Erik Bergwall

Short presentation

I am a Ph.D. student at the Department of Musicology. Research interests include early music theory and pedagogy, improvisation, historiography, and computer assisted analysis.

Research

My PhD project will explore and evaluate concepts such as intertextuality and transtextuality to describe aspects of interconnectedness between works of composers of late Renaissance England, looking particularly at the music collected by the musician and copyist John Baldwin (c.1560-1615).

Baldwin is unique in the way he collected and copied music into his own scorebook (sometimes called his "commonplace" book). The repertory is eclectic: secular madrigals are copied next to mass movements and motets. There is also a section of the book containing what seems to be didactic pieces or etudes. It is in these pieces of "learned" counterpoint that Baldwin seems to have been particularly influenced by his colleagues, whose pieces he copied next to his own.

By describing the similarities (also exploring the question "what is similarity in music") between Baldwin's pieces and those of his colleagues, and by discussing the border-like territory between what could be described as a common musical "grammar" and a particular style or genre, I hope to gain a clearer understanding of Baldwin and his professional network of musicians.