From 24 to 28 July 2023, one of Europe’s largest musicological events, the ʿInternational Medieval and Renaissance Music Conferenceʾ, or MedRen as it is commonly called, was held for the 51st time. After the 2003 meeting in Jena, the conference took place again in Germany, this time at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. MedRen has traditionally brought together specialists in polyphonic music of the Middle Ages and early modern periods, but in recent years an increasing number of scholars of medieval liturgical monophony have also found their place in the community and are happy to communicate with their colleagues in related fields.

Nearly two hundred presentations were delivered at the conference. These included the construction and integration of plainchant databases into the RISM system, the Notre-Dame repertoire, Jewish and Islamic manuscripts, medieval Georgian and Renaissance Armenian music, compositions of Hildegard von Bingen, Josquin, Lassus and Senfl, late medieval music theory and 14th-century Italian polyphony, tropes, Benedicamina and much more. Our research group was represented by Julianna Nagy Torma, who in her lecture entitled An unknown late medieval notated liturgical manuscript from the Episcopal Library in Székesfehérvár talked about a 16th-century chant manuscript recently found by accident on one of our fragment tours in Székesfehérvár, presumably written and used in the monastery of St. Adrian in Lamspringe.

Julianna Nagy Torma, Zsuzsa Czagány

Conference booklet for download: https://medren2023.com/schedule-2/