Upper-Voice Structures and Compositional Process in the Ars Nova Motet

175 Pages·2018·8.71 MB·English

by  Anna Zayaruznaya

Upper-Voice Structures and Compositional
Process in the Ars nova Motet
In the motets of Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, and their
contemporaries, tenors are often characterized as the primary shaping
forces, prior in conception as well as in construction to the upper voices.
Tenors are shaped by the interaction of talea and color, medieval terms
now used to refer to the independent repetition of rhythms and pitches,
respectively. The presence in the upper voices of the periodically
repeating rhythmic patterns often referred to as “isorhythm” has been
characterized as an amplification of tenor structure. But a fresh look
at the medieval treatises suggests a revised analytical vocabulary: for
many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers, both color and talea
involved rhythmic repetition, the latter in the upper voices specifically.
And attention to upper-voice taleae independently of tenor structures
brings renewed emphasis to the significant portion of the repertory in
which upper voices evince formal schemes that differ from those in
the tenors. These structures in turn suggest a revision of the presumed
compositional process for motets, implying that in some cases
upper-voice text and forms may have preceded the selection and
organization of tenors. Such revisions have implications for hermeneutic
endeavors, since not only the forms of motet voices but the meanings of
their texts may change, depending on whether analysis proceeds from
the tenor up or from the top down. Where the presumed compositional
and structural primacy afforded to tenors has encouraged a strand of
interpretation that reads upper-voice poetry as conforming to, and
amplifying, the tenor text snippets and their liturgical contexts, a
“bottom-down” view casts tenors in a supporting role and reveals the
poetic impulse of the upper voices as the organizing principle of motets.
Anna Zayaruznaya is interested in the cultural and compositional
contexts of late-medieval song. Her first book, The Monstrous New Art:
Divided Forms in the Late-Medieval Motet (Cambridge University Press,
2015), explores the roles played by monstrous and hybrid imagery in
fourteenth-century musical aesthetics. More recent publications center
on Philippe de Vitry (1291–1369), a poet and composer well known to
music historians as a pioneer in the development of musical notation.
Zayaruznaya received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010 and
teaches at Yale University, where she co-convenes the interdisciplinary
Medieval Song Lab. Her awards include the Van Courtlandt Elliott
Prize from the Medieval Academy of America, the Gaddis Smith
International Book Prize from the MacMillan Center at Yale, a project
grant from the Digital Humanities Lab at Yale, and a fellowship from
the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Upper-Voice Structures
and Compositional
Process in the Ars nova
Motet
ANNA ZAYARUZNAYA
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Anna Zayaruznaya
The right of Anna Zayaruznaya to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zayaruznaya, Anna, author.
Title: Upper-voice structures and compositional process in the
ars nova motet / Anna Zayaruznaya.
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Royal musical association monographs ; 32 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047511| ISBN 9781138302440
(hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780203730867 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motets—500–1400—History and criticism. |
Motets—500-1400—Analysis, appreciation.
Classification: LCC ML1402 .Z39 2018 | DDC 782.2609/02—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047511
ISBN: 978-1-138-30244-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-73086-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Palatino Linotype
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of music examples vii
List of figures ix
List of tables xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Note on music examples and naming conventions xv
1 Introduction 1
2 Foundational tenors and the power dynamics of
compositional process 11
3 Talea and/as color 23
4 A catalog of upper-voice structures 43
5 The hermeneutic stakes: reading form in
S’il estoit/S’Amours 65
6 A new paradigm for motet composition: Colla/Bona
reconstructed 85
Conclusion 105
Appendix: music-theoretical discussions of color and talea, c. 1340–1430 109
Bibliography 145
Index 153

List of music examples
1.1 Vitry, In virtute/Decens, breves 1–60. Tenor taleae
aligned; significant isorhythm shaded 2
1.2 Vitry, In virtute/Decens mm. 1–60, arranged to align
upper-voice isorhythm (shaded) 5
3.1 Post missarum/Post misse, tenor as notated in I-Iv 115, fol. 8r 32
3.2 Post missarum/Post misse, triplum breves 53–9, 95–101,
and 137–43 as notated in I-Iv 115, fol. 7v 32
4.1 Machaut, Trop plus/Biaute (text omitted), arranged to
align upper-voice blocks; taleae shaded 53
4.2 In virtute/Decens arranged to align upper-voice blocks;
taleae shaded 55
4.3 Vitry, Cum statua/Hugo, arranged to align upper-voice
blocks; taleae shaded 56
4.4 Je voi/Fauvel, upper-voice blocks aligned 58
4.5 Flos/Celsa, mm. 1–84, arranged to align upper-voice
taleae (shaded) 60
4.6 Flos/Celsa, arranged to align upper-voice blocks;
taleae shaded 62
5.1 S’il estoit/S’Amours, tenor in original note-values
(ligatures expanded) 66
5.2 S’il estoit/S’Amours, tenor as sung (note-values reduced
4:1; measure numbers correspond to Exx. 5.3 and 5.4) 66
5.3 S’il estoit/S’Amours arranged according to tenor taleae;
tenor and upper-voice taleae shaded 71
5.4 S’il estoit/S’Amours arranged to align upper-voice
blocks; taleae shaded 77
5.5 S’il estoit/S’Amours, upper voices, mm. 1–12; original
in roman type, revisions necessary to excise
mm. 1–3 in italics 82
5.6 S’il estoit/S’Amours, upper voices, mm. 46–57; original
in roman type, revisions necessary to excise
mm. 49–51 in italics 82
6.1 Colla/Bona, tenor, repeating pitches and taleae marked
(ligatures expanded) 90
6.2 Colla/Bona, breves 64–75 97
6.3 Libera me de sanguinibus, F-Pn Lat. 10482, fol. 163v 99
6.4 Colla/Bona, upper-voice blocks aligned, taleae shaded 102

List of figures
2.1 Table IV, “Relation Between Sections of Poems
and Taleae,” Frank Harrison, ed., Motets of French
Provenance, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth
Century 5 (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1968), 204 17
4.1 Upper-voice and tenor structures in Machaut,
Hélas/Corde mesto (M12) 45
4.2 Upper-voice and tenor structures in Machaut,
Amours/Faus Semblant (M15) 45
4.3 Upper-voice and tenor structures in Machaut, Qui/Ha!
Fortune (M8) 46
4.4 Upper-voice and tenor structures in Tribum/Quoniam
(exclusive of a twelve-breve introitus) 47
4.5 Upper-voice and tenor structures in Machaut,
Quant/Amour (M1, left) and Hareu/Helas (M10, right) 48
4.6 Upper- and lower-voice structures in Vitry,
Vos/Gratissima 50
4.7 Upper-voice and tenor structures in Pusiex, Ida/Portio 50
4.8 Schemes of periodic rhythmic repetition in the tenor
(left) and upper voices (right) of Flos/Celsa 51
5.1 Gombosi’s analysis of the tenor of S’il estoit/S’Amours
(“Machaut’s Messe de Notre-Dame,” 221); Key: α = w h h
h h; β = h –∑ h w; . = –∑ h 68
5.2 Powell’s analysis of the tenor of S’il estoit/S’Amours
(“Fibonacci and the Gold Mean,” 246) 68
5.3 Powell’s rendering of the Fibonacci hierarchy
and geometric construction in the tenor of S’il
estoit/S’Amours (“Fibonacci and the Gold Mean,” 251) 69
5.4 Telescopic tenor in Boogaart’s analysis of S’il
estoit/S’amours (“Encompassing Past and Present,” 25;
spacing modified) 72
5.5 Four ways of parsing the notated tenor of S’il
estoit/S’Amours; GB-Ccc Fer, fol. 266r, image courtesy
of DIAMM 80
5.6 Melodic comparison between the tenor of S’il
estoit/S’Amours and fifteen chant sources, from Alice
Clark, “Concordare cum materia: The Tenor in the
Fourteenth-Century Motet” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton
University, 1996), 190. Reproduced with permission 84
6.1 Hypothetical compositional plan for Colla/Bona,
summarizing the combination of text-lines in triplum
(black circles) and motetus (white diamonds; hollow
diamonds represent untexted motetus passages) 98