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Tonal structure and the melodic role of chromatic inflections in the music of Machaut

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2005

JENNIFER BAIN
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Abstract

The interpretation of chromatic content in fourteenth-century music has been widely debated. While most studies have focused on contrapuntal necessity, this study advocates an approach that begins from the perspective of melody. Using the ballades, virelais and rondeaux of Guillaume de Machaut as a central repertory, it proposes that not only are chromatic inflections in Machaut's monophonic songs derived melodically, but that many chromatic inflections in Machaut's polyphonic songs also arise from melodic rather than contrapuntal requirements. Because of their implied semitone motion – arguably crucial to tonal organization – they can have an impact on the definition of tonal structure by privileging the individual pitches they decorate, particularly but not exclusively in cadential melodic formulas or progressions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 2005 , pp. 59 - 88
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I presented earlier versions of this paper at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference at the University of Bristol in July 2002 and at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Columbus, Ohio in October 2002. Research for this article was supported in part by the Sarah Jane Williams Award from the International Machaut Society, as well as by generous fellowships from the Québec government's Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would like to thank Sarah Fuller and my colleagues David Schroeder, Jacqueline Warwick and Steve Baur for their comments, and an anonymous reader for critiquing and engaging so deeply with an earlier version of this essay.