Nils Holger Petersen
Biographic Data
| ID | 565486 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nils Holger Petersen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nils Holger |
| FAMILY NAME | Petersen |
| SIGNATURE | PETERSEN N H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8568-6595 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
W.A. Mozart’s Music and Karl Barth’s Das Nichtige
This article discusses Karl Barth’s use of W.A. Mozart’s music in the doctrine of creation (in Barth’s Church Dogmatics) in relation to Mozart’s music. I propose an approach for understanding how and why Mozart’s music was able to contribute to the theological delimitation of das Nichtige, a key concept in Barth’s theodicy, in a way that Barth’s discursive argumentation could not. Scholars have discussed whether the music for Barth functions as a…
Music Drama as a Christian Parable
This article discusses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Idomeneo: Re di Creta (1781, to a text by Giambattista Varesco) as a Christian parable in the historical context of its genesis. Mozart's Idomeneo is based on a short episode in François Fénelon's Télémaque, but also on Antoine Danchet's adaptation of this episode for the theater in his tragédie lyrique Idoménée (1712; set to music by André Campra). In important aspects, Mozart's Idomeneo cha…
T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral
This article discusses the relationship between the divine and the human, as it appears in T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral, written for and performed at the Cathedral of Canterbury in 1935. On the one hand, and most obviously, this play about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the Cathedral on 29 December 1170 owes much to a medieval Catholic as well as Anglo-Catholic tradition. On the other hand, the unbridgeable distance bet…
Framing Medieval Latin Liturgy through the Marginal
Whereas medieval liturgy has often been presented as a specialized and complex but well-defined area, gradually and to a high extent bound by tradition, modern scholarship has increasingly shown how difficult it is to define or circumscribe what the notion covers, or what may be the margins of the notion, even in later medieval centuries. In this article, I propose to shed light on the notion of medieval liturgy, framing the notion, as it were, b…
Von der Oralität zum SchriftBild
Medievalism and Rued Langgaard’s Romantic Image of Queen Dagmar
Rued Langgaard’s organ piece, Fantasy on “Queen Dagmar Lies Sick in Ribe,” was written in 1942 for a festal service in Ribe Cathedral in connection with the opening of a newly renovated archeological site of a medieval royal castle outside of Ribe where, according to popular traditions, the Danish queen Dagmar had died in 1212. Although Langgaard based his work on a traditional melody for a medieval ballad, his Fantasy does not use medieval compo…
Danielis ludus
A twelfth-century so-called liturgical drama (preserved in a unique copy of the thirteenth century, preserved in British Library, London), the Danielis ludus (Play of Daniel), based mainly on chapters 5 and 6 from the Book of Daniel has been much discussed in scholarship. It has been seen by scholars, not least Margot Fassler, as a (music) drama intended to establish a role model for young clerics in connection with ecclesiastical attempts at ref…
Saints and Sainthood around the Baltic Sea
"This volume addresses the history of saints and sainthood in the Middle Ages in the Baltic Region, with a special focus on the cult of saints in Russia, Prussia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia (more commonly referred to in the Middle Ages as Livonia)."
Singing Jeremiah
Singing Jeremiah concerns what in the first place may seem like a very narrow range of early modern European liturgical music. It involves settings of lessons, responsories, and other texts from Matins and Lauds of liturgical Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (normally performed in this period on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in Holy Week) in their ritual and devotional contexts. However, as is made clear throughout Robert Kendric…
Medievalism
Definitions of key words and terms for the study of medievalism. The discipline of medievalism has produced a great deal of scholarship acknowledging the "makers" of the Middle Ages: those who re-discovered the period from 500 to 1500 by engaging with its cultural works, seeking inspiration from them, or fantasizing about them. Yet such approaches - organized by time period, geography, or theme - often lack an overarching critical framework. This…
Commentary
Quotation and Framing
George Crumb's Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land for Electric String Quartet (1970) are individually original, but also representative for compositional practices for the twentieth century. As in his other compositions, Crumb has integrated musical quotations and various musical styles, including a web of references that extend into other media in such a way that they form an indispensable part of the basic construction of the work…
Medieval Ritual and Early Modern Music
The polyphonic lauda had its place of prominence in the lay devotional confraternities in Italian cities in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. A main theme of this volume is the influence of art music in devotional contexts dominated by ritual functionality, where a modern aesthetic perspective is rarely employed. The authors raise fundamental questions about the validity of such a distinction between functional simplicity and aest…
The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim
The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim
The Singing of Laude and Musical Sensibilities in Early Seventeenth‐Century Confraternity Devotion
In Part I of this article, we gave an outline of the devotional and musical life in the confraternity of the Archangel Raphael emphasizing how the most recent developments in areas such as poetics and music theory were absorbed and brought into a synthesis both with the current musical practices and with the understanding of the religious ceremonies as they are manifested in the preserved ricordi of the confraternity. In Part II, a laude manuscri…
The Singing of Laude and Musical Sensibilities in Early Seventeenth‐Century Confraternity Devotion
In this article, we explore the devotional use of avant‐garde music in a remarkable Florentine youth confraternity, the Compagnia dell’arcangelo Raffaello , in the early seventeenth century. We point to traits of the close relationship between the religious and musical practices in the confraternity, which shed light on the development of an aesthetic sensibility towards music. In the coming second part of the article, this will form the backgrou…
The Representational Liturgy of the Regularis Concordia
When a monk living at the beginning of the last millennium described Europe ‘cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of churches’, he precipitated several questions for historians to answer. Was there a surge in church-building at the time? If so, what were the causes of this, and what were the purposes? Does it help to explain our understanding of Romanesque architecture and art? Was there a connection between the ‘white mantle of churches’…
A Mutual Lamenting
Matt. 28
Matt. 28 :16-20 passed through three primary stages. There was initially a primitive proto-commissioning. This was then, at the second stage, reinterpreted in terms of Daniel 7. At the third stage, or redactional level, the pericope was glossed with items drawn from the Moses traditions and the commissioning of Joshua in Joshua 1:1-9
The Triennial Hafṭarot and the Perorations of the Midrashic Homilies
Framing Medieval Latin Liturgy through the Marginal
Whereas medieval liturgy has often been presented as a specialized and complex but well-defined area, gradually and to a high extent bound by tradition, modern scholarship has increasingly shown how difficult it is to define or circumscribe what the notion covers, or what may be the margins of the notion, even in later medieval centuries. In this article, I propose to shed light on the notion of medieval liturgy, framing the notion, as it were, b…
Quotation and Framing
George Crumb's Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land for Electric String Quartet (1970) are individually original, but also representative for compositional practices for the twentieth century. As in his other compositions, Crumb has integrated musical quotations and various musical styles, including a web of references that extend into other media in such a way that they form an indispensable part of the basic construction of the work…
The Triennial Hafṭarot and the Perorations of the Midrashic Homilies
Matt. 28
Matt. 28 :16-20 passed through three primary stages. There was initially a primitive proto-commissioning. This was then, at the second stage, reinterpreted in terms of Daniel 7. At the third stage, or redactional level, the pericope was glossed with items drawn from the Moses traditions and the commissioning of Joshua in Joshua 1:1-9
A Mutual Lamenting
The Representational Liturgy of the Regularis Concordia
When a monk living at the beginning of the last millennium described Europe ‘cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of churches’, he precipitated several questions for historians to answer. Was there a surge in church-building at the time? If so, what were the causes of this, and what were the purposes? Does it help to explain our understanding of Romanesque architecture and art? Was there a connection between the ‘white mantle of churches’…
The Singing of Laude and Musical Sensibilities in Early Seventeenth‐Century Confraternity Devotion
In this article, we explore the devotional use of avant‐garde music in a remarkable Florentine youth confraternity, the Compagnia dell’arcangelo Raffaello , in the early seventeenth century. We point to traits of the close relationship between the religious and musical practices in the confraternity, which shed light on the development of an aesthetic sensibility towards music. In the coming second part of the article, this will form the backgrou…
The Singing of Laude and Musical Sensibilities in Early Seventeenth‐Century Confraternity Devotion
In Part I of this article, we gave an outline of the devotional and musical life in the confraternity of the Archangel Raphael emphasizing how the most recent developments in areas such as poetics and music theory were absorbed and brought into a synthesis both with the current musical practices and with the understanding of the religious ceremonies as they are manifested in the preserved ricordi of the confraternity. In Part II, a laude manuscri…
The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim
The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim
Medieval Ritual and Early Modern Music
The polyphonic lauda had its place of prominence in the lay devotional confraternities in Italian cities in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. A main theme of this volume is the influence of art music in devotional contexts dominated by ritual functionality, where a modern aesthetic perspective is rarely employed. The authors raise fundamental questions about the validity of such a distinction between functional simplicity and aest…
Quotation and Framing
George Crumb's Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land for Electric String Quartet (1970) are individually original, but also representative for compositional practices for the twentieth century. As in his other compositions, Crumb has integrated musical quotations and various musical styles, including a web of references that extend into other media in such a way that they form an indispensable part of the basic construction of the work…
Commentary
Medievalism
Definitions of key words and terms for the study of medievalism. The discipline of medievalism has produced a great deal of scholarship acknowledging the "makers" of the Middle Ages: those who re-discovered the period from 500 to 1500 by engaging with its cultural works, seeking inspiration from them, or fantasizing about them. Yet such approaches - organized by time period, geography, or theme - often lack an overarching critical framework. This…
Singing Jeremiah
Singing Jeremiah concerns what in the first place may seem like a very narrow range of early modern European liturgical music. It involves settings of lessons, responsories, and other texts from Matins and Lauds of liturgical Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (normally performed in this period on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in Holy Week) in their ritual and devotional contexts. However, as is made clear throughout Robert Kendric…
Saints and Sainthood around the Baltic Sea
"This volume addresses the history of saints and sainthood in the Middle Ages in the Baltic Region, with a special focus on the cult of saints in Russia, Prussia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia (more commonly referred to in the Middle Ages as Livonia)."
Danielis ludus
A twelfth-century so-called liturgical drama (preserved in a unique copy of the thirteenth century, preserved in British Library, London), the Danielis ludus (Play of Daniel), based mainly on chapters 5 and 6 from the Book of Daniel has been much discussed in scholarship. It has been seen by scholars, not least Margot Fassler, as a (music) drama intended to establish a role model for young clerics in connection with ecclesiastical attempts at ref…
Von der Oralität zum SchriftBild
Medievalism and Rued Langgaard’s Romantic Image of Queen Dagmar
Rued Langgaard’s organ piece, Fantasy on “Queen Dagmar Lies Sick in Ribe,” was written in 1942 for a festal service in Ribe Cathedral in connection with the opening of a newly renovated archeological site of a medieval royal castle outside of Ribe where, according to popular traditions, the Danish queen Dagmar had died in 1212. Although Langgaard based his work on a traditional melody for a medieval ballad, his Fantasy does not use medieval compo…
T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral
This article discusses the relationship between the divine and the human, as it appears in T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral, written for and performed at the Cathedral of Canterbury in 1935. On the one hand, and most obviously, this play about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the Cathedral on 29 December 1170 owes much to a medieval Catholic as well as Anglo-Catholic tradition. On the other hand, the unbridgeable distance bet…
Framing Medieval Latin Liturgy through the Marginal
Whereas medieval liturgy has often been presented as a specialized and complex but well-defined area, gradually and to a high extent bound by tradition, modern scholarship has increasingly shown how difficult it is to define or circumscribe what the notion covers, or what may be the margins of the notion, even in later medieval centuries. In this article, I propose to shed light on the notion of medieval liturgy, framing the notion, as it were, b…
W.A. Mozart’s Music and Karl Barth’s Das Nichtige
This article discusses Karl Barth’s use of W.A. Mozart’s music in the doctrine of creation (in Barth’s Church Dogmatics) in relation to Mozart’s music. I propose an approach for understanding how and why Mozart’s music was able to contribute to the theological delimitation of das Nichtige, a key concept in Barth’s theodicy, in a way that Barth’s discursive argumentation could not. Scholars have discussed whether the music for Barth functions as a…
Music Drama as a Christian Parable
This article discusses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Idomeneo: Re di Creta (1781, to a text by Giambattista Varesco) as a Christian parable in the historical context of its genesis. Mozart's Idomeneo is based on a short episode in François Fénelon's Télémaque, but also on Antoine Danchet's adaptation of this episode for the theater in his tragédie lyrique Idoménée (1712; set to music by André Campra). In important aspects, Mozart's Idomeneo cha…
Art (12 works) · History (11 works) · Literature (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Theology (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Medieval Literature and History (5 works) · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Historical and Archaeological Studies (4 works)