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Simon Mellet, scribe of Cambrai Cathedral

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Liane Curtis
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Simon Mellet, scribe and vicar at the cathedral of Cambrai, is among the best-known music scribes of the fifteenth century. Jules Houdoy's classic study of Cambrai Cathedral (1880) documented numerous payments made to Mellet for copying, payments which have remained an important source of information for our understanding of the career of Guillaume Du Fay and the role of the Cambrai Cathedral as a vital musical centre in the fifteenth century. Simon Mellet's thirty-six-year career dominates the study of the production of music manuscripts at Cambrai. Payments made to Mellet are mentioned in most research on Du Fay and on sacred polyphony in the Franco-Burgundian regions. It is through these documents that we know of lost works by Du Fay, such as the Requiem, and of the existence of the composer Rasse de Lavenne. The payments even tell us of apparently wholly lost genres, such as the lamentations by Busnois, Ockeghem and Fremiet that were copied by Mellet in 1475–6.

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Articles
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , October 1999 , pp. 133 - 166
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 Other examples include Wiser, Johannes, whose role in copying Trent manuscripts is detailed in Adelyn Peck Leverett's ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento … 91’, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University (1990)Google Scholar, ch. 1; another scribe is considered in Cattin's, Giulio ‘II copista Rolando da Casale: nuovi framenti musicali nell'archivo di Stato’, Annales Musicologiques, 7 (1963–77), 17–41.Google Scholar

2 Houdoy, , Histoire artistique de la Cathédrale de Cambrai, published in Mémoires de la Société des Sciences, de l'agriculture et des arts de Lille, 4th series, vol. 7 (Lille, 1880; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), 188–201.Google Scholar

3 Craig Wright suggests that these works were laments written in honour of Du Fay's death. ‘Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions’, The Journal of the American Musicological Society, 28(1975), 209.

4 Referred to hereafter as Ca 6 and 11. Ca 6 probably survives in nearly complete status, although with new end leaves; Ca 11 remains intact and in its original binding. See Curtis, Liane, ‘The Origins of Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale manuscript 6 and its Relation to Cambrai 11’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 44 (1994), 6–36.Google Scholar Ca 11 has been published in facsimile: Cambrai Cathedral Choirbook: Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 11, with an introduction by Curtis, L. (Peer, Belgium: Alamire, 1992).Google Scholar

5 ‘Music Manuscripts and Their Production in Fifteenth Century Cambrai’, Ph.D. diss., The Universityof North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1991).Google Scholar

6 Kenney, , Walter Frye and the Contenance Angloise (New Haven, 1964), 55;Google Scholar Bockholdt, ‘Die Hymnenin der Handschrift Cambrai 6: Zwei unbekannte Vertonungen von Dufay?’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 29 (1979), 82–4. These studies do not focus on scribalpractice, but make incidental observations about Mellet. Wright refutes Kenney in ‘Dufay atCambrai’, 198, n. 135; Fallows refutes Bockholdt in Dufay (London, 1982), 288, n. 10. Wathey, Andrew makes relevant observations concerning manuscript origins in ‘The Production of Books in Liturgical Polyphony’, Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. Griffiths, Jeremy and Pearsall, Derek (Cambridge, 1989), 143–61.Google Scholar

7 Wright, ‘Dufay at Cambrai’, 198, 216.

8 The records of the Office de la fabrique were compiled according to a fiscal year that ran from June 24 to June 23; Wright, ‘Dufay at Cambrai’, 194.

9 Mellet is named as a lesser vicar (petit vicaire) from 1444–5 to 1449–50, and as a greater vicar (grand vicaire) from 1468–9 to 1479–80. In the intervening years his rank is not mentioned.

10 I would like to thank Professor Planchart for his helpfulness and generosity in sharing these unpublished documents. Vatican Archives, Registra Supplicationum (RS) 334, fols. 235r–236v (1437–8); RS 363, fols. 156v–157r (1439–40); RS 369, fol. 20v (1440–1); Cambrai, Bibliotheque Municipale, MS 1059 (1453–6), Chapter Acts (Actes capitulaires).

11 Wright, ‘Dufay at Cambrai’, 203.

12 The currency is the standard Parisian money: livres of twenty sous, each of which contains twelve deniers.

13 Lille, AN 4 G 2009.

14 Wright, ‘Performance Practices’, 298.

15 Lille, AN 4 G 2009, p. 9. Planchart suggests (in private correspondence) that Mellet himselfendowed this Mass.

16 Table 1 may be compared with the list of earlier scribes found in Curtis, ‘Music Manuscripts’, 82, Table 5.A. Copying activity in the earlier period (before 1442) is discussed in ‘Music Manuscripts’, ch. 7, 136–54.

17 Haggh, Barbara notes the importance of the Virgin in newly endowed services. ‘Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony in Brussels, 1300–1500’, Ph.D. diss. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne(1988), 503–26.Google Scholar

18 Numerous payments for repairing books that were used by the boys attest to their destructiveness, so a book made especially for them was probably a ‘no frills’ volume.

19 The significance of Document 6 (which Wright labels Doc. 16, ‘Dufay at Cambrai’) has beennoted by Fallows, Dufay, rev. edn. (1987), note to p. 63; and Planchart, Alejandro E. ‘Guillaume Du Fay's Benefices and his Relationship to the Court of Burgundy’, Early Music History, 8 (1988), 142.Google Scholar

20 Wright's, Peter important observations on the Zwettl fragment support this latter theory; see ‘The Structure of Trent 87, and 922’, Early Music History, 2 (1982), 268–9.Google Scholar

21 Craig Wright states that the volume of music containing the Mass of St Anthony that was owned by Du Fay at his death was not copied by Mellet because Mellet copied only on paper (‘Dufayat Cambrai’, 216). This assertion is now untenable.

22 Boidin was a former Burgundian court singer, and de la Croix served as master of the petitsvicaires during Du Fay's absence in the 1450s. See Fallows, Dufay, 243, 248.

23 Fallows, Dufay, 245, 256.

24 Wright, ‘Dufay at Cambrai’, 216. Wright discusses Mellet only in light of Du Fay, stating that Mellet's career ended in 1475, after Du Fay's death; ‘Dufay at Cambrai’, 197–8. Federov callsMellet ‘der ständige Kopist Dufays’ in ‘Cambrai’, MCG, vol. II, col. 701.

25 I have found only one instance when chant was copied on to paper. In this case, the paperversion was to be used by the choirboys, and another copy was made on parchment (1429–30).See Curtis, ‘Music Manuscripts’, 221.

26 It is possible that this was Jacobo Caritatis (Jacques Charity) who died in 1461. See Wright, Musicat the Court of Burgundy, 81–2.

27 Jehan may have been a relative of the Thomas Ronguiet who served the cathedral library in the1430s and early 1440s.

28 Fallows, Dufay, 286. The activities of Jean de Namps and Gerard Sohier are discussed in more detail in Curtis, ‘Music Manuscripts’, ch. 8: ‘ ’Scribendo, Illuminando, et Notulando’: Jean de Namps’. Curtis, ‘Music Manuscripts’ includes the relevant documents in Appendix III.

29 Craig Wright has suggested that Gerard Sohier was a member of a musical family, probably a relative of the composer Jean Sohier alias Fedé; see Wright, ‘Du Fay at Cambrai’, 204. Jean Fedéwas a petit vicaire in Cambrai from 30 June to 23 November 1446, and thus he may have been a connection for bringing Gerard to Cambrai. There is no biographical information about Nampsbut his name is medieval Latin for Amiens, which suggests he was from that city. On Du Fayhiring Namps and Sohier, see Wright, ‘Du Fay at Cambrai’, 197.

30 The flyleaves are described as unrelated in A Census–Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1440–1550, Renaissance Manuscript Studies I, Vol. 1, ed. Hamm, Charles and Kellman, Herbert (Neuhausen-Sruttgart, 1979), 121–2.Google Scholar I describe these features in more detail in ‘TheOrigins of Cambrai 6’.

31 See, for example, van Dijk, S. J. P., ‘An Advertisement Sheet of an Early Fourteenth-Century Writing Master at Oxford’, Scriptorium, 10 (1956), 17–64;Google Scholar and P. Kruitwagen, ‘De Münstersche schryfmeester Herman Strepel (1447)’, in Laat-middeleeuwsche paleograpca, paleotypica, liturgica, kalendalia, grammatical (s-Gravenhage, 1942), 1–116. This latter example is also discussed by Lieftinck, M. G. I., in ‘Pour une nomenclature de l'é;criture livresque de la période dite gothique’, Nomenclature des Ecritures Livresques du lXe au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1954), 24–6.Google Scholar

32 While I am not yet asserting an identity for this scribe, the masculine pronoun can be confidently employed since the documents indicate that all those involved in manuscript production at thiscathedral were men. At Cambrai, women did contribute to making and repairing liturgical garments and altar cloths, and in cleaning the cathedral. Women served as scribes in some religious institutions; for instance, Strohm, Reinhard notes the scribal activity of nuns in Music inlate Medieval Bruges (Oxford, 1985), 62.Google Scholar

33 In a comparable situation, evidence for a sixteenth-century music scribe employing different script types for different functions has been found by Jessie Ann Owens. She points out that Johannes Pollet, the scribe of the choirbook Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mus. MS B, copied anindex in a humanist hand for this source, that otherwise employs formal Gothic script. This scribe also copied music texted with humanist script in a less formal context: the partbooks Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung Mus. H. s. 18.744. The partbooksare printed in facsimile in the series Renaissance Music in Facsimile 26 (New York, 1986). The choirbook is discussed in Owens's dissertation, ‘An Illuminated Manuscript of Motets by Ciprianodi Rore’, Princeton University (1979), with a facsimile of the index on pages 34–5.

34 The distinctive ‘E's with diagonals between the crossbars may be found in Example A–5 (Ca 73, fol. 139), A-2 (Ca 29, fol. 223) and Plate 2 (Ca 11; staves 6 and 7). A fanged letter ‘E’ is foundin Ca 79, fol. 76v, staff 1.

35 Not ‘O sanctum convivium’, as given by Wright, ‘Dufay at Cambrai’, 198, and Houdoy, Histoire,195. Although the language of the document is abbreviated, and thus possibly ambiguous, Osacrum convivium is a standard antiphon that occurs in Cambrai sources, while O sanctum conviviumis not present in any standard chant index.

36 Haggh, Barbara, ‘The Celebration of the “Recollectio Festorum Beatae Mariae Virginis”’, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 30 (1988), 373.Google Scholar