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Texting Practices in Manuscript Sources of Early Fifteenth-Century Polyphony
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
The majority of surviving fifteenth-century polyphonic music is vocal, and a great many upper-voice parts are provided with text in the oldest manuscripts; however, it is not always clear from these sources which notes are meant to be sung to which syllables. Much research has been devoted to helping editors and performers to cope with this situation, principally by providing editorial guidelines for the application of verbal texts to musical lines. This article does not aim to resolve such ambiguities as remain. Rather, it presents new evidence for an informed view of the situation in the sources. This may have implications for the development of editorial guidelines. However, its greater importance is as a contribution to the more general understanding of text-music relations in the period.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1999
References
This research was supported by a grant from the Department of Education for Xorthem Ireland. The folIodng manuscript sigh are used:Google Scholar
| Br5557 | Brussels, Bibliothique Rople, 5357 |
| CS15 | Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, CS15 |
| MachA | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale f. f. 1584 |
| Me1 | New Haven, Yale University Library, Beinecke Rare Book and hlanuscript Collection, 91 |
| ModB | Modena, Biblioteca Estense, a.X.l.ll |
| MuEm | Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14274 |
| OH | London, British Library, Add. 55950 |
| Q15 | Bologna, Chic0 hluseo Bibliografico hlusicale, Q15 |
| S | Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. Selden B. 26 |
| Ven336 | Venice, Biblioteca hlarciana, La. 336, COIL 1584 |
1 The term ‘texting’ is preferred here to the alternatives ‘text underlay’ and ‘text placement’ for the following reasons. ‘Text underlay’ can be misleading because it tends to imply that music was normally copied first and words second which, as will be seen, was not always the case. The more neutral ‘text placement’ tends to suggest a more meticulous scribal procedure than seems generally to have been used. ‘Texting’ is especially suitable because being a gerund it conveys a sense of activity as well as procedure.Google Scholar
2 See, for example, Leeman Perkins, ‘Toward a Rational Approach to Text Placement in the Secular Music of Dufay's Time’, Papers Read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference, Brooklyn College, December 6-7, 1974, ed. Allan W. Adas (Brooklyn, NY, 1976), 102–14.Google Scholar
3 Don Harrán, ‘In Pursuit of Origins: The Earliest Writing on Text Underlay (c. 1440)’, Acta musicologica, 50 (1978), 217–40 (includes facsimile and English translation); ‘Intorno a un codice veneziano quattrocentesco’, Studi musicali, 8 (1979), 41-60 (includes facsimile); Word-Tone Relations in Musical Thought: From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, Musicological Studies and Documents, 40 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1986), 67-75 (includes revised English translation). Harrán attributes the text to Antonius de Leno.Google Scholar
4 Pause signs in the manuscript have been omitted, abbreviations expanded without comment, words divided, accents and apostrophes introduced, and numbers supplied.Google Scholar
5 For the noun, see Carapetyan, Armen, Anonymi notitia del valore delle note, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 5 (Rome, 1957), 40; the verb is used by Landini in his ballata Musica son/Ciascun vuol/Gia furon: for an edition, see Poesie musicali del trecento, ed. Giuseppe Corsi, Collezione di opere inedite o rare, 131 (Bologna, 1970), 129–30. This point is also made by Arthur Mendel, ‘The Purposes and Desirable Characteristics of Text-Critical Editions’, Modern Musical Scholarship, ed. Edward Olleson (Stocksfield, 1978), 14-27 (p. 27).Google Scholar
6 These are set out in my ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1996), 226–7.Google Scholar
7 Heinrich Besseler, ‘The Setting of the Text’, Guglielmi Dufay opera omnia, iii: Missarum pars altera, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 1 (Rome, 1951), xi-xiii; and see my ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’, ch. 1.Google Scholar
8 See my ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony'. The special treatment of repeated notes in groups of three or more discussed in ch. 4 there confirms the former, while the attitudes expressed in the texts of the ‘musician motet’ Musicalis sciencia/Sciencie laudabilis bear ample witness to the latter (ch. 3).Google Scholar
9 Examples of diagonals are cited in my ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polphony”, 47.Google Scholar
10 Compare John F. R. Stainer, Cecilia Stainer, Edward W. B. Nicholson and Sir John Stainer, Dufay and his Contemporaries (London, 1898); Hans Schoop, Entstehung und Verwendung der Handschrift Oxford Bodleian Library, Canonici misc. 213, Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft, 2nd ser., 24 (Berne and Stuttgart, 1971); Margaret Bent, ‘The Old Hall Manuscript; A Paleographical Study’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1969); eadem, ‘Text Setting in Sacred Music of the Early Fifteenth Century: Evidence and Implications’, Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts: Vorträge des Gastsymposiums in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, 8. bis 12. September 1980, ed. Ursula Günther and Ludwig Finscher, Göttinger Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 10 (Kassel, 1984), 291–326; LawTence Earp, ‘Scribal Practice, Manuscript Production and the Transmission of Music in Late Medieval France: The Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1983); idem, ‘Texting in Fifteenth-Century French Chansons: A Look Ahead from the Fourteenth Century’, Early Music, 19 (1991), 194-212.Google Scholar
11 See Earp, ‘Texting in Fifteenth-Century French Chansons’, 197.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., 200.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., 200.Google Scholar
14 Though not the only thematic index in the period – an index in MuEm also uses musical notation to distinguish between various melismatic Kyrie settings – the ModB index is unique in providing both text and music. See Charles Hamm and Ann Besser Scott, ‘A Study and Inventory of the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, a.X.1.11 (ModB)’, Musica disciplina, 26 (1972), 101–43 (p. 104); a further discussion, together with a facsimile of the index, is in Laurenz Lütteken, Guillaume Dufay und die isorhythmische Motette: Gattungstradition und Werkcharakter an der Schwelle der Neuzeit, Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft aus Münster, 4 (Hamburg, 1993), 131-53.Google Scholar
15 See Earp, Lawrence, ‘Machaut's Role in the Production of Manuscripts of his Works’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 42 (1989), 461–503 (pp. 482-7).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 See Scott, Hamm and, ‘A Study and Inventory’, 104.Google Scholar
17 Copying could have taken several years: compare Anthony Ian Doyle and Malcolm B. Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R Ker, ed. Malcolm B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London, 1978), 163–210.Google Scholar
18 Besseler, ‘The Setting of the Text'.Google Scholar
19 Besseler's edition is in Dufay, Opera omnia, v. 37-72; for a new edition of a selection of them see Dufay, Hymns, ed. Gareth R. K. Curtis, Musica Practica, 1 (n.p., 1972). On the hymns see Tom R. Ward, The Polyphonic Office Hymn 1400-1520: A Descriptive Catalogue (Stuttgart, 1980); idem, ‘The Polyphonic Office Hymn and the Liturgy of Fifteenth-Century Italy’, Musica disciplina, 26 (1972), 161–88; David Fallows, Dufay, The Master Musicians (2nd edn, London, 1987), 135-46.Google Scholar
20 These links are conveniently summarized in Karol Berger, ‘The Martyrdom of St Sebastian: The Function of Accidental Inflections in Dufay's O beate Sebastiane’, Early Music, 17 (1989), 342–7 (pp. 343-51).Google Scholar
21 See my ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’, 144-5.Google Scholar
22 See my ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’, 154.Google Scholar
23 See ibid., 155-7.Google Scholar
24 Stevens, John, ‘Carol’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), iii, 810.Google Scholar