Kees Vellekoop, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1940. Ph.D. from Utrecht University. Professor of Musicology at Utrecht University.
VNC Fellow (1 February 1998 – 30 June 1998)
During my five-month stay at NIAS I applied myself to various research projects.
In one of these, the notation of Dutch monophonic songs in the fifteenth century, I concentrated on the reconstruction of 33 songs in the Gruuthuse manuscript (about 1400), which have a deviating refrain structure. In many cases the text and the melody, written down separately, could be brought together. Moreover the refrains in these songs turned out to have their own melodies. In this respect the authors of the Gruuthuse manuscript introduce a new development in the structure of the formes fixes.
A second project, not planned in advance, concerned the role of music in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). My conclusion is that her 69 songs and the play Ordo virtutum, nearly all based on texts which were first presented in descriptions of her visions, got their definite form no earlier than during the last years of her life, when they were written down with their melodies in the manuscripts Dendermonde (about 1175) and Wiesbaden (1180-1190).
Thirdly much time was spent on an edition of the Ordinal of the St. Salvator Church, Utrecht. This book, of which two copies have been preserved, dating from 1386 and 1544 respectively, gives detailed instructions for the day to day course of the liturgy. The edition of the Elder Text is completed, as are the Calendar and a greater part of the Indices. The differences and additions in the younger version will be described in the Notes. Parallel to the Ordinal the text of a sixteenth-century vergers book of the same church will be edited.