Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Universal Music Group.

Multi-national recording and music publishing organization. Formed in 1996 and owned by the Canadian firm Seagram Company Ltd, Universal Music Group is one of the world’s leading music companies, with record operations in 59 countries around the world. Among the company’s record labels are A&M, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Geffen, GRP, MCA, Mercury, Motown, Philips, Polydor, Universal and Verve. Universal Music Publishing Group, part of the Universal Music Group, is one of the industry’s largest global music publishing operations. Its antecedents may be traced back to 1924 with the formation of the talent agency Music Corporation of America (MCA). In 1964 MCA Music Publishing began to take shape with the purchase of Leeds Music and Duchess Music. Over the next three decades, the division grew to include over 150,000 copyrights; and it represents, wholly or in part, nearly 200 publishers’ imprints. Classical, popular and educational music titles are included in its catalogue. MCA was acquired by Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Ltd in 1991 and by Seagram Company Ltd in 1995.

MARK JACOBS/R

Universities.

This article examines the history of the study of music at university level.

I. Middle Ages and Renaissance, to 1600

II. 1600–1945

III. After 1945

CHRISTOPHER PAGE (I), WILLIAM WEBER (II), JEAN GRIBENSKI (III, 1), DAVID HILEY (III, 2), CAROLYN GIANTURCO (III, 3), HOWARD E. SMITHER (III, 4), PETER DICKINSON (III, 5)

Universities

I. Middle Ages and Renaissance, to 1600

The word universitas in later medieval Latin meant any association of individuals and was not restricted to a ‘university’ in the modern sense. The history of the English term ‘university’ and its European cognates therefore shows how the organization of higher learning in the 12th and 13th centuries was shaped by the spread of sworn associations and professional corporations that is an outstanding feature of Western civilization in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In considering these ‘universities’, the danger of anachronism is severe, hence the cardinal importance of proceeding cautiously in the early period, especially the decades from 1180 to 1230, which saw rise of Notre Dame polyphony; in the Western tradition this is the only musical development of epoch-making significance to have taken place in a university city.

The germinating cells of the universities were the masters (magistri). During the ‘long’ 12th century from 1090 to 1210, the period of the nascent universities, a magister was generally a person who had shown such aptitude at a secular school that his best choice of career, at least initially, was to become a schoolmaster himself. Because most of Latin Christendom experienced a phase of urban renewal and demographic increase after about 1050, a process that continued (albeit with less sudden energy) into the 16th century and beyond, the masters invariably based themselves in cities where a relatively abundant supply of money, sustenance and pupils was to be had. The master, in his urban school that was perhaps no more than a rented room, taught his pupils how to read Latin and to compose Latin verse; he also instilled in them some connoisseurship of classical and late antique texts such as the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius. He might also extend his teaching to logic and dialectic. The evidence that some of these magistri composed polyphony appears early. The ‘Codex Calixtinus’ (12th century) contains a number of polyphonic pieces attributed in a slightly later hand to various magistri, including two items by ‘Master Goslenus bishop of Soissons’. Goslenus became bishop in 1126, when he would have assumed the title dominus; if the attribution in the ‘Codex Calixtinus’ is trustworthy, the term magister may carry the date of composition back to the years around 1112 when Goslenus was a noted authority in Paris for his studies of speculative grammar and his opposition to Peter Abelard.

Such evidence is important for establishing the pre-history of the Notre Dame school of polyphonic music, but it reveals little about the formal study of music at Paris. Just as a magister of the Middle Ages and Renaissance might have a limited professional interest in the writings of Fathers such as Augustine – the texts that enflamed the monastic love of learning – so too he did not usually teach plainchant. If the master’s classes touched upon music it was principally through the medium of revered texts such as the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella or the De musica of Boethius. Numerous treatises on plainchant were composed in the 13th century, and indeed later, but Dyer (1990) has emphasized that they reveal only modest traces of the masters’ fundamental technique of comparing the authoritative texts in their inheritance, posing questions (quaestiones) to explore the contradictions between them and then devising a solutio to resolve the question posed. (One author who did, Elias Salomon, showed by his eccentric manner and shaky Latin that he was far from being a magister in the sense described above.) The scholastic colouring is also light in most treatises on polyphony from the period before 1450 or so, and even in the most rigorously taxonomic and objective treatises, such as the Regule of Robert de Handlo, it is rarely to be found or does not appear at all. Certainly it is not to be confused with the use of a rigorous structure of argument and the use of Aristotelian conceptions such as ‘proper’ and ‘accident’ or ‘species’ and ‘genus’; these were the common property of most men after about 1150 who had been educated to read and write Latin on technical subjects. Revealing evidence on this point is provided by a manual for arts students at Paris, compiled between 1230 and 1240–45 (now in E-Bac, Ripoll 109; facs. of section concerning music in Page, 1989, p.140). This mentions the set texts in arts and gives specimen questions and answers to be studied by candidates for examinations. The only set text for music is the De musica of Boethius, which remained among the fundamental materials for the university study of music until at least the 16th century. There is no evidence in this syllabus for the existence of ‘university music texts’ (Yudkin, 1990) other than Boethius, at least at this date.

Where early records still exist, exact musical requirements are often specified: at Prague (1367) ‘ordinary (non-holiday) lectures on music were given as well as on arithmetic, geometry and astronomy’; at Vienna (1389) ‘some books on music and some on arithmetic’ was the requirement for bachelors seeking the licentiate; at Cologne (1398) a one-month study of ‘music in two parts’, perhaps consisting of theory and practice, was required; at Kraków (1400) aspirants to the magisterium heard music lectures for a month; and at Oxford (1431) ‘music for the term of a year’ was required of magisterial candidates.

The study of music as a liberal discipline was supplemented by other university activities such as academic exercises, masses and investitures, and there was also much informal singing, dancing and instrumental performance. Private music instruction was available to those who wanted it, and instruction was regularly given in choir schools connected with university foundations. The school of Notre Dame was allied to the university in Paris, as were St Stephen’s, the Neckarschule and the Thomasschule to univeristies in Vienna, Heidelberg and Leipzig. Collges at Oxford and Cambridge provided for choristers to supply a constant flow of religious services, and some college statutes emphasized music. Thus Queen’s College, Oxford, required chapel clerks skilled in plainchant and polyphony to instruct the choristers, and both New College and All Souls demanded musical proficiency of all their applicants.

Paris undoubtedly provided a congenial environment for men interested in music, and throughout the later Middle Ages and Renaissance other universities did the same, notably those at Padua, which provided the milieu for the works of Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, and Oxford, a city that was at least temporarily a home to Walter Odington. Well into the 15th century, however, the question of whether the composition and study of polyphonic music existed as an established university subject remains open in many cases. Palisca (1985) maintains that ‘music early earned a place alongside the disciplines of the humanist curriculum in the main Italian centres of learning’ while judiciously admitting that the facts on which to base such a judgment are ‘meagre’ (p.8). The issue perhaps rests, in part, on what is meant by ‘music’ and ‘musical studies’. For Johannes Gallicus of Namur (d 1473), who studied at the school founded by Vittorino da Feltre at the court of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga in Mantua in 1424, musical studies were conducted with the same textbook used by students in Paris two centuries earlier, namely ‘the Musica of Boethius’. The retention of Boethius – even if he was read somewhat differently, as is surely the case – points to the essential issue. The fundamental requirement for a university subject in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was that its material should be sensed as a universal. The emergence of the university at Bologna, one of the earliest in Europe, is intimately connected with the rediscovery of Roman law and its gradual dissemination throughout western Europe. Theology and medicine, the two other subjects studied in the Higher Faculties, may be spoken of in similar terms, especially in relation to Paris, Salerno and Montpellier. Until the mid-15th century at the earliest, polyphonic music could not readily be regarded in this light because there was no central musical language for polyphonic composition. The rise of ‘music’ to become a ‘university subject’, in something like the sense in which both of these terms are now understood, is linked to the process, chronicled by Strohm (1993), whereby a common language of polyphony emerged in Europe during the period 1380–1500. Music degrees were instituted at Cambridge, and probably at Oxford, in the mid-15th century; it has been claimed that a ‘chair of music’ existed at Salamanca much earlier and a chair was endowed at Bologna in 1450. Evidence like this may easily be multiplied, and it has often been assembled, notably by Carpenter (1958). As Strohm has emphasized, it reveals that the generation of 1450–90 provided the men who ‘began creatively to engage in the development of the art’ as university teachers (p.293).

During the early Renaissance, university music instruction continued to follow a medieval pattern. Musica speculativa was still an essential part of the Quadrivium, and practical musical skills were cultivated in collegiate foundations. Universities established during this period, such as Leuven, Basle and Wittenberg, insisted on musical requirements similar to those of older institutions. Although music taught as a science was gradually allied with physics, it continued to be emphasized as a separate art. The linking of music to humanistic studies, partaicularly Greek and Latin literature, was characteristic of the Renaissance period. At Paris, which was strongly conservative, music remained a mathematical science until the end of the 16th century when it became part of physics, and treatises by mathematicians such as Oronce Finé, the first professor of mathematics in the Collège de France, emphasize this connection. At Prague, knowledge of Johannes de Muris’s Musica, a traditional requirement, was not insisted on after 1528, and in Germany it was not demanded after the mid-century, when musica speculativa became part of physics. In German universities a number of eminent theorists and composers (including Cochlaeus, Listenius, Glarean and Ornithoparchus) with an interest in contemporary music taught either publicly on a university stipend or privately.

The association of musical studies with classical poetry was strong during the Renaissance. The Collegium Poetarum et Mathematicorum, established in Vienna early in the 16th century under Conradus Celtes, became important for the cultivation of choral ode settings. At the Collège de Coqueret in Paris, Jean Dorat, professor of Greek and the teacher of Pierre de Ronsard, sang Greek poetry to a lute accompaniment and investigated Greek theories of the emotional powers of music; similar examinations were the main concert of the Pléiade and Baïf’s Académie de Poésie et de Musique. Several poets held the chair of music at Salamanca in the 16th century, among them Juan del Encina. Wimpheling’s Stylpho, the earliest of all humanistic Schuldramen to incorporate ode settings, was performed at Heidelberg; and at Uppsala the musician appointed to teach singing was even called professor poeteos et musices.

English universities were unique in awarding degrees in music, although they did not maintain staff, and candidates learnt music privately. At Cambridge in 1464 Henry Abyndon, the earliest recorded recipient of an English music degree, became MusB and later that year received the MusD. The earliest recorded BMus at Oxford was Henry Parker, eminent ‘for his Compositions in Vocal and Instrumental Musick’, who received the degree in 1502, though in the same year Robert Wydow of Oxford was incorporated MusB at Cambridge, and must therefore have taken the degree earlier. The earliest known recipient of the Oxford DMus is Fayrfax, who was incorporated from Cambridge in 1511. During the century, many important English musicians obtained degrees from one or both of these universities. Degree requirements were perhaps stricter at Cambridge, where proof of theoretical and practical experience was required. Even Tye had to prove, before ‘incepting’, that he had spent many years studying and practising music beyond the MusB and to compose a mass to be sung at commencement. Oxford awarded honorary degrees in music: Heyther, for example, received both BMus and DMus at the same time; Orlando Gibbons, who composed Heyther’s commencement anthem, was created DMus ‘to accompany Dr Heather’. Late 16th-century statutes of both Oxford and Cambridge list numerous fees imposed on music candidates who ranked with candidates in the higher faulties of law, medicine and theology.

Unlike their counterparts in Germany, France and England the Italian universities played only a modest part in music teaching during the Renaissance. The only certain example of a chair of music at an Italian university during the early part of the period is that held by Gaffurius at Pavia in the 1490s, which Kristeller believed to have been granted to him as a special favour by Lodovico Sforza. Of course there was a good deal of private instruction given in university institutions, such as that of Ramos de Pareia in Bologna, but the main centres of music education in Italy throughout the 15th and 16th centuries remained the cathedrals and courts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Universities, §I: Medieval and Renaissance

BIBLIOGRAPHY

N.C. Carpenter: Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York, 1958/R)

M. Huglo: ‘L'enseignement de la musique à l'Université de Paris au Moyen Age’, L'enseignement de la musique au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance: Royaumont 1985, 73–9

C. Meyer: ‘L'enseignement de la musique dans les universités allemandes au Moyen Age’, ibid., 87–95

C.V. Palisca: Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven, CT, 1985)

J.K. Hyde: ‘Universities and Cities in Medieval Italy’, The University and the City: from Medieval Origins to the Present, ed. T. Bender (Oxford, 1986), 13–21

R.W. Southern: ‘The Changing Rôle of Universities in Medieval Europe’, Historical Research, lx (1987), 134–46

C. Wright: ‘Music in the History of the Universities’, AcM, lix (1987), 8–10 [report on Round Table I, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, 27–89]

C. Page: The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 (London, 1989)

B.B. Price: ‘Master by Any Other Means’, Renaissance and Reformation, xiii (1989), 115–34

J. Verger: ‘L'université de Paris et ses collèges au temps de Jérôme de Moravie’, Jérôme de Moravie: Royaumont 1989, 15–31 [with Eng. summary]

C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris 500–1550 (Cambridge, 1989)

M. Huglo: ‘The Study of Ancient Sources of Music Theory in the Medieval Universities’, Music Theory and its Sources: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. A. Barbera (Notre Dame, IN, 1990), 150–72

J. Yudkin: ‘The Influence of Aristotle on French University Music Texts’, ibid., 73–89

J. Dyer: ‘Chant Theory and Philosophy in the Late Thirteenth Century’, Cantus Planus IV: Pécs 1990, 99–118

F.A. Gallo: ‘La musica in alcune prolusioni universitarie bolognesi del XV secolo’, Sapere è poeter: discipline, dispute e professioni nell'università medievale e moderna: il caso bolognese a confonto, ed. L. Avellini, A. Cristiani and A. de Benedictis (Bologna, 1990), ii, 205–15

D. García Fraile: ‘La cátedra de musica de la Universidad de Salamanca durante diecisieti años del siglo XV (1464–1481)’, AnM, xlvi (1991), 57–101

C. Panti: ‘The First Questio of MS. Paris, B.N., lat.7372: Utrum musica sit scientia’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., xxxiii (1992), 265–313

C.H. Kneepens: ‘Orleans 266 and the Sophismata Collection: Master Jocelin of Soissons and the Infinite Words in the Early Twelfth Century’, Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar, ed. S. Read (Dordecht, 1993), 64–85

C.V. Palisca: ‘Francisco de Salinas et l'humanisme italien’, Musique et humanisme à la Renaissance (Paris, 1993), 37–45

R. Strohm: The Rise of European Music 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993)

O. Weijers: ‘L'enseignement du trivium à la faculté des arts de Paris: la questio’, Manuels, programmes de cours et techniques d'enseignement dans les universités médiévales: actes du colloque international de Louvain-la-Neuve, 9–11 September 1993, ed. J. Hamesse (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994), 57–74

J.P. Wei: ‘The Self-Image of the Masters of Theology at the University of Paris in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xlvi (1995), 397–431

Universities