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Ordering in the motet fascicles of the Florence manuscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2013

CATHERINE A. BRADLEY
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Abstract

Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.29.1 (F) is considered the earliest extant manuscript to preserve a collection of motets, with two fascicles devoted to this new genre. Scholars have long emphasised the strict liturgical sequence of the first motet fascicle, in contrast to the seeming lack of order in the second. This article engages with questions of liturgical arrangement in F, exploring the possibility of a liturgical function for motets in this source. It undertakes a re-examination of the ordering of motets in F, proposing two new organisational principles applicable across both fascicles: first, that the arrangement of motets may have been influenced by an awareness of related clausulae and discant materials extant elsewhere in F; and second, that ordering of the collection reflects the relative dissemination or ‘popularity’ of motets and their related materials.

Type
Research Article
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , April 2013 , pp. 37 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 Roesner, Edward H., ed., Antiphonarium, seu, Magnus liber de gradali et antiphonario: Color Microfiche Edition of the Manuscript Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Pluteus 29.1: Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, Codices illuminati medii aevi 45 (Munich, 1996), 14Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 15.

3 Roesner, Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, 20–1. Barbara Haggh and Michel Huglo recently suggested that F was prepared for Louis IX, presented to him at the solemn dedication of the Sainte-Chapelle on 26 April 1248. See their ‘Magnus liber – Maius munus: Origine et destineé du manuscrit F’, Revue de Musicologie, 90 (2004), 193–230.

4 The term ‘monotextual motet’, coined by Darwin Scott, is used throughout to replace the more conventional, but confusing term ‘conductus motet’. Darwin F. Scott, ‘The Early Three- and Four-Voice Monotextual Motets of the Notre Dame School’, Ph.D. diss., University of California (1988), 16–17.

5 See Scott, ‘The Early Three- and Four-Voice Monotextual Motets’, 164, and Peter M. Lefferts and Ernest H. Sanders, ‘Motet, §I: Middle Ages, 1. France, Ars antiqua’, in Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy. Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40086pg1 (last accessed 15 April 2011).

6 This is stated incorrectly by Lefferts and Sanders, see ‘Motet, §I: Middle Ages’. Roesner has also commented on the apparent lack of order and structure in fascicle 9. See his Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, 29–30.

7 Wulf Arlt, ‘Zur frühen Geschichte der Motette’, unpublished paper (1985).

8 Ludwig, Friedrich's Repertorium organorum recentioris et motetorum vetustissimi stili, 2 vols. (Halle, 1910; repr. and ed. Dittmer, Luther, 1964, 1972 and 1978), 1/1:102–12Google Scholar, 112–23 offers the only comprehensive discussion of ordering in these motet fascicles currently in print. Both Arlt (‘Zur frühen Geschichte der Motette’) and Rebecca A. Baltzer (‘Performance Practice, the Notre-Dame Calendar, and the Earliest Latin Liturgical Motets’) delivered papers relating to this topic at the Das Ereignis Notre Dame conference in Wolfenbüttel in 1985, but these papers remain unpublished. Scott also commented on ordering in F in his unpublished dissertation (‘The Early Three- and Four-Voice Monotextual Motets’, 110–77). I am most grateful to Professors Arlt and Baltzer for sharing their unpublished materials with me.

9 Such clausulae are often referred to as ‘substitute clausulae’, on the premise that they were introduced into organa as substitutes for other passages of discant. This stems from Ludwig, who described them as ‘Ersatzkompositionen einzelner Teile des Magnus liber organi’. Ludwig, Repertorium, 1/1:23.

10 The editions of motets by Tischler, Hans, The Earliest Motets (to circa 1270): A Complete Comparative Edition (New Haven, CT, and London, 1982)Google Scholar and Payne, Thomas, Philip the Chancellor: Motets and Prosulas (Middleton, WI, 2011)Google Scholar do not, for example, consistently distinguish between clausulae and passages of discant within organa. Others are more meticulous in this regard: Flotzinger, Rudolf's numbering system in Der Discantussatz im Magnus liber und seiner Nachfolge, Wiener musikwissenschaftliche Beiträge 8 (Vienna, 1969), 19–55Google Scholar, differentiates clausulae, passages of discant and motet sources.

11 See Flotzinger, Der Discantussatz im Magnus liber, 35–40, for a summary of passages of discant within organa in W2 and their concordances.

12 See ibid., 19–23 for a summary of passages of discant within organa in W1 and their concordances.

13 Fragmentary sources of organum (such as Aba, Ber, K, MüA and Si) are not considered in detail here, as they offer only a limited amount of data. However, cursory investigation suggests that the passages of discant they record are most often also found within organal settings in other manuscripts, rather than as independent clausulae.

14 Compiled in accordance with Craig Wright's table showing liturgical usage of the F Magnus liber. See his Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550 (Cambridge, 1989), 259–62.

15 Folio numbers are available in Ludwig, Repertorium, 1/1:103–8.

16 Haggh and Huglo have also commented on the presence of empty ruled folios on which no text or music was copied at the end of fascicle 10 in F. See their ‘Magnus liber – Maius munus’, 215. They suggest that the eleven folios of blank staves at the end of this fascicle of monophonic conducti may indicate that the manuscript was compiled quickly in order to be ready for the dedication of the Sainte Chapelle. This does not, however, seem a plausible explanation for the empty staves in fascicle 8. As these blank staves occur mid-fascicle it appears more likely that they were subsequently intended to be filled than that the scribe simply ran out of time. Indeed, one might expect a scribe working under pressured conditions to compromise the comprehensive nature or the ordering of his motet collection, and simply to complete the fascicle with available pieces rather than leaving space for later insertions.

17 It is possible that these motets were intended not specifically for the Assumption, but more generally for the Common of Virgins or for Lady Masses. In that case, their placement at the end of the fascicle alongside other motets on chants for the Common of Saints would not be unusual.

18 This occurs in the fascicle containing three-voice organa, where the organum setting of the O 40 tenor (fol. 33v) precedes that of M 51 (fol. 36r).

19 The status of 1.24–1.26 as a group is enhanced by the fact that all of these motets also exist in the form of widely disseminated Latin double motets. Regardless of the relative chronological priority of the monotextual or double motet versions, it is possible that the compiler of F already knew these monotextual motets to exist also in polytextual versions and that this contributed to their placement side by side in fascicle 8.

20 This was also noted by Thomas B. Payne, in his ‘Poetry, Politics, and Polyphony: Philip the Chancellor's Contribution to the Music of the Notre Dame School’, Ph.D. diss., 5 vols., University of Chicago (1991), 2: 548, n. 24.

21 Folio numbers are available in Ludwig, Repertorium, 1/1:112–17.

22 The numbering system for motets in this fascicle does not correspond with the number of single pieces, since each double motet receives two numbers (each corresponding to a separately presented upper-voice text).

23 Motet 2.46 is excluded from Table 3: its tenor is not extant in F and remains unknown.

24 This is all the more significant given that clausulae in F vastly outnumber passages of discant within organa.

25 The feast of the Assumption belonged, atypically, to annual rank as a consequence of the dedication of Notre Dame not only to the Blessed Virgin, but specifically to her Assumption. See Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame, 253.

26 Motets suggested by Baltzer as suitable for performance at the Vigil Mass for the Assumption and for use at the Benedicamus Domino for First Vespers are not included here. See Baltzer, Rebeccca A., ‘Aspects of Trope in the Earliest Motets for the Assumption of the Virgin’, in Studies in Medieval Music: Festschrift for Ernest H. Sanders (New York, 1990)Google Scholar, ed. Peter M. Lefferts and Brian Seirup=Current Musicology, 45–7 (1990), 5–42, at 11–12.

27 Roesner is also of the opinion that the first fascicle of motets was compiled for F, observing that ‘the irregularities in copying towards the end of the collection in fascicle 8 [presumably the unfilled staves] suggest … that this cycle was only then in the process of being compiled’. Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, 29.

28 Ibid., 24.

29 Gaudeat devotio/NOSTRUM, for example, appears twice in W2: once in a three-voice version (fols. 131v–132v) and once with only its respective motetus and tenor parts (fol. 148r–v). Different texted versions of the same musical material are also copied in W2: the pair of motets Sederunt inique principes/[DOMI]NE (W2, fol. 185v) and En mai qe nest/[DOMI]NE (W2, fol. 226v), for instance.

30 This was also noted by Arlt in ‘Zur frühen Geschichte’.

31 Luther Dittmer also thought it ‘improbable’ that ‘secular’ French motets could have been used in the liturgy, declaring their arrangement in MüA ‘comprehensible only if the motets had only recently sprung from the clausulae, and that they had consequently preserved their order’. See his Eine zentrale Quelle der Notre-Dame Musik [MüA]: Faksimile, Widerherstellung, Catalogue raisonné, Besprechung und Transcriptionen, Publications of Medieval Manuscripts 3 (Brooklyn, NY, 1959), 39–40, at 40.

32 See the discussion of two-, three- and four-voice clausulae lacking host organa in Tischler, Hans, ‘How Were Notre Dame Clausulae Performed?’, Music and Letters, 50 (1969), 273–7, at 274–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is, however, possible that clausulae lacking host organa were still performed liturgically, simply inserted into a host chant rather than into a polyphonic organum.

33 For instance, two neighbouring clausulae – on the tenors CLEMENTIA[M] (F, fol. 184r–v), from the responsory Qui cum audissent for St Nicholas (O 25a), and TE (F, fol. 184v), from the responsory Sancte Paule Apostole V. Ut digni (O 4a) for St Paul the Apostle – employ chant melismas from the choral portions of their host responsories.

34 Gordon A. Anderson initially rejected the hypothesis that clausulae in F might be transcriptions of motets; see his ‘Clausulae or Transcribed Motets in the Florence Manuscript?’, Acta musicologica, 42 (1970), 109–28. However, Frobenius, Wolf, in ‘Zum genetischen Verhältnis zwischen Notre-Dame-Klauseln und ihren Motetten’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 44 (1987), 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, declared a majority of clausulae with related motet versions to have originated as motets. Frobenius's general reversal of the traditional clausula–motet relationship was not widely accepted. See, for example, Smith, Norman E., ‘The Earliest Motets: Music and Words’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 114 (1989), 141–63, at 145–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet a small number of clausulae in F have recently been re-proposed as transcriptions of French motets. See Büttner, Fred, ‘Weltliche Einflüsse in der Notre-Dame-Musik?’ Anuario musical, 57 (2002), 19–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradley, ‘The Earliest Motets’, 179–226.

35 See Lefferts and Sanders ,‘Motet, §I: Middle Ages’, where it is suggested that the earliest motets ‘may have been used within their appropriate organa’. See also Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame, 342–4.

36 Baltzer, ‘Performance Practice’.

37 John Bergsagel concluded that this rubric might indicate the chronological priority of the motet over its related discant, possibly providing evidence to support the then recent proposals by Frobenius (‘Zum genetischen Verhältnis’). Bergsagel, , ‘The Transmission of Notre-Dame Organa in Some Newly-Discovered “Magnus liber organi” Fragments in Copenhagen’, in Atti del xiv congresso della società internazionale di musicologia: trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale, ed. Pompilio, Angeloet al., 3 vols. (Turin, 1990), 3:629–36, at 634–5Google Scholar.

38 Motet 1.24 could be performed within the two-voice organum for the Alleluia Corpus beate virginis (M 65) found in StV (fol. 286v), the only extant organum to set polyphonically the melisma on Agmina. Friedrich Ludwig named M 65 as the source of the Agmina melisma; see Repertorium I/1, 107. In his 2011 edition of this motet, Thomas Payne gave both M 65 and O 40 as possible chant sources (Philip the Chancellor: Motets and Prosulas, 59). Recent research by Franz Körndle suggests that O 40 is the more likely source. Körndle has emphasised that the M 65 Alleluia is entirely unique to StV, and may have been a chant newly created specifically for the two-part organum in this source by a process of centonisation, borrowing the melisma on Agmina from the responsory Virgo flagellator. See Körndle, Franz, ‘Von der Klausel zur Motette und zurück? Überlegungen zum Repertoire der Handschrift Saint-Victor’, Musiktheorie, 25 (2010), 117–28, at 120Google Scholar.

39 Arlt, ‘Zur frühen Geschichte’. There are no corresponding organa in W2 for those motets on tenors for M 15, M 17, M 18, M 24, M 25, M 27, M 34 and M 38. This lack of correspondence between organa and motets in W2 could result partly from the copying of the respective fascicles by different scribes.

40 The lack of correlation between the number of voices in a motet and a host organum might not, however, be significant, since the highest voice of a three-part monotexual motet could easily be omitted. Many of the three-voice monotextual motets in F are transmitted in sources such as MüA, Ma and W2 without their associated tripla. And in K, the ‘Gaudeat devocio’ rubric is copied above a two-voice discant passage lacking the associated motet triplum.

41 In ‘Performance Practice’, Baltzer's concept of a liturgically appropriate motet was very narrowly defined, to include only motets that directly and specifically refer to the feast in question, and excluding those with purely hortatory or polemical texts. Arlt's conception (in ‘Zur frühen Geschichte’) of a liturgically appropriate motet was, however, more broadly construed. Baltzer later relaxed her criteria to include Marian motets on non-Marian tenors (see ‘Why Marian Motets on Non-Marian Tenors? An Answer’, in Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham, ed. Terence Bailey and Alma Santosuosso (Aldershot, 2007), 112–28). On questions of troping and liturgical suitability, see also Kidwell, Susan A., ‘Elaboration through Exhortation: Troping Motets for the Common of Martyrs’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 5 (1996), 153–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 This could additionally account for two of the five anomalous clausula-related motets on previously unrepresented tenors in the ninth fascicle. The double motet 2.5–6 is related to the very widely transmitted four-voice MORS clausula (M 18). Similarly, motet 2.1, which opens the ninth fascicle, has a corresponding three-voice clausula on IN ODOREM (M 45), transmitted in both W1 and F.

43 Organa dupla are thought to represent one of the oldest extant layers of the Magnus liber repertory, pre-dating organa tripla, quadrupla and clausulae. See Baltzer, Rebecca A., ed., Les clausules à deux voix du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteus 29.1, fascicule V, Le magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris, 5 (Monaco, 1995), xlvGoogle Scholar, and Roesner, Edward H., ed., Les quadrupla et tripla de Paris, Le magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris, 1 (Monaco, 1993), lxixGoogle Scholar. Norman E. Smith also organises his catalogue of clausulae so that two-voice passages of discant within organa are numbered first, as befits their ‘proper position of primacy’. See his ‘The Clausulae of the Notre Dame School’, Ph.D. diss., 3 vols., Yale University (1964), 1:25. Roesner, Edward H., in ‘Who “Made the Magnus liber?”’, Early Music History, 20 (2001), 227–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has, however, emphasised the complexity of chronological relationships in this repertory, drawing attention to the multiple re-workings of organa dupla by independent organistae or ‘abbreviators’. Thus, although organa dupla may represent an early layer of the Magnus liber repertory, they could be preserved in textual states that are relatively late.

44 Hans Tischler also noted in passing the concentration of unica texts in the later part of the second motet fascicle of F. See his ‘Latin Texts in the Early Motet Collections: Relationships and Perspectives’, Musica Disciplina, 31 (1977), 31–44, at 34.

45 For an edition of Franco's Ars cantus mensurabilis musicae, see Gilles, André and Reaney, Glibert eds., Franco de Colonia: Ars cantus mensurabilis musicae, Corpus scriptorium de musica 18 (Rome, 1974)Google Scholar.

46 Tischler states that the second motet fascicle in F ‘clearly contains two separate collections’ (‘Latin Texts in the Early Motet Collections’, 34), placing the beginning of his ‘second collection’ a little earlier: at motet 2.25 (Alpha bovi et leoni/DOMINO), rather than 2.30. He observes that this opening motet begins, appropriately, with the letter ‘A’, but his reasons for declaring an intentional and clearly defined ‘second collection’ at this point in the fascicle are otherwise unclear. The distinction between Tischler's two ‘collections’ seems to rely chiefly on patterns of concordance and transmission. On these grounds, the case for a distinct group of pieces beginning at motet 2.30 is stronger, and also takes account of the existence and transmission of related clausula and discant materials.

47 Sources giving only text incipits of widely transmitted motets are not listed here. The number of voice-parts in each related motet is provided in brackets, and includes the tenor part unless otherwise indicated.

48 Fred Büttner has recently prosed that this clausula in StV represents a transcribed motet. See his Das Klauselrepertoire der Handschrift Saint-Victor (Paris, BN, lat. 15139): Eine Studie zur mehrstimmigen Komposition im 13. Jahrhundert (Lecce, 2011), 306–12.

49 See Büttner, Fred, ‘Eine süddeutsche Motettenaufzeichnung des 14. Jahrhunderts und ihr Verhältnis zur älteren französischen Überlieferung’, Musik in Bayern, 32 (1986), 91–107Google Scholar, and Bradley, ‘The Earliest Motets’, 274–83.

50 Scott, ‘The Early Three- and Four-Voice Monotextual Motets’, 164.

51 Arlt, ‘Zur frühen Geschichte der Motette’.

52 Roesner, Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, 29. Roesner goes on to remark that ‘the criterion of relative popularity does not apply to the [motet] collection in fascicle 9 [of F], since these are among the most widely disseminated works in the repertory, and also among the most reworked’ (29). He is seemingly unaware that many of these widely disseminated works appear in F in a version extant only in this source and that they are interspersed with unica.

53 Wolinski, Mary, ‘Review of Rebecca A. Baltzer ed., Le magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris V: Les clausules à deux voix du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteus 29.1, fascicule V (Monaco, 1995)’, Notes, 33 (1997), 973–6, at 975CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Roesner, Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, 25. Internally, however, fascicle 5 may enact a progression in the opposite direction. Baltzer has noted that ‘the newest and largest collection is given pride of place, and the second and third/fourth series betray increasing age’. See Les clausules à deux voix du manuscrit F, xliv.

55 Roesner, Introduction to the ‘Notre-Dame Manuscript’ F, 30.

56 Admittedly, this does not seem to occur elsewhere. All other fascicles in F end with unfilled folios, save fascicles 2 and 5, which break off mid-clausula (but where it is evident from the original foliation that leaves are now missing).

57 Scott, ‘The Early Three- and Four-Voice Monotextual Motets’, 13.

58 Smith, ‘The Earliest Motets: Music and Words’, 147.

59 See, for example, Roesner, Introduction to the Notre-Dame Manuscript F, 15.

60 Ma is (save later additions) also the product of a single text scribe and a single music notator.