| Sebastian Virdung's Musica getutscht (Basel, 1511), the earliest printed treatise to deal exclusively with musical instruments and their performance techniques, has been misinterpreted and misquoted by scholars from the eighteenth century to the present day. This stems partly from the archaic language in which the work is written and partly from the fragmentary study to which it has been subjected. The foundation of this dissertation, then, is an English translation of the entire treatise. The methodology for this stage of the project involved linguistic research using dictionaries and word lists from the era of Musica getutscht. The result is a translation with a documented glossary for the benefit of other investigators who wish to further understand or to challenge the decisions made in rendering this language into English. The second part of the dissertation provides a study of Musica getutscht. Extant documents have been translated and analyzed for the purpose of placing this treatise and its author within the context of intellectual history of the period. Documents brought to bear in the present study relate to the following aspects of Musica getutscht: (1) the lives of those who brought it to fruition (the author, the author's partner in the dialogue, the dedicatee, the printer, the artist, and several men in the background); (2) the publication history of this work, which lived on for over half a century in four derivative treatises in as many languages; (3) the sources of influence that fed into its genesis; and (4) the many woodcut illustrations, which constitute a vehicle of expression rivaling the importance of the text proper. Results from this research include new light on the biography of Virdung, further insights about the production of Musica getutscht as an artifact, an updated chronology for the four derivative treatises, better understanding of the similarities and differences among these five related works, a fresh approach to the pictorial aspect of Virdung's treatise, and a new appreciation of Musica getutscht as a whole within the larger cultural context to which it belongs. |
