Music in the collegiate church of Our Lady in Antwerp (c.1370 - c.1530): a European hub?

The collegiate church of Our Lady in Antwerp played an important role in the development of polyphonic music in the Low Countries and Europe during the long 15th century, with first-rank composers such as Johannes Ockeghem, Johannes Pulloys, Jacobus Barbireau and Jacobus Obrecht as central figures. However, this period has received very little attention, perhaps because it stood in the shadow of the enormous economic and cultural sixteenth-century boom. The fact that much of the earliest source material was lost, among other things due to religious wars and the French Revolution, did not facilitate the research. This is particularly unfortunate because the fundement for the flourishing musical life was laid precisely in this earlier period (cf. the papal singer's bull of 1410). By conducting research both in breadth (interdisciplinary) and depth (extensive documentation from the archives, supplemented by that from the secondary literature and by comparative research in other countries), we nevertheless succeeded in creating a better picture of the mechanisms that lay at the basis of this success. Thus, we learned more about when and how music was performed, how it was perceived by both performers and listeners, how environmental sounds were dealt with, how it fitted in with the religious experience, etc. Contacts with the papal chapels of Rome and Avignon, exchanges with courts in Northern Italy, Spain, France, England, Germany, Hungary rich foundations for musical performances, were an ideal breeding ground for the musical flowering. In other words: contextualising music proved to be essential for a better understanding of the functioning and unprecedented success of the local musical life.