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Review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Extract

The origins of The Earliest Motets (to c.1270): A Complete Comparative Edition lie in Hans Tischler's 1942 Yale doctoral dissertation, in which all the motets in D-W677, 1-Fl Plut.29.1 and D-W1099 were systematically transcribed. Tischler's dissertation has contained the only available transcriptions of the unica in these sources for nearly forty years, though works with concordances have been accessible in publications by Aubry, Rokseth, Anglès and Anderson. The Earliest Motets (henceforth EM) takes his dissertation as its core, and adds the motets of E-Mn 20486, F-Pn lat. 15139, F-Pn n.a.f. 13521, D-Mbs Mus.Ms. 4775, the chansonniers, and odd motet voices and texts found in various narrative works and poetry anthologies. Such a publication is therefore a major landmark of twentieth-century musicology.

Type
Book Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1987

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References

Notes

1 Hans Tischler, ‘The Motet in Thirteenth-Century France’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1942); henceforth ‘Motet'. Manuscript sigla are explained in the Appendix to this review.Google Scholar

2 Cent motets du treizième siècle, ed. Pierre Aubry (Paris, 1908; repr., New York, 1964). Polyphonies du treizième siècle, ed. Yvonne Rokseth (Paris, 1935–9). El còdex musical de las Huelgas (música a veus dels segles xiii-xiv): introducció, fascímil i transcripció, ed. Higini Anglés (Barcelona, 1931). Motets of the Manuscript La Clayette: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, nouv.acq.f.fr. 13521, ed. Gordon A. Anderson, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 68 (n.p., 1975); henceforth La Clayette. The Las Huelgas Manuscript: Burgos, Monasterio de las Huelgas, ed. Gordon A. Anderson, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 79 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1982); henceforth Las Huelgas. Compositions of the Bamberg Manuscript: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Lit.115 (olim Ed.TV.6), ed. Gordon A. Anderson, Corpus menurabilis musicae, 75 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1977). The Latin Compositions in Fascicles VII and VIII of the Notre Dame Manuscript Wolfenbüttel Helmstadt 1099 (1206), ed. Gordon A. Anderson, Musicological Studies, 24 (Brooklyn, N.Y. [1971]-6).Google Scholar

3 Friedrich Ludwig, Repertorium organorum recentioris et motetorum vetustissimi stili (2 vols. 1(1): Halle, 1910; repr. [ed. Luther Dittmer, Musicological Studies, 7], New York and Hildesheim, 1964. 1(2): [ed. Friedrich Gennrich (including a reprint of ‘Die Quellen der Motetten ältesten Stils', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 5 (1923), 185–222 and 273–315), Summa musicae mediiaevi, 7], Langen bei Frankfurt, 1961; repr. [ed. Luther Dittmer, Musicological Studies, 26, Binningen, 1978. 2: [ed. Friedrich Gennrich, Summa musicae medii aevi, 8], Langen bei Frankfurt, 1962; repr. [ed. Luther Dittmer, Musicological Studies, 17], New York, n.d., Hildesheim, 1972). Friedrich Gennrich, Bibliographie der ältesten französischen und lateinischen Motetten, Summa musicae medii aevi, 2 (Darmstadt, 1957).Google Scholar

4 No translations of the texts are provided in Hans Tischler, The Style and Evolution of the Earliest Motets (to Circa 1270), Musicological Studies, 40 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1985). The poems are simply categorized or given a singleline paraphrase. It seems unlikely that an edition of the texts and translations will subsequently appear, as one did in the case of Tischler's edition of F-MO H196 (The Montpellier Codex, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 2–8 (Madison, Wise, 1978–85) [vol. 4 ed. and transi. Susan Stakel and Joel C. Relihan], In this latter case, it seems a great pity that the editors of the fourth volume were not allowed the space for a fuller commentary to each of the poems in question).Google Scholar

5 Anderson, La Clayette.Google Scholar

6 Anderson, Las Huelgas, presumably appeared too late to be given consideration in Tischler's edition.Google Scholar

7 Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker, Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series (Milan and Paris, 1864–76; repr., Hildesheim, 1963), 1, 251–281. A new edition for the series Corpus Scriptorum de Musica is being undertaken by Gilbert Reaney.Google Scholar

8 Gordon Anderson managed to avoid these ambiguities; in La Clayette (p.xxviii), he states that ‘The ligatures of the original notation are not indicated in the modern score, as the note groupings make the ligature arrangement quite clear, except in one or two short melismatic sections in the upper parts and in all the tenors where ligatures are used'.Google Scholar

9 Tischler, ‘Motet', 1, 89.Google Scholar

10 In his publication of this part of his thesis, Tischler softens the tone of this comment: ‘These and similar examples indicate that the perfect longa with plica in the second and third modi should be transcribed (Hans Tischler, ‘Ligatures, Plicae and Vertical Bars in Premensural NotationRevue beige de musicologie, 11 (1957), 85).Google Scholar

11 Coussemaker, Scriptores, 1, 273 (read in F-Pn lat, 11266).Google Scholar

12 In his discussion of this problem in Style and Evolution, 1, 48–54, Tischler cites the evidence from Lambertus and then promptly dismisses it in favour of a series of contrasting assumptions derived from a study of concordant sources. Nowhere does he question the validity of this method.Google Scholar

13 Hans Tischler, ‘Musica Ficta in the Thirteenth Century', Music and Letters, 54 (1973), 38–56; The Montpellier Codex, ed. Hans Tischler, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 2–7 (Madison, Wise, 1978); henceforth Montpellier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Margaret Bent, ‘Musica Recta and Musica Ficta', Musica disciplina, 26 (1972), 73–100.Google Scholar

15 Andrew Hughes, Manuscript Accidentals: Ficta in Focus 1350–1450, Musicological Studies and Documents, 27 (n.p., 1972).Google Scholar

16 Gaston G. Allaire, The Theory of Hexachords, Solmization and the Modal System: A Practical Application, Musicological Studies and Documents, 24 (n.p., 1972).Google Scholar

17 Tischler, Montpellier, 1, 36.Google Scholar

18 Ernest H. Sanders, ‘Polyphony and Secular Monophony: Ninth Century—c.1300', Music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. Frederick W. Sternfield, A History of Western Music, 1 (London, 1973), 108–9, 111–13 and 122–4. These ideas had already been presented by Sanders in ‘The Medieval Motet', Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. Wulf Arlt et al. (Berne, 1973), 518, 521 and passim; Sanders’ contribution is dated 1967.Google Scholar

19 Paul Maas, Textual Criticism, trans. Barbara Flower (Oxford, 1958). For a useful discussion of text-critical methods in a musicological context, see Boorman, Stanley, ‘Limitations and Extensions of Filiation Technique', Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. Iain Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), 319–346. A brief bibliography is appended to that article (340–6).Google Scholar

20 James H. Cook, ‘Manuscript Transmission of Thirteenth-Century Motets', (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1978), 8–45.Google Scholar

21 'An attempt to determine the date of these manuscripts… lies outside the scope of this study’ (ibid., 46).Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 90.Google Scholar

23 Principally in Ludwig, Repertorium.Google Scholar

24 Rebecca A. Baltzer, ‘Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Miniatures and the Date of the Florence Manuscript', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 25 (1972), 1–18; Patricia L.P. Norwood, ‘A Study of the Provenance and French Motets in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Lit. 115', (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1979); Mark Everist, ‘Music and Theory in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris—The Manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds lat. 11266', Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 17 (1981), 52–64; Julian Brown, Sonia Patterson and David Hiley, ‘Further Observations on Wl', Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, 4 (1981), 53–80.Google Scholar

25 Baltzer, ‘Miniatures', 15.Google Scholar

26 Friedrich Ludwig, ‘Die 50 Beispiele Coussemakers’ aus der Handschrift von Montpellier (Studien über die Geschichte der mehrstimmige Musik im Mittelalter II)', Sammelbände der Internationale Musikgesellschaft, 5 (1903–4), 200.Google Scholar

27 Robert Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris during the Reign of St. Louis: A Study of Styles, California Studies in the History of Art, 18 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1977), 238.Google Scholar

28 Ludwig, Repertorium, 1(1), 294–5.Google Scholar