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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
A badly trimmed ascription can be more a matter for relish than regret: if enough of the composer's name survives to permit informed speculation, the musicologist's sense of pleasure is likely to outweigh his sense of loss. Most musical manuscripts from the late Middle Ages have visibly suffered at the hands of the binder's knife, but perhaps none more so than the famous ‘Aosta Manuscript’ (I-AO15), one of the central sources of early fifteenth-century sacred polyphony. In his inventory of the manuscript Guillaume de Van reported no fewer than twenty names as surviving in varying states of incompleteness. In fifteen instances he was able to decipher the composer's name or supply it from the manuscript's index or a concordant source, while the other five apparently defeated him. Two of the names have since been deciphered, and a third has been identified from another source, but the remaining two have attracted no further comment.
1 Aosta, Biblioteca del Seminario Maggiore, MS 15 (olim MS A1D19). I wish to thank the staff of the Biblioteca del Seminario Maggiore, in particular don Franco Lovignana, for their kind and courteous assistance during my recent visit.
2 de Van, G., ‘A Recently Discovered Source of Early Fifteenth Century Polyphonic Music’, Musica Disciplina, 2 (1948), 5–74Google Scholar: see Inventory, nos. 6, 40, 42, 49, 66, 68, 73, 75, 92, 96, 119, 121, 122, 138, 143, 179, 188, 189, 190, 191.
3 The five items in question are nos. 6, 179, 189, 190 and 191. The ascriptions to nos. 6 and 179 have been identified as ‘Leonell [Power]’ and ‘Soursby’ respectively, and an attribution to Sarto has been discovered for no. 189 (see note 24 below for details).
4 Nos. 190 and 191 (fols. 268v–71r). There has until now been no published edition of this work, only the unpublished edition given in Cobin, M., ‘The Aosta Manuscript: a Central Source of Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’, 2 vols., Ph.D. dissertation, New York University (1978), vol. II, nos. 35 and 36Google Scholar, from which the present version (see Appendix) differs in a number of important respects.
5 The space between the single and paired descenders comfortably allows for the presentation of his name in its most common attributional form: ‘Jo. brassart’ (what may be remnants of the letters o and b can just be detected at the top edge of fol. 268v: see Plate 1).
6 The original structure of this section was apparently modified at an early stage in the manuscript's history. De Van, ‘A Recently Discovered Source’ (note 2), pp. 7–8 and 36–7, clearly misunderstood the structure, as Margaret Bent first noted (‘Some Criteria for Establishing Relationships between Sources of Late-Medieval Polyphony’, in Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. I. Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), p. 303, n. 11); his analysis nevertheless continues to be repeated, most recently in Sasaki, T., ‘The Dating of the Aosta Manuscript from Watermarks’, Acta Musicologica, 64 (1992), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar De Van saw section 4 as comprising four gatherings: 22 (fols. 259–66), 23 (fols. 267–73), 24 (fols. 274–80) and 25 (fol. 281). It is difficult to understand why he should have separated fols. 267–80 into two gatherings (even allowing for the fact that he saw the manuscript before restoration), since they are so obviously one. But the case of his ‘gathering 251’ is less straightforward. This consists of a single complete leaf, fol. 281, the stub of whose missing conjugate leaf is currently attached to the recto of fol. 267. There is apparently no evidence to support de Van's view that fol. 281 formed part of a bifolium that was separate from the preceding gatherings (, Hamm, ‘Manuscript Structure in the Dufay Era’, Acta Musicologica, 34 (1962), 168Google Scholar, mistakenly identifies fols. 280–1 as a bifolium, and hence as a ‘fascicle-manuscript’). It seems altogether more likely that fol. 281 originally formed part of one of the two preceding gatherings of section 4. Fols. 259 and 267, although currently conjoint, each have a watermark (a point not previously noted) and therefore presumably once had different conjugate folios; the removal of the latter would help to explain both the missing portions of Christi nutu sublimato (fols. 258v–9r) and Lamberte vir inclite (fols. 260r–lr) and the absence of some of the original folio numbers. It may well be that fol. 259 for some reason came to replace fol. 281, the music of whose recto it replicates, and that fol. 281, which is unwatermarked, was originally part of the same bifolium as fol. 267. However, for the sake of convenience, and in the absence of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, fol. 281 is here seen as forming part of ‘gathering XXIII’. Section 4 is thus considered to comprise two gatherings rather than four.
7 See de Van, ‘A Recently Discovered Source’ (note 2), p. 19, and Cobin, M., ‘The Compilation of the Aosta Manuscript: a Working Hypothesis’, in Papers Read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference, Brooklyn College, December 6–7, 1974, ed. Atlas, A. W. (New York, 1976), 77 and 85.Google Scholar
8 See note 13 below.
9 I-TR be 89 (Trent, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali, MS 1376 (olim MS 89)), fols. 294v–303r. There is no published edition of this Mass.
10 Wright, C., ‘Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 28 (1975), 205–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also P. Wright ‘Johannes Brassart and Johannes de Sarto’, this journal, 1/1 (April 1992), 43.
11 Letter to the editors, this journal, 1/2 (October 1992), 215–16.
12 A late fifteenth-century chanson survives with an attribution to ‘Jo. Dusart’, almost certainly the Cambrai musician of the same name (see A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 229, ed. Brown, H. M., 2 vols. (Chicago, 1983), text vol., p. 46, music vol., no. 219).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 The edition of the complete works (CMM 35/i–ii) comprises all twenty-nine compositions which survive with fifteenth-century attributions to Brassart and three ‘opera dubia’: a Kyrie by ‘Braxatoris’ which is unlikely to be authentic and two four-voice motets previously attributed to Brassart conjecturally. Charles Hamm's attribution of Lamberte vir inclite (‘Manuscript Structure in the Dufay Era’ (note 6), pp. 170–1) seems so convincing as to be beyond reasonable doubt, whereas Guillaume de Van's slightly hesitant attribution of Romanorum rex inclite (‘A Recently Discovered Source’ (note 2), p. 14) has recently been called into question (see note 24 below).
14 They are published as CMM 35/i, nos. 14–15 and 16–17. Although he presents nos. 14 and 15 as a pair in his edition, Mixter himself casts doubt on the authenticity of the pairing (CMM 35/i, pp. xvxvi).
15 The most obvious points of correspondence are at the very start and close of each movement, where all three voices are affected. Additional cross-references can be found in both the discantus (e.g. Gloria, bars 3 and 52, Credo, bar 8; Gloria, bar 33, Credo, bar 14) and the tenor (e.g. Gloria, bars 4 and 5–9; Credo, bars 1–4 and 7–11).
16 For a discussion of the twin questions of the authorship and musical unity of this cycle, see Wright, ‘Johannes Brassart and Johannes de Sarto’ (note 10), pp. 43–6.
17 In both Glorias the phrase ‘Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam’ is set as a duet (although in neither case does the source provide lower-voice text), and in both Credos the texture reduces from three voices to two at the words ‘Genitum, non factum’.
18 For further examples see CMM 35/i: no. 12, bars 108–10 and 201–3 (duple time); CMM 35/ii: no. 2, bars 4–5, 10, 19–20, 38; no. 3, bars 47–8, 85–6, 101–2; no. 6, bars 6–7; no. 8, bars 16–17; no. 9, bars 17–18; no. 12, bars 15–16. The anonymous Credo contains a further example of the same rhythmic configuration, but modified by the incorporation of a dotted rhythm (see bars 128–9). All the examples cited here and in the following footnotes refer to the highest notated voice unless otherwise indicated.
19 Gloria, bars 6–7, 24–5, 52–3; Credo, bars 25–6, 76–7, 101, 119–20, 123–4 (contratenor).
20 CMM 35/i: no. 12, bars 23–5, 43–5, 48–9, 52–3, 85–9, 112–15; no. 13, bars 76–7 (= ex. 6b); no. 14, bars 31–2; no. 15, bars 53–4, 195–8, 209–10, 26^4, 277–8; no. 16, bars 16–18 (contratenor); no. 17, bars 99–100, 118–20; CMM 35/ii: no. 1, bars 16–17; no. 2, bars 24–5; no. 3, bars 17–18, 33, 86–7, 102–3; no. 6, bars 24–5, 92–3, 128–9; no. 9, bars 18–19, 52–3 (II), 79–80, 132–3; no. 11, bars 130–1 (II); no. 12, bars 24–6 (I and II); no. 13, bars 11–12 (II), 18–19, 41–2, 75–6, 103–4, 122–3, 148–9, 166–7.
21 See bars 39, 71–2, 75–6, 97, 109–10; the second and third of these instances include dead intervals.
22 CMM 35/i: no. 14, bar 46; no. 15, bars 108–10, 248 (= ex. 7b); CMM 35/ii: no. 3, bars 43–4; no. 8, bars 33–4, 41–3, 72–4 (with dead intervals), 84–5; no. 10, bars 23–4; no. 13, bars 84–5 (dead interval), 98–9 (II). It may be worth noting (though it could be fortuitous) that a retrograde version of figure C is used to underline the title-name of the motet O rex Fridrice written in honour of Friedrich IV, King of the Romans (CMM 35/ii: no. 11, bars 9–14).
23 For figure D see Credo, bar 103 and CMM 35/i: no. 15, bars 36–7; CMM 35/ii: no. 8, bars 27–8 (II) (= ex. 8b); no. 9, bars 33–4 (II), 176–7; no. 10, bars 62–4; no. 11, bars 41 (I), 53 (0), 56 (H), 128 (II); no. 13, bars 112 (II), 143 (II). For figure E (the second bar of which is subject to variation) see CMM 35/i: no. 15, bar 256; CMM 35/ii: no. 3, bars 23–1, 99–101 (= ex. 9b); no. 9, bars 129–31 (II).
24 A letter (1529) from the theorist Giovanni del Lago to his great contemporary Giovanni Spataro refers to ‘a motet by the priest Joannes de Sarto with a tenor on the introit Requiem eternam’, and in a later letter (1533) he quotes the tenor in full together with the composer's instructions about its performance; the work is further discussed in a letter (1533) from Spataro to Pietro Aaron (for the texts of these letters and for a useful discussion of the del Lago attribution see A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians, ed. Blackburn, B. J., Lowinsky, E. E. and Miller, C. A. (Oxford, 1991), 387, 397–8, 658–9 and 662–4, 693–4, 704–5).Google Scholar De Van's cautious attribution of Romanorum rex inclite to Brassart (‘A Recently Discovered Source’ (note 2), p. 14) has in the past been accepted somewhat unquestioningly, but the discovery of del Lago's attribution prompts recognition that a number of important aspects of this work are without parallel in Brassart's music: the size of the overall pitch compass (c–f″); the use of strict panisorhythm; the unusual character of the second line, which, rather than being a second cantus voice as one would normally expect, is labelled ‘primus contratenor’ and is untexted; and the designation of the lowest voice ‘secundus contratenor’. These and other features certainly point one away from Brassart, although the uniqueness of this motet – not least its remarkable proportional structure (see Turner, C., ‘Proportion and Form in the Continental Isorhythmic Motet c. 1385–1450’, Music Analysis, 10 (1991), 98–9, 107, 111 and 120–1)CrossRefGoogle Scholar – no doubt partly reflects the uniqueness of the event which occasioned it. Evidently del Lago was intrigued by the work's extraordinary mensural scheme, and it is particularly interesting to discover that in the same letter in which he quotes its tenor he also quotes – again on account of its unusual mensural scheme – a tenor attributed to Brassart (Hoc iocundum dulce melos, presumably part of a motet no longer extant). The juxtaposition of these tenors bears witness to a continued association of the names of Brassart and Sarto beyond their respective lifetimes.
25 See Wright, ‘Johannes Brassart and Johannes de Sarto’ (note 10), pp. 49–57.
26 Ibid., 44–6.