Sources of Identity: Makers, Owners, and Users of Music Sources before 1600 ed. by Lisa Colton and Tim Shephard (review)

Contemporary people obsess over identity. Currently, identity can be constructed, digitized, faked, enhanced, defamed, stolen, protected, projected, dissected, deconstructed, and bought and sold. Conversely, recovering personal identities from much earlier history requires careful interpretation of the human traces, faint or explicit, left intentionally or unawares in artifacts that survived for centuries, usually against steep odds.

In fifteen essays, Sources of Identity: Makers, Owners, and Users of Music Sources before 1600 finds the individuals who created music books in these traces left behind. Music sources dating from the eleventh century to the dawn of the seventeenth century reveal identities of individuals and the communities and institutions in which they created music. The book's chronological organization creates an overarching narrative of the changes—in musical functions and styles, material aspects and source creation, patterns of preservation and dissemination, centers of musical patronage and influence, and even the concept of individuals and their roles as creators and purveyors of music. Books and manuscripts served particular needs, and Julie E. Cumming commends their "insight into the roles, identities, activities, and social, economic, and cultural networks of the people involved in their creation, dissemination, and use" (p. 38). Mitchell P. Brauner and Elisabeth Giselbrecht caution readers that our assumptions about using sources, which incline toward performance or the making of editions, obscure the richer readings available. The varied types of evidence within the sources require a large tool kit of methodologies to produce nuanced, productive, and multivalent readings. Thus these essays inform readers not only through their discoveries but also by their processes and logic; their new insights create a bridge between ancient and modern musickers.

The manuscripts and prints examined here contain liturgical chant and polyphony, motets, madrigals, songs, and instrumental music. Alongside the music, the skills, creations, agendas, and agency of the individuals connected with music making survive in handwriting, illustrations, repertorial and formatting choices, inscriptions, and instructions. Ralph Corrigan identifies a nameless scribe who not only produced but also owned and used music books. Corrigan considers repertorial and material aspects of a fifteenthcentury book to reconstruct this scribe's process of conceptualizing, organizing, constructing, and writing. Changes in handwriting and the original manuscript plan, and errors in copying and their solutions, reveal the variable skills and needs of the scribe, who Corrigan believes was also its user.

Jason Stoessel's intimate examinations of a music-loving trio illuminate the Italian Benedictine music communities they inhabited as well as their personal identities. Paolo da Firenze—the powerful and influential abbot, collector of music books, musician, and composer—was "in a position to influence the requisition of the resources, and to harness his own resources and personal associates, for music manuscript production" (p. 88). Paleographic evidence suggests that the Paduan monk and copyist Rolando da Casale, who often signed his work, was more prolific and versatile than previously believed, competent in writing both music and multiple text styles. Stoessel's close readings uncover a name, Giacomo da Padova, for an illuminator known as the "Master of 1411."

Even a musical icon like Guillaume Dufay becomes more real as Jeffrey J. Dean tracks his formation as a composer. Assessing hymn cycles in vesperal manuscripts, Dean speculates that Dufay composed his own cycle in response to the one used by the papal chapel, beginning with new settings for existing hymn texts; then, "at some point along this path, it will have occurred to him that he was on the way to composing a coherent cycle, and he will have settled down to do this on purpose" (p. 162).

Music printing enables the formation, promotion, and preservation of composer identity. Esperanza Rodríguez-García portrays Tomás Luis de Victoria as a strong self-advocate within the traditional patronage system. His Missae, magnificat, motecta, psalmi et alia quam plurima of...