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This dissertation studies sixteenth-century polyphonic music based on the “Te deum laudamus” text, using methods and tools from network science. This interdisciplinary approach connects a trend from Digital Humanities with historical musicology. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part offers introductions on network science, on its applications in music studies and musicology, and on the history and characteristics of the “Te deum laudamus”. In the second part three different network perspectives on the polyphonic settings of the “Te deum” are presented. A concluding chapter evaluates the observations from the three perspectives, connects them with the central research question and reconciles network perspectives with more traditional musicological ones. The dissertation is accompanied by an online dataset. From the sixth century onwards the “Te deum” text – a praise to God – has been set to music. More than 150 unique, polyphonic compositions are known from the sixteenth century, handed down in nearly 190 different sources. It is not always possible to determine where and when these settings were performed. Written and printed sources from this period often give an impression of the performance context though. The central research question of this dissertation is how network science can help to clarify this context. For this, three different network perspectives are presented, each with a different focus on this corpus of polyphonic “Te deum” compositions. The networks are constructed using information found in contemporary sources and existing literature. The first network perspective is a microscopic view of a set of six partbooks (now known as Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms. Mus. Saec. XVI-49 (1-6)). The partbooks are dated 1566 and contain eight different polyphonic settings of the “Te deum laudamus”. This view demonstrates how a network can be modelled from existing knowledge, found in the source itself and in musicological literature about it. To provide insight on the history of the transmission of the polyphonic “Te deum”, the second network perspective is a temporal perspective, showing when the sources with “Te deum” settings originated and what their interrelations are. It shows over time which sources are connected and which remain isolated. The third perspective demonstrates, by analysing network communities and network paths, to what extent the existing text variants of the “Te deum laudamus” relate to other texts. The network observations demonstrate that so-called network communities and network paths transcend the local context of one particular source or composition. Furthermore, they show that broader musicological interpretations are possible. In addition, network visualisations support distant reading and can change the way how we think about and order (musicological) information. A general conclusion is that musicological books, articles and editions are certainly rich in data. Extracting data from the literature and digitising them, however, makes the data accessible and applicable for new types of research.
DOI: 10.33540/1072