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A lexicon of contratenor behaviour: case studies of equal-cantus Italian motets from the MS Bologna Q.15

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2009

ANDREW WESTERHAUS
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Abstract

This paper considers contratenor parts in equal-cantus Italian motets found in the manuscript Bologna Q.15 from codicological, contrapuntal and stylistic perspectives. After establishing criteria for contratenor classification, the paper collates a lexicon of rules governing contratenor behaviour in fourteen motets by Johannes Carmen, Johannes Ciconia, Christoforus de Monte, Antonius Romanus, Matheus de Brixia, and Antonius de Civitate. Four paradigmatic motets are presented as case studies. Q.15 is the earliest (or only extant) source for many of these contratenors, several of which were probably added by a later composer, and they exhibit remarkably similar behaviour that we might term a ‘Q.15 style’. Finally, the lexicon is employed to distinguish between the features of an original contratenor and a later one, and the paper posits that studying contratenors can offer a unique window into fifteenth-century compositional thinking.

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Research Article
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , October 2009 , pp. 113 - 140
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 I-Bc 15 (BL); Bologna, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, MS Q.15 (olim Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS Q.15; olim Liceo Musicale 37). RISM B IV5, 15–33. Inventory: Guillaume De Van, ‘Inventory of Manuscript Bologna, Liceo Musicale, Q 15 (olim 37)’, Musica Disciplina (hereafter MD), 2 (1948), 231–57; see also De Van's ‘A Recently Discovered Source of Early Fifteenth Century Polyphonic Music’, MD, 2 (1948), 5–74. Margaret Bent has shown that the Q15 manuscript was copied in three stages by a single principal scribe over a period that extended from the early 1420s to the mid-1430s, while the music was composed over a much longer period (from the 1370s to the late 1430s). Bent asserts that the scribe's handwriting went through multiple phases, developing ‘from a neat Italian hand through a phase of French mannerisms, to a final stage which shows some influence of humanist script’. Bent has also established that the manuscript is from the Veneto, with connections to Padua and Vicenza. See Bent, ‘A Contemporary Perception of Early Fifteenth-century Style: Bologna Q15 as a Document of Scribal Editorial Initiative’, MD, 41 (1987), 183–201; ‘Music and the Early Veneto Humanists’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 101 (1999), 101–30; and her monumental study, Bologna Q15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript. Introductory Study and Facsimile Edition, 2 vols. (Lucca, 2008). Lastly, the manuscript contains two numbering systems for foliations, and these will be represented with ‘A’ for Arabic numerals, which describe the final state of the manuscript in the fifteenth century, and ‘R’ for Roman numerals, which defines an earlier stage of compilation (stage II).

2 Bodleian Library, Canon. Misc. 213, and David Fallows, Oxford, Bodleian library, MS. Canon. Misc. 213 (hereafter OX), Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music in Facsimile, 1 (Chicago, 1995). Fallows suggests that most of the copying of OX occurred between 1428 and 1434, perhaps in two main stages, with the last music added in 1436. See ‘Introduction’, 20.

3 For an extensive discussion of this motet type, see Bent, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’, in L’ars nova italiana del trecento VI: Certaldo 1984, ed. Giulio Cattin (Certaldo, 1992), 85–125; and Ernest H. Sanders and Peter M. Lefferts, ‘Motet, §I, 5: Middle Ages, Italy’, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (hereafter GMO). See also Bobby Wayne Cox, ‘The Motets of MS Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Q 15’, Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University (1977), 119–23 (hereafter, Cox I/II); and Robert Michael Nosow, ‘The Florid and Equal-Discantus Motet Styles of Fifteenth-Century Italy’, Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1992). Nosow's term ‘discantus’ corresponds to ‘cantus’ that I use throughout this paper in accordance with scribal designations in Q15.

4 Andrew Hughes studied the contratenor as a voice appended to a dyadic core, advancing the view of an ‘additive’ or ‘successive’ order of composition in fifteenth-century music (‘Some Notes on the Early Fifteenth-Century Contratenor’, Music & Letters, 50/3 (1969), 376–87, at p. 378). This topic prompted significant deliberation as several scholars sought to refine and clarify how musical and stemmatic analysis could reveal evidence about conceptual and temporal priority in the compositional process. For more on the debate, see Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Machaut's Rose, Lis and the Problem of Early Music Analysis’, Music Analysis (hereafter MA), 3/1 (1984), 9–28; Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society (hereafter JAMS), 40/2 (1987), 210–84; Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Machaut's Mass: An Introduction (Oxford, 1990), 56; Robert Michael Nosow, ‘The Equal-Discantus Motet Style after Ciconia’, MD, 45 (1991), 221–75, at p. 248; Natasha Coplestone-Crow, ‘Philippe de Vitry and the Development of the Early Fourteenth-century Motet’, Ph.D. diss., University of Southampton (1996), 17–20; Margaret Bent, ‘The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis’, in Tonal Structures in Early Music, ed. Cristle Collins Judd (New York, 1998), 15–59, esp. 31–3; and Bent, ‘Naming of Parts: Notes on the Contratenor, c.1350–1450’, in ‘Uno gentile et subtile ingenio’: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honor of Bonnie Blackburn, ed. Gioia Filocamo and M. Jennifer Bloxam (Turnhout, 2009).

5 In the early layers of his work, the Q15 scribe had strong Francophile tendencies, particularly in the notational adaptation of Italian repertory. See Bent, ‘A Contemporary Perception’, 196.

6 Dagmar Hoffmann-Axthelm, ‘Contratenor’, in Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, ed. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur: Kommission für Musikwissenschaft (Wiesbaden, 1973). There are no contratenors in early fourteenth-century sources, such as the Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f.fr. 146), completed c.1317/18. The contratenor's function and its designation first appear in manuscripts of the mid-fourteenth century, as the rules of counterpoint were becoming established, in Machaut songs and in French motets by Vitry and others after 1350 found in the Ivrea Codex (completed c.1390). In music theory, the term appears first in the Anonymous treatise, In arte motetorum (CS III, 88a). Signe Rotter-Broman has collated several treatises that teach how to compose a contratenor to an existing cantus-tenor framework; yet, she has shown that none were codified in writing before 1450, with the majority dated to a period c.1480–1500, which would have been too late for the Q15 composers. See Rotter-Broman, ‘Was there an Ars contratenoris in the music of the late Trecento?’, paper read at the Tenth International Symposium on Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music, Novacella/Neustift, 2006.

7 Anonymous XI, Ars contratenoris (mid-15th century), §47–62: ‘(47) Now follows the theory of the contratenor. (48) If one wishes to add a contratenor above a certain tenor, he should note where the discant begins; if the discant begins on the octave, then the contratenor should have the fifth, if the tenor is low (in the graves); if the tenor is high (in the acutae), then the contratenor should take the octave below. … (62) When the discant takes the unison and the tenor is low, then the contratenor can take the third, fifth, sixth, octave, or tenth; when the tenor is high, then the contratenor can take the octave or fifth below the tenor, etc.’ Translation in Richard Joseph Wingell, ‘Anonymous XI (CS III): An Edition, Translation, and Commentary’, Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California (1973), 319–22; quoted in Andrew Hughes, ‘Some notes on the early fifteenth-century contratenor’, 376–7.

8 Rotter-Broman further clarifies that her use of the term ‘commentary’ to describe diverse contratenor functions ‘is aimed to illustrate and summarise the features of non-authoritativity, interchangability and qualitative difference from the cantus-tenor duet’. See ‘Was there an Ars contratenoris in the music of the late Trecento?’

9 Rotter-Broman, ibid.

10 See Nosow, ‘The Florid and Equal-Discantus Motet Styles’, 49.

11 An example of this would be Antonius Romanus's Aurea flamigeri jam excedis (#219), which originally existed in layer I of Q15 with only three voices, but a contratenor part was added in layer II. On folio R227, a pasted-over strip of parchment contains a contratenor part, exactly the same as that found under the strip but written in a more compressed form since it appears that the scribe ran out of room. As Cox has pointed out, there is further evidence to suggest that the scribe rewrote Antonius Romanus's piece, forgetting to correct mensuration signs – erroneously giving C-sig (bars 64, 73), but which must be read in Φ – as well as forgetting to erase extra notes in the contratenor. Cox I, 142–3. See also Cox, ‘“Pseudo-Augmentation” in the Manuscript Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Q 15 (BL)’, Journal of Musicology, 1/4 (1982), 419–48.

12 In a recent essay, Bent has called for a more critical application of the term ‘isorhythm’, arguing that many modern writers have mistakenly used the term as a general category that actually encompasses a variety of strategies in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century motet composition, and this confusion has led to serious terminological and historiographical problems. Encouraging us to shift attention back to local compositional processes within these works, Bent contends that ‘isorhythm’ refers to a specific procedure: ‘Complete isorhythm is found in motets where the entire second half rhythmically replicates the first, but with different pitches, notably the three truly isorhythmic motets of Ciconia without preexistent tenors (Albane misse celitus, Ut te per omnes, and Petrum Marcello Venetum)’. For further clarification of the term, see Bent, ‘What is Isorhythm?’, in ‘Quomodo Cantabimus Canticum?’: Studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner, ed. David Butler Cannata, with Gabriela Ilnitchi, Rena Charnin Mueller, and John Nádas (Middleton, WI, 2008), 121–43.

13 To clarify, these distinctions are not intended to imply whether the composers of the early fifteenth century would have preferred the piece being performed with or without these parts.

14 Similarly, the unusual behaviour of a contratenor was the motivating factor in Bent's ‘The “Harmony” of the Machaut Mass’, in Machaut's Music: New Interpretations, ed. Elizabeth Eva Leach (Woodbridge, 2003), 75–94. Two other recent stylistic analyses of early music have influenced the present study. The first is Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans's article on Missa Une mousse de Biscaye, in which the author analyses recurring stylistic features by comparing explicit rules (codified by theorists) and implicit norms (observed in works by one or more composers); she argues that together these point towards an underlying compositional method. (‘A Stylistic Investigation of Missa Une mousse de Biscaye, in the Light of Its Attribution to Josquin des Prez’, Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 48/1 (1998), 30–50.) Another probing stylistic study is Pedro Memelsdorff's analysis of two surviving contratenor parts for Ciconia's balata Lizadra donna, one anonymous and the other written by Matteo da Perugia. Memelsdorff hypothesises that Matteo's reworkings follow a ‘corrective intention’ in line with an Ars Contratenoris. (See Pedro Memelsdorff, ‘Lizadra Donna: Ciconia, Matteo da Perugia, and the Late Medieval Ars Contratenor’, in Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Turnhout, 2003), 233–78, esp. 254–61; also published in Studi Musicali, 31 (2002), 273–306.)

15 Bent, ‘Renaissance Counterpoint and Musica Ficta (1978)’, in Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta (hereafter CCMF) (New York, 2002), 112.

16 Bent, ‘The Grammar of Early Music’, 42. This phenomenon is also the subject guiding Sarah Fuller's theory of the ‘directed progression’, which the author defines as ‘a succession of two adjacent sonorities – the first imperfect in nature and unstable in quality, the second perfect in nature and stable in quality – in which the first resolves to the second according to the norms of contrapunctus voice-leading’ (‘Tendencies and Resolutions: The Directed Progression in Ars Nova Music’, Journal of Music Theory (hereafter JMT), 36, no. 2 (1992), 231). Bent advocates a reduced notion of Fuller's three-part ‘directed progressions’ in order to maintain a hierarchy of ‘dyad plus one’ in this music; Bent's concept of ‘cadentia’ is the dyadic form of Fuller's ‘directed progression’. See Bent's article, ‘Ciconia, Prosdocimus, and the Workings of Musical Grammar as Exemplified in O felix templum and O Padua’, in Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition, 81.

17 Kevin Moll has dubbed this succession as the ‘paradigmatic discant cadence’ of the fourteenth century; see ‘Voice Function, Sonority and Contrapuntal Procedure’, Current Musicology, 64 (2001), 26–72, at pp. 33–4.

18 Bent, ‘Fourteenth Century Italian Motet’. See also Julie E. Cumming, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay (New York, 1999), 76.

19 Bent, ‘Ciconia, Prosdocimus, and the Workings of Musical Grammar’, 67.

20 The ‘essential contrapuntal voice’ described here is somewhat related to Kevin Moll's notion of ‘referential’ pitches and voices. Moll posits that ‘The “referential pitch” is the lowest note of any given “chord”, to which all upper parts must conform. … The “referential voice”, on the other hand, is the voice part that is conceptually anterior to the others – the one that creates the voice-leading possibilities for the other parts’ [emphasis original]. For further clarification, see Moll's ‘Voice Function, Sonority and Contrapuntal Procedure’, 47.

21 Found in two locations in Q15: #217 (fols. R[224]v–[225]; A253v–254) and #327 (fols. A341v–342). Both versions include five parts: cantus I and II, solus tenor, contratenor and tenor (the last three untexted). #217 comes from layer III and is written in a different scribal manner. #327 is from layer I and found as a fly-leaf at the end of the manuscript. The motet is tripartite based upon mensuration changes, and each voice (except the solus tenor) has six taleae (bars 1–26, 27–52, 53–78, 79–104, 105–30, 131–56). This motet includes full isorhythm in cantus I and II; however, color repeats in the tenor and contratenor do not correspond to the isorhythmic sections of the upper voices. Concordances: OX #321 (fols. 138v–139; white notation). Editions: Charles van den Borren, Polyphonia sacra; A Continental Miscellany of the Fifteenth Century, revised edition (University Park, PA, 1963), (hereafter Borren), #25 (3 voices; no contratenor); Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 11/1, 39–48; Cox II, 238–55. See commentary in Borren, xxxiv–xxxvi; Cox I, 124–8; and J. Michael Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet 1400–1440’, Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison (1992), #77, 438–49. Also consult the following studies: Nosow, ‘Florid and Equal-Discantus Motet Styles’, 48–50; Robert D. Reynolds, ‘Evolution of Notation Practices in Manuscripts between 1400–1450’, Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University (1974), 187–9; and Charles Turner, ‘Proportion and Form in the Continental Isorhythmic Motet c.1385–1450’, MA, 10, no. 1/2 (1991), 122.

22 In addition to origin and provenance, Allsen gives the following general characteristics to classify early fifteenth-century French motets: 1) they include four voices (texted cantus I and II above untexted tenor/contratenor); 2) a musical texture consisting of continuous counterpoint with relatively few rests in the lower voices; 3) tenors consist principally of longs and breves, notated in perfect modus; 4) contratenors have modus values and act as harmonic fillers; 5) tenor form is usually simple and unipartite, the upper voices are often fully isorhythmic; 6) very few tenors are based on chant cantus firmi; 7) the primary focus is the demarcation of talea structure; and 8) the rhythmic form has a directional component. See Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality’, 72–6.

23 Craig Wright, ‘Johannes Carmen’, GMO.

24 Craig Wright, ‘Tapissier and Cordier: New Documents and Conjectures’, Musical Quarterly, LIX (1973), 186, n. 35; quoted in Cox I, 127.

25 The original parchment bifolio that contained this motet was removed from the motet fascicle and subsequently appears as a pair of fly-leaves at the end of the manuscript (#327, fols. A341v–342). The recopied version, which appears on a paper bifolio (#217, fols. A253v–254), was reinserted in the place formerly occupied by the parchment folios and is only slightly different from the original copy. The reason for the recopy was likely because of space limitations: on folio A342, a repeat sign (:‖:) for the contratenor is written above the final notes in the fourth space of the eighth system since there was no room at the end of the system and the tenor begins on the ninth system. This folio also includes a pasted-over strip of parchment that condenses the ninth system and tenor canon. When the piece was recopied on folio A254, these two voices were reversed – the tenor beginning on the eighth system, followed by the contratenor – and the canon instructions now appear in the bottom margin.

26 The interpretation of the tenor canon is problematic in all three copies of the motet. The tenor is written once (one color, three taleae), but the canon seems to have been written as if there were to be three statements of the tenor, rather than the necessary two. Additionally, the contratenor has a different canon in each manuscript copy. In OX, the contratenor is notated once, with a repeat sign and the instruction Contratenor cantandus ad modum tenoris (‘the contratenor is sung in the manner of the tenor’). In Q15 #217, the part is also notated once, but with the instruction Contratenor dicitur bis, which substitutes a repeat sign. In Q15 #327, the same contratenor part appears as in OX, with the exception of the word cantandus, which does not appear. Thus, two of the three copies of the contratenor are shown to depend upon the tenor and its canon for proper execution. See Reynolds, ‘Evolution of Notation Practices’, 189; and Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality’, 438–9.

27 See Bent's introduction to CCMF, 38–46, which clarifies and amplifies her earlier ideas proposed in ‘Some Factors in the Control of Consonance and Sonority: Successive Composition and the Solus Tenor (1981)’, in CCMF, 241–54. For more background on the solus tenor, see also Shelly Davis, ‘The Solus Tenor in the 14th and 15th Centuries’, Acta Musicologica, 39, no. 1/2 (1967), 44–64; Davis, ‘The Solus Tenor: An Addendum’, Acta Musicologica, 40, no. 2/3 (1968), 176–8; and Coplestone-Crow, ‘Philippe de Vitry and the Development of the Early Fourteenth-century Motet’, 17–20.

28 See Bent's ‘Some Factors in the Control of Consonance and Sonority’, 253 (commentary to 247); and her article, ‘Pycard's Double Canon: Evidence of Revision? (1993)’, in CCMF, 255–72.

29 Bent, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’. See also Giuliano di Bacco, John Nádas, Margaret Bent, and David Fallows, ‘Johannes Ciconia’, GMO; and Margaret Bent and Anne Hallmark, The Works of Johannes Ciconia, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 24 (hereafter PMFC24) (Monaco, 1985).

30 Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality’, 98.

31 Found in layer I of Q15 on fols. R248v–249; A277v–278. No concordances. Editions: PMFC24 #18; Cox II, 431–49; and Suzanne Clercx, Johannes Ciconia, un musicien liégeois et son temps (vers 1335–1411), 2 vols. (Brussels, 1960), (hereafter Clercx I/II), II #42, 193–6. See commentary in PMFC24, 207–8; Cox I, 194–200; and Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality’, #81. See also the following studies: Jane Alden, ‘Text/Music Design in Ciconia's Ceremonial Motets’, in Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition, 61; Bent, ‘Music and the Early Veneto Humanists’, 119–20; Bent, ‘Text Setting in Sacred Music of the Early 15th Century: Evidence and Implications’, in CCMF, 292–4; Brown, ‘The Motets of Ciconia, Dunstable, and Dufay’, Ph.D. diss, Indiana University (1962), 104–5; and Turner, ‘Proportion and Form’, 112–13, 120.

32 PMFC24, 207; and Bent, ‘Early Papal Motets’, in Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford, 1998), 25.

33 Alden, ‘Text/Music Design’, 61. The second half of the motet is a rhythmic duplicate of the first but with a different color, and for each half of the motet the long-note statement of each tenor/contratenor talea is immediately repeated in diminution by a 3:1 proportion. The lower voices contain four taleae: bars 1–41 (the first talea in integer valor), 42–56 (a repeat diminished per tercium), 57–97 (the second talea in integer valor), and 98–113 (a repeat of the second talea diminished per tercium). See also Bent, ‘What is Isorhythm?’, 130–1.

34 Bent, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’; on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French motet style, see Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality’.

35 Samuel E. Brown has suggested that color I bears a melodic resemblance to the benediction chant for a bishop, Oremus pro Antiste (Liber Usualis, 1867). There is close similarity, but the relationship is tenuous at best since no chant model for color II has yet been identified. See ‘A Possible Cantus Firmus among Ciconia's Isorhythmic Motets’, JAMS, 12/1 (1959), 7–15. See also Allsen, ‘Style and Intertextuality’, 446; and Cumming, The Motet in the Age of Dufay, 78.

36 Although Bent contends that ad longum versions are fundamentally different from the solus tenor parts preserved for some fifteenth-century works (such as in Carmen's Venite adoremus), she also suggests that the normally post facto ad longum versions may have been not merely crutches for inexperienced performers, but in special circumstances may possibly have served an analogous purpose in aiding compositional process, facilitating Ciconia's essay in an unaccustomed technique (tenor diminution). See Bent, PMFC24, 207; ‘Some Factors in the Control of Consonance and Sonority’; and ‘Pycard's Double Canon: Evidence of Revision? (1993)’, in CCMF, 255–72. See also Allsen, ‘Tenores ad longum and Rhythmic Cues in the Early Fifteenth-century Motet’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 12/1 (2003), 43–69, esp. 60–4.

37 Brown, ‘The motets of Ciconia, Dunstable, and Dufay’, 104–5.

38 See folios R248v–249; A277v–278. The tenor canon specifies that ‘the tenors are sung thus: first all the way to the second talea as written. Second, upon resuming, they are diminished, and the other successive taleae continue like this’ (trans. Turner, ‘Proportion and Form’, 120).

39 Found in two locations in Q15: #216 (fols. R223v–[224]; A252–253) and #326 (f. A341). The verso of #216 comes from layer II and contains cantus I and tenor; the recto comes from layer III and only contains cantus II. The layer II recto folio is a fly-leaf at the end of the manuscript, which includes a contratenor part rejected at stage III. Concordances: OX #33 (fols. 22v–23; black notation). Editions: PMFC24 #12; Borren #37; Cox II, 223–37; Clercx II #36, 169–72; and Heinrich Hüschen, Die Motette (Cologne, 1974), 32. See commentary in PMFC24, xii–xiii, 205; Borren, xliv–xlv; and Cox I, 118–23. See also the following studies: Bent, ‘A Contemporary Perception’, 193–4; Bent, ‘Ciconia, Prosdocimus, and the Workings of Musical Grammar’; and Heinrich Besseler, ‘Tonal Harmony and Full Sonority: A Reply to Rudolf von Ficker (1952)’, in Counterpoint and Compositional Process in the Time of Dufay: Perspectives from German Musicology, ed. and trans. Kevin N. Moll (New York, 1997), 139–40.

40 PMFC24, xii–xiii. As Emma Dillon has recently pointed out, the text implies that the motet is for his induction as Bishop in April 1402; see David Fallows, ‘Inventory’ in OX, 32.

41 It is important to mention that the Italian notation in OX provides the strongest single evidence of Italian conception for all Ciconia's motets. See PMFC24, xiii.

42 The fragment on the back of a pasted capital establishes that O felix templum was present in the oldest layer of Q15, whose normal spacing, coupled with the line-end status of the fragment, makes it unlikely that the first version had a contratenor. The second-layer copy devoted one opening of the manuscript to this motet: the folio R223v (A252v) contained cantus I and tenor, and the folio originally facing it (R224r) contained cantus II and contratenor. During the third stage of copying, the original paper manuscript was taken apart and a fascicle of parchment was bound in. The first leaf of the interpolated fascicle, now lying opposite folio R223v (A253), contains only the cantus II, but in what appears to be a later script, and the contratenor is omitted altogether; hence, the third-layer version of O felix templum is a three-part composition, rather than the four-part version we saw in layer II. The right-hand half of the dismembered original – folio R224r, subsequently numbered A341 – appears as a rejected bifolio at the end of the manuscript (#326). See Bent, ‘A Contemporary Perception’, 193.

43 In the Ciconia volume of PMFC, Bent maintains, on the grounds of problematic transmission, that the contratenor for O felix templum is the least satisfactory of a group of problematic contratenors, and recommends its omission. PMFC24, 205.

44 PMFC24, xiii. Bent argues that the number of pieces affected in Q15, and the uniqueness of the contratenors, makes it unlikely that the scribe gained access to new copies of all these pieces, since some were quite old and not otherwise widely distributed. She contends that it cannot even be claimed that the scribe had a period of predilection for ‘added contratenors’ which he then outgrew; the contratenor of Pie pater dominice (#242) was added at the same script stage (III) that saw the removal of the O felix templum contratenor. Bent concludes that the nature of the scribe's initiatives, and the details of their execution makes it almost certain that the scribe was himself the composer of at least some of these parts. See ‘A Contemporary Perception’, 193–4.

45 This explanation is somewhat anachronistic; perhaps the scribe simply thought that the contratenor was not written well. Besseler made a similar argument, suggesting that the contratenor ‘is probably not original since it frequently conceals the structure’. Although Besseler does not specifically state that the contratenor of O felix templum is not by Ciconia, the implication seems to be that a contratenor added later by Ciconia himself would not conceal the structure. See Heinrich Besseler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon; Studien zum Ursprung der niederländischen Musik (Leipzig, 1950), 81, table, n. 4.

46 Cox I, 120. The author's second assumption is bolstered by the visibly suspect contratenor on the surviving fly-leaf (#326): cantus II required six and one-half systems; the scribe began the contratenor in the middle of the seventh system and extended systems 8–10 into the right margin but, still running out of room, he added a truncated eleventh system at the extreme left of the bottom margin to finish transcribing the final six notes. Thus, the page was completely filled.

47 ‘Non-normative’ M3–5 successions occur where two parts move by similar, rather than contrary, motion.

48 PMFC24, 206. Elsewhere, Bent refers to this configuration as a ‘bifocal dissonance’, with the contratenor a fifth below the tenor and the cantus I a fifth above. See ‘The Grammar of Early Music’, 49–50.

49 See Laurenz Lütteken, ‘Isomelism’, GMO; and Bent, ‘What is Isorhythm?’, 126–7.

50 In ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’, Bent describes the motets of Ciconia's followers as continuing in the fourteenth-century tradition: ‘the list however could be extended to over forty pieces belonging to a coherent and continuing tradition of north Italian motet composition, were we to add about twenty motets by Ciconia's followers, notably Antonius de Civitate, Antonius Romanus and Christoforus de Monte’. Also see her article, ‘Pietro Emiliani's Chaplain Bartolomeo Rossi da Carpi and the Lamentations of Johannes de Quadris in Vicenza’, Saggiatore Musicale, 2 (1995), 5–16. For more biographical information on these composers, see the following articles from GMO: ‘Christoforus de Monte’ and ‘Matheus de Brixia’ by Margaret Bent; ‘Antonius de Civitate Austrie’ by Hans Schoop and Robert Nosow; and ‘Antonius Romanus’ by Albert Seay and David Fallows.

51 Found in layer I of Q15 on fols. R221v–223; A250v–252. No known concordances. Edition in Cox II, 208–22; Rudolf von Ficker, ed., Sechs [i.e. Sieben] Trienter Codices; Geistliche und weltliche Compositionen des XV. Jahrhunderts, vol. XL, bd. 76 Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich VI (Wien, 1933), 6–8. See also commentary in Cox I, 112–17; Bent, ‘Christoforus de Monte’, GMO; Nosow, ‘Florid and Equal-Discantus Motet Styles’, 61–6; Julie E. Cumming, ‘Concord out of Discord: Occasional Motets of the Early Quattrocento’, Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley (1987), 320–9; and Cumming, ‘Music for the Doge in Early Renaissance Venice’, Speculum 67 (1992), 324–64. Additionally, Bent has shown that Plaude decus is the last datable composition to be copied in layer I of Q15; see ‘A Contemporary Perception’, 186.

52 The relevant passage comes from the second half of the text: ‘Plaudite, nam populis successit dux pius eq[u]us mille quadrigentis domini currentibus annis/vigenisque tribus cum sol ter quinque per orbem inerat et thauri/lustrabat cornua fortis’ (English translation: ‘Applaud, for a just and pious doge has come to the people, in fourteen hundred and twenty-three, anno domini, when the sun had been thrice five times through the heavens and was shining upon the horns of the strong bull’.) Cumming, ‘Concord out of Discord’, 320.

53 Bent discusses similar situations in ‘The “Harmony” of the Machaut Mass’.