Maximilian is firmly rooted in the medieval idea of the Holy German Empire on the one hand, on the other hand he cleverly pursued aims to pave the way for the Habsburg dynasty to rule as a modern world power. He has been called “the last knight” on the one hand, on the other hand he is known for his smart utilization of modern cultural technologies such as printing media. With regard to music, Maximilian equally used to act in a two-fold manner. He heavily drew on the power of music as a means for representation. His efforts to enlarge the chapel, to engage capable musicians and to enhance the splendor of his official court music particularly in liturgical contexts have been well studied. However, beyond that music played an important role for him individually, which has been neglected so far. Like his revered first father-in-law, Charles the Bold, and like his second father-in-law, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and a few other modern rulers, he turned to music privately as a means to meet his deeper aesthetic desires. In the time around 1500 this convergence of military heroism and artistic sensibility was a new profile for a ruler, which was not universally accepted and still had to be legitimized by citing Aristoteles.

Nicole Schwindt (b. 1957) is Professor of Musicology (Early Music) at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen and Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at Stanford University in winter of 2015. She studied musicology and German language and literature at the Universities of Saarbrücken and Tübingen, where she took her M.A. (1982, Georg von Dadelsen). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg (1986, Ludwig Finscher). From 1985 to 1989 she worked for the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich on the music manuscript cataloging project. In 1990, she taught at the Institute of Musicology at Saarbrücken University before coming to Trossingen in 1993. She has been invited to teach at Bern Universität in Switzerland as a guest from 2006 to 2008.

Since 2001 she has been organising an annual Symposium für Renaissancemusikforschung and has been editor of Troja, Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, published by Bärenreiter every year. With 20,000 copies, the basic study manual Musikwissenschaftliches Arbeiten (first edition, 1992) belongs to the most successful books in German musicology.

Her research centers on secular music of the 15th and 16th centuries (an extensive survey of music and poetry in the Renaissance appeared in 2004), especially the German Lied (reflected in the two-volume complete edition of the songs by Ivo de Vento for the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern, 2002–03), as well as late 18th-century music history, particularly chamber music (producing the contribution The Chamber Music to the Mozart Handbuch, 2005). Currently, her work focuses on a comprehensive study of the song in the Aetas Maximiliana.

Free (a Valente Lecture)