Medieval uncloistered: Uses of medieval music in late twentieth-century culture

This dissertation explores the uses of medieval music in forms of late twentieth century popular and concert music cultures. It reviews the 'uncloistered' state of medieval music and the range of contemporary musical domains in which medieval music now functions. Through a series of studies that examine contemporary performances of medieval music and that chart medieval references in popular music, and concert music, I offer a detailed analysis of medieval music's social, cultural and ideological functions in contemporary musical life. Central to the dissertation is the concept of medievalism, a term that acknowledges socially and culturally constructed discourses of Middle Ages. Four discourses of the Middle Ages are identified: a Middle Ages of folk-like charm; a Middle Ages of spirituality; a Middle Ages of exoticism; and a Middle Ages of the feminine. Chapter One provides a theoretical framework for the dissertation. Each remaining chapter details the construction of medievalism through an examination of the compositional features or performance aesthetic, in addition to the visual imagery, liner notes, music reviews, interviews with musicians, and other written texts surrounding the music. The ideological circumstances under which medieval music was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s by the New York Pro Musica and the Studio der Fruhen Musik are taken up in Chapter Two. Chapter Three discusses the allusions to and performance of medieval music by the bands Dead Can Dance and Enigma; Chapter Four explores the female a cappella performance aesthetic of groups such as Anonymous 4 and Sequentia; medieval allusions in music by Arvo Part and John Tavener are examined in Chapter Five. The concluding chapter suggests ways in which these various medievalisms have offered alternatives to modernism and generate a range of meanings for the Middle Ages and medieval music.