence? Mille regretz, singing their own future epitaphs?

T o me, ‘aesthetic realism’ and ‘documentary genre’ are inherently scary. In painting or in music or in film, they are able to conjure a special kind of existential horror, perfect for Halloween. Horror of being skeletonized, forgotten.

D on’t miss the wonderful new book on Josquin, by David Fallows, just released this month...

• Paul Hillier website
  
• Hilliard Ensemble website
  
• Hillier P & Hilliard Ensemble. Josquin Desprez: Motets & Chansons. (EMI, 1995.)
  
• Edward Green (Prof Composition, Manhattan School of Music) on Aesthetic Realism
  
• David Fallows page at Univ Manchester
  
• Fallows D. Josquin. Brepols, 2009.
  
• Fallows D. Who composed Mille regretz?, in Barbara Haggh, ed., Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman. Paris, 2001, pp. 214-52.
  
• Duffin R, Hillier P, eds. A Josquin Anthology. Oxford Univ, 2000.
  
• Sherr R, ed. The Josquin Companion. Oxford Univ, 2001.
  
• Siegel E. Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism. Definition, 1981.
  
• Siegel E, Reiss E. The Modern Quarterly Beginnings of Aesthetic Realism, 1922-1923: The Equality of Man, the Scientific Criticism, and Other Essays. 2e. Definition, 1997.
  
• Countertenor page at Spiritus Temporis
  
• Aesthetic Realism Foundation website
  
• Josquin scores at Werner Icking Music Archive
  
• Josquin Desprez page at Wikipedia
  
• Eli Siegel page at Wikipedia

Anonymous 4: Aural Ambitions of Medieval Worship, Modal Fictionalism

T he performance by Anonymous 4 last Saturday evening in the Friends of Chamber Music’s Early Music series was beautiful, without doubt.

• Marsha Genensky
  
• Susan Hellauer
  
• Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek
  
• Ruth Cunningham

T he program ‘Secret Voices: Music from Las Huelgas, ca. 1300 CE’ of pieces from the Codex Las Huelgas embodies both traditional and emerging aspects of the musical and religious practice of its time. There are motets that manifest secular or para-liturgical aspirations, but the music is also inherently liturgical and devotional.

A s I listened, entranced by the singing, I began to imagine medieval religious thought—the pious thought and feeling that motivated the creation and preservation of the Codex—as a kind of improvisation and ‘modal fictionalism’ that aimed to make the tenets of belief that the text expresses come true or be true. More than an expression of belief or mere devotional act, the words and music seem intent on establishing the possible world in which what the words say really happens. In other words, the impression that struck me was that the Las Huelgas nuns’ practice was far more radical than any ordinary kind of piety.

S ome links to recent books on modal fictionalism are at the bottom of this blog post, for your interest.

Motet Claustrum pudicicie Virgo viget, Triplum
Claustrum pudicicie, virginis triclinium,	Cloister of modesty, seat of virginity,
spes tocius leticie...	hope of all happiness...
virgo filium fac nobis propicium...	Virgin, make your Son merciful to us...

Discant
Fa fa mi fa mi re mi,	Fa fa mi fa mi re mi,
Ut mi sol re mi ut fa fa,	Ut mi sol re mi ut fa fa,
Fa re fa fa re ut re mi ut re mi.	Fa re fa fa re ut re mi ut re mi.
Est fatuum spernere	It is foolish to despise these
quia musicalia...	because they are the elements of music...

Alleluya: Que est ista?
Alleluya!	Alleluia!
Que est ista tam formosa,	Who is she, so lovely,
pulcra ut luna,	beautiful as the moon,
electa ut sol,	noble as the sun,
terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata?	awesome as an army arrayed for battle?

B oth the Codex las Huelgas and the Codex Calixtinus (the subject of previous Anonymous 4 recordings and concerts) are noted for their importance in understanding the development of 12th and 13th Century polyphony. They are important on account of their scope, fine condition, and readability. There are oddities of alignment between the voices (see the reproduction manuscripts, links below). In the note-against-note style, it was fairly clear which notes went together, since they pair off nicely with few exceptions. On the other hand, when the upper voice is allowed to have more than one note for every note in the lower voice, it’s hard to determine on which notes the two voices coincide. Karp’s book is a good place to begin understanding the intervalic alignments and dissonances, especially the note-against-note portions.

R hythmic and metrical ambiguities in the notation also reveal how much improvisational latitude there is (was). These ambiguities and the performance decisions and interactions between the ensemble members last Saturday night were the cause of my meditations on modal fictionalism. The ambiguities are obliterated in modern transcriptions (like these), so you really need to look at [facsimiles of] the original Codices. Is the meter duple or triple?


P ossible-worlds semantics for modality says that an expression is possibly true if it is true in some possible world. In classical propositional logic, one can show that every logically-consistent set of propositions can be embedded in a ‘maximal consistent set’. A ‘maximal consistent set’ is an abstraction of a ‘possible world’—for the nuns of the Codex, a possible world where Mary is really Queen and all members of the Order really are virtuous. But the abstraction depends on the fact that modal logics are ‘finitary’, and it seems false that an infinite collection of sets of sentences—each finite subset of which is intuitively ‘possible’ in natural language—has the property that the whole set is possible.

S o questions about necessity (or what ‘has to be’, or what ‘must be true’, or what cannot be otherwise) and possibility (or what can be, or what could be otherwise) are questions about modality—and such questions are what the works that comprised the Anonymous 4’s ‘Secrets of las Huelgas’ program so strongly evoked.

F ictionalism is a philosophical approach which treats the claims or assertions as analogous to fictional claims: claims that are not asserted literally, but which are put forward to serve a specific useful function of deliberation. There is even a modal fictionalism in theoretical mathematics (link below).

B ut, despite the name ‘modal fictionalism’, it’s not primarily fictionalism about claims of necessity and possibility, but rather a fictionalist approach to claims about possible worlds. (For instance, modal fictionalism is not normally fictionalist about the claim that “it is possible that there be a species of tail-less kangaroo”, but rather about the claim that “there is a possible world in which there is a species of tail-less kangaroo”.)

T heories employing possible-worlds constructs have been found to be very useful in philosophy—‘thought experiments’, basically, to discover the implications and meanings of constellations of propositions. The ‘modal fictionalism’ approach has been extensively applied over the past 30 years in ethics and in areas other than philosophy, like linguistics, logic, and probability theory.

I sn’t it extravagant to believe that just because a situation or constellation of facts is possible, it must in some sense exist? ‘Weak modal fictionalists’ say ‘yes’ to this; they take commitments to the existence of possible worlds that are constructed in the mind—merely hypothetical situations, non-actual but possible situations—to be strictly or possibly false, and so they avoid the problems of believing in possible worlds. Nevertheless, they claim, they derive the epistemological benefits of using these seemingly problematic theories.

I  think that the the nuns of Las Huelgas ca. 1300 may have been what we would today call ‘strong’ modal fictionalists—who say it is not extravagant at all.

A  wonderful performance, with much food for thought...

• Anonymous4 website
  
• Anonymous4. Four Centuries of Chant. (Harmonia Mundi, 2009.)
  
• Anonymous4. Miracles of Compostela. (Harmonia Mundi, 2008.)
  
• Codex las Huelgas, OMIfacsimiles edition
  
• Codex las Huelgas page at Wikipedia
  
• Codex las Huelgas page at Goldbergweb.com
  
• Begbie J. Theology, Music and Time. Cambridge Univ, 2000.
  
• Berman C. Medieval Religion: New Approaches. Routledge, 2005.
  
• Bratman M. Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge Univ, 1999.
  
• Broad J, Green K, eds. Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800. Springer, 2007. [esp. Chapter 1, Earl Richards]
  
• Bueno O, Linnebo O, eds. New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. [esp. Chapter 3 on mathematical fictionalism]
  
• Danielson P. Artificial Morality: Virtuous Robots for Virtual Games. Routledge, 1992.
  
• Fuller S. Perspectives on Musical Notation. In The Codex Calixtinus, in El Códice Calixtino y la Música de su Tiempo, J. López-Calo and C. Villanueva, eds. Fundación Pedro Barrié da la Maza, 2001, pp. 183-234.
  
• Fuller S. Early Polyphony to circa 1200. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, M. Everist, ed. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Fuller S. Modal Discourse and Fourteenth-Century French Song: A ‘Medieval’ Perspective Recovered? Early Music History 1998; 17: 61-108.
  
• Sarah Fuller page at SUNY Stony Brook
  
• Hare C. On Myself and Other, Less Important Subjects. Princeton Univ, 2009.
  
• Hathorne G. 'Secret Voices' was a bonfire for the soul. KCmetropolis.org, 28-OCT-2009.
  
• Henriques L. Miracles of Sant'iago. Atrium Musicologicum blog, 04-APR-2009.
  
• Irwin J, ed. Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice. AARB, 1984.
  
• Johnston M. Saving God: Religion after Idolatry. Princeton Univ, 2009.
  
• Karp T. The Polyphony of Saint Martial and Santiago de Compostela. 2 vol. Univ California, 1993.
  
• Ledbetter M. Virtuous Intentions: The Religious Dimension of Narrative. AARB, 1989.
  
• Liggins D. Modal fictionalism and possible-worlds discourse. Phil Stud 2007; 138:151-60.
  
• Meyers D. Women and Religion in Old and New Worlds. Routledge, 2001.
  
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• Nichols S, ed. The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction. Oxford Univ, 2006.
  
• Nolan D. Modal Fictionalism. Stanford Univ, 2007.
  
• Parens J. An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Introducing Alfarabi. SUNY, 2006.
  
• Petrie L. Anonymous4 reveals sacred secrets. San Francisco Classical Voice. OCT-2009.
  
• Raleigh S. Codex Calixtinus and the development of polyphony in the twelfth century. Vanderbilt Univ, 1998.
  
• Rosen G. Modal fictionalism. Mind 1990; 99: 327-54.
  
• Papers citing Gideon Rosen on Possible-Worlds
  
• Sainsbury R. Fiction and Fictionalism. Routledge, 2009.
  
• Saliers D. Music and Theology. Abingdon, 2007.
  
• Shaw M. The Paradox of Intention: Reaching the Goal by Giving Up the Attempt to Reach It. AARB, 1988.
  
• Westermeyer P. Te Deum: The Church and Music. Augsburg, 1998.
  
• Williams J, Stones A, eds. The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St. James. Narr, 1992.
  
• The Way of St. James, page at spain.info
  
• Codex Calixtinus, OMIfacsimiles edition

S    ince the late 12th Century, the Cathedral of Santiago in Compostela has possessed a manuscript entitled ‘Jacobus’ (Codex Calixtinus). How it found its way to Compostela is unknown, but it is undoubtedly a French product, probably compiled or writtin in Cluny around 1150. Although they represent a mere 10% of the music in Jacobus, the polyphonic works have received attention from scholars because they are among the earliest such pieces to have been written down. But the notation in Jacobus is ambiguous as to rhythm and meter, as well as to alignment of the pitches between the voice parts in the polyphony...”
  —  Susan Hellauer, Anonymous4 CD liner notes.