AN ‘EPISODE IN THE SOUTH’? ARS SUBTILIOR AND THE PATRONAGE OF FRENCH PRINCES

Extract

Scholars have long been aware of the intriguing fact that the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century French song repertory survives almost exclusively in non-French sources. Most of the principal collections of chansons copied between c.1380 and 1420 – that is, in the period corresponding roughly to the reign of Charles VI, sources like PR, Pit, ModA and FP – derive from Italy; further witness to the circulation of this repertory south of the Alps is found in additional, fragmentary sources, such as Lu, SL and GR. In comparison, the number of French songs preserved in manuscripts of northern provenance is remarkably slight. Moreover, those works that do survive in such sources (and these are mostly Flemish fragments) are generally simple works in classic Ars nova style; hardly any songs from the repertory we associate with Ars subtilior feature in these collections at all.