Books by Melinda Latour
The Voice of Virtue illuminates the musical practices at the heart of the Neostoic movement that ... more The Voice of Virtue illuminates the musical practices at the heart of the Neostoic movement that spread across French lands during the Wars of Religion in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Guided by twin reparative traditions granting music and philosophy therapeutic power, composers and performers across the embattled Catholic and Protestant confessions turned to moral song as a means of repairing personal and collective virtue damaged by the ongoing conflict. Moral song collections enlarged interest in Stoic philosophy by circulating its ethical program to a broader audience through attractive paraphrases of Stoic maxims set to music. Even more importantly, this skillfully composed repertoire of polyphonic song offered a multi-sensory moral practice that would have resonated powerfully for those well-versed in the paradoxes of the Stoic tradition. Bringing together a repertoire of little-known music prints, a rich visual culture, and an impressive body of literary and philosophical sources, The Voice of Virtue not only illuminates the influence of Stoicism on music, but also reveals that we cannot fully understand Neostoicism as an intellectual or cultural movement without accounting for its vibrant musical sounds. Virtue, as voiced in these Stoic practices, proves to be both rational and fully invested in the sensory processes of the singing body.
Articles by Melinda Latour
Music and Letters, 2021
In this article, I present new research on the composer Paschal de L’Estocart during his peak yea... more In this article, I present new research on the composer Paschal de L’Estocart during his peak years of activity at the University of Basel (1581–3). In addition to discussing two fresh pieces of archival evidence related to L’Estocart found in the Basel archives, I offer new research on the identities of his laudatory contributors. Considering how little biographical information has survived on the composer beyond his published music, the identities of these poetic contributors are a critical piece of evidence that fills in our skeletal knowledge of L’Estocart’s network and the social context of his music. Taken together, this new evidence sheds light on L’Estocart’s active participation in the most elite academic circles in Basel and Geneva, which makes his return to the Catholic world at the end of his life all the more difficult to explain. L’Estocart’s 1583 letter to Zwinger, however, offers a clue that might explain his break from the Reformed faith. https://academic.oup.com/ml/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ml/gcab023/6397025 [For those without institutional access, please reach out to me, and I will send you the pdf.]
Revue d'histoire du protestantisme, 2018
La Chrestienne resjouyssance de Beaulieu a été conçue par son auteur comme une véritable arme art... more La Chrestienne resjouyssance de Beaulieu a été conçue par son auteur comme une véritable arme artistique ayant comme mission de statuer sur le pouvoir du chant dans le monde réformé. Il s’ensuit que Beaulieu inclut dans son recueil de chansons spirituelles des textes à visée morale conçus pour instruire la communauté sur différents points de comportement, sur la vertu et l’art de bien vivre selon une éthique protestante rigoureuse. Les stratégies poétiques utilisées dans ce recueil de contrefactures constituent une base intéressante pour éclairer le rôle du chant dans la formation morale des individus et les conditions de développement de la chanson morale comme genre de musique imprimé émergent.
Beaulieu’s Chrestienne resjouyssance was created as an artistic weapon to harness the power of song for Protestant moral living. Thus, his collection of spiritual songs includes moral texts that offer lessons in conduct, that is, in virtue and the art of living as prescribed by a rigorous Protestant ethic. The poetic strategies utilised in this collection of contrafacta shed light on the role of song in individual moral formation and on the broader development of moral song as an emerging printed genre.
Die Chrestienne resjouyssance (Christliche Freude) wurde von ihrem Verfasser Eustorg de Beaulieu wie eine künstlerische Waffe entworfen, um die Macht des Liedes in der reformierten Welt zu behaupten. Es folgt daraus, dass Beaulieu in seine Sammlung geistlicher Lieder Texte aufnimmt, die moralische Ziele verfolgen und die Gemeinde über verschiedene Bereiche des Verhaltens, der Tugend und des guten Lebens nach einer strengen protestantischen Ethik belehren soll. Die poetischen Methoden, die in dieser Sammlung von übernommenen Melodien angewandt wurden, ermöglicht es die Aufgabe der Lieder zur moralischen Bildung der Einzelnen sowie die Bedingungen für die Entwicklung des „moralischen“ Lieds als Genus der gedruckten Kompositionen zu erfassen.
Building upon Marie-Alexis Colin’s foundational bibliography on the musical editions of the Quatr... more Building upon Marie-Alexis Colin’s foundational bibliography on the musical editions of the Quatrains de Pibrac, this article enriches this list with several new printed and manuscript sources. These additions to the musical bibliography of the Quatrains reveal that the practice of singing Pibrac’s Quatrains continued long after the late sixteenth-century vogue for moral virtue. Among these new musical sources, several fill the large gap that separates the collection by Jean Planson (1583) from that of Jean de Bournonville (1622). In addition, the use of the Quatrains de Pibrac as a timbre reveals a different type of evidence for the popularity of singing the Quatrains well into the seventeenth century.
Song was frequently disciplined in the sixteenth-century Consistory of Geneva as part of the broa... more Song was frequently disciplined in the sixteenth-century Consistory of Geneva as part of the broad program of social Reform led by Calvin. Between 1542 and 1552¬¬¬, more than one hundred cases involving illicit singing came before the Consistory court. These cases reveal the Consistory’s persistent attempt to control the singing of all members of Genevan society regardless of social status or situation. They also offer a new field of evidence for exploring the boundaries between proper (honnête) and improper (deshonnête) singing in Reformed communities. The bulk of the cases surveyed from this period involved charges of illicit singing alongside other immoral behaviors, such as gambling and fornication. These cases directly linked indecent singing to other forbidden acts—a connection that worked out a neo-Platonic view of music in juridical process and provided the rationalization for the entire project of disciplining song in the courts. Concerns over improper song leading to illicit behavior and ultimately to social disorder were dramatically illustrated in a cluster of Consistory cases related to the famous Bolsec affair that exploded in Geneva near the end of the year 1551. Bolsec’s contrafactum on the tune of Psalm 23 from the Geneva Psalter—written during Bolsec’s lengthy stay in prison—spread his dissenting theology to his supporters and enacted the dangerous potential of song to disrupt the unity of the Reformed city.
Book Chapters by Melinda Latour
The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music, 2018
Throughout his career, Carlos Santana has used music to express his idiosyncratic spiritual belie... more Throughout his career, Carlos Santana has used music to express his idiosyncratic spiritual beliefs. Pursuing the guidance of guru Sri Chinmoy in the 1970s and subsequently seeking his own spiritual path, Santana sought to channel a higher power through his guitar technique and tone, describing the process of music making as a mystical endeavor. In order to attain these goals, Santana used amplifiers that prioritized depth of sound, feedback loops for his signature sustained tones, an avoidance of hypermasculine performance, and a peaceful stage presence.
Edited Books by Melinda Latour
This collection assembles a wide spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how “sound” functions i... more This collection assembles a wide spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how “sound” functions in an equally wide array of popular music. Ranging from the twang of country banjoes and the sheen of hip-hop strings to the crunch of amplified guitars and the thump of subwoofers on the dancefloor, this volume attempts to bridge the gap between timbre, our name for the purely acoustic characteristics of sound waves, and tone, an emergent musical construct that straddles the borderline between the perceptual and the political. Essays engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day, under four large categories. “Genre” asks how sonic signatures define musical identities and publics; “Voice” considers the most naturalized musical instrument, the human voice, as racial and gendered signifier, as property or likeness, and as raw material for algorithmic perfection through software; “Instrument” tells stories of the way some iconic pop music machines—guitars, strings, synthesizers—got (or lost) their distinctive sounds; “Production” then puts it all together, asking structural questions about what happens in a recording studio, what is produced (sonic cartoons? rockist authenticity? empty space?) and what it all might mean. With a general theoretical Introduction by the editors, and an Afterword by noted popular music scholar Simon Frith.
Selected Lectures and Conference Presentations by Melinda Latour
Dissertation and Thesis by Melinda Latour
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Books by Melinda Latour
Articles by Melinda Latour
Beaulieu’s Chrestienne resjouyssance was created as an artistic weapon to harness the power of song for Protestant moral living. Thus, his collection of spiritual songs includes moral texts that offer lessons in conduct, that is, in virtue and the art of living as prescribed by a rigorous Protestant ethic. The poetic strategies utilised in this collection of contrafacta shed light on the role of song in individual moral formation and on the broader development of moral song as an emerging printed genre.
Die Chrestienne resjouyssance (Christliche Freude) wurde von ihrem Verfasser Eustorg de Beaulieu wie eine künstlerische Waffe entworfen, um die Macht des Liedes in der reformierten Welt zu behaupten. Es folgt daraus, dass Beaulieu in seine Sammlung geistlicher Lieder Texte aufnimmt, die moralische Ziele verfolgen und die Gemeinde über verschiedene Bereiche des Verhaltens, der Tugend und des guten Lebens nach einer strengen protestantischen Ethik belehren soll. Die poetischen Methoden, die in dieser Sammlung von übernommenen Melodien angewandt wurden, ermöglicht es die Aufgabe der Lieder zur moralischen Bildung der Einzelnen sowie die Bedingungen für die Entwicklung des „moralischen“ Lieds als Genus der gedruckten Kompositionen zu erfassen.
Book Chapters by Melinda Latour
Edited Books by Melinda Latour
Selected Lectures and Conference Presentations by Melinda Latour
Dissertation and Thesis by Melinda Latour
Beaulieu’s Chrestienne resjouyssance was created as an artistic weapon to harness the power of song for Protestant moral living. Thus, his collection of spiritual songs includes moral texts that offer lessons in conduct, that is, in virtue and the art of living as prescribed by a rigorous Protestant ethic. The poetic strategies utilised in this collection of contrafacta shed light on the role of song in individual moral formation and on the broader development of moral song as an emerging printed genre.
Die Chrestienne resjouyssance (Christliche Freude) wurde von ihrem Verfasser Eustorg de Beaulieu wie eine künstlerische Waffe entworfen, um die Macht des Liedes in der reformierten Welt zu behaupten. Es folgt daraus, dass Beaulieu in seine Sammlung geistlicher Lieder Texte aufnimmt, die moralische Ziele verfolgen und die Gemeinde über verschiedene Bereiche des Verhaltens, der Tugend und des guten Lebens nach einer strengen protestantischen Ethik belehren soll. Die poetischen Methoden, die in dieser Sammlung von übernommenen Melodien angewandt wurden, ermöglicht es die Aufgabe der Lieder zur moralischen Bildung der Einzelnen sowie die Bedingungen für die Entwicklung des „moralischen“ Lieds als Genus der gedruckten Kompositionen zu erfassen.