Mahindra Humanities Center Medieval Studies Seminar

Graeme Boone (The Ohio State University), Affective Inflection in the Works of Jean Gerson and Guillaume Dufay. This lecture is part of the 2019-2020 Medieval Studies Seminar series "Hearing the Middle Ages".

This talk will elucidate the musical theology of the French scholar and reformer Jean Gerson (1363-1429)—in particular, his use of the note Bb as a 'spiritual inflection'—and illustrate its relationship to the musical compositions of Guillaume Dufay, focusing on Dufay's affective use of that same note. Just as Gerson illuminates Dufay, so too does research in this area illuminate the broader domain of musical affectivity in the fifteenth century, notably as regards the so-called 'minor' keys.