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Stylistic Layers in the English Mass Repertory c. 1400–1450

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1982

Gareth R. K. Curtis
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That the English style of the early fifteenth century was crucial to the development of later music seems undeniable. The oft-cited, passages from the writings of Martin le Franc and Tinctoris, whatever their obscurities of detail, are unequivocal in their placing of the English in general and Dunstable in particular at the head of a completely new style, and to set against this, we have a large and varied corpus of music, especially music for the mass Ordinary, which amply testifies to the richness of the insular tradition. Not only was this music considered distinctive in its own day, but it has also proved readily recognizable to modern scholars despite the relative dearth of ascriptions. Even so, one feels that any suggestion that it is the English style as such which is so obvious remains surprisingly premature. The main reason for this is not hard to find; in fact, nearly all the most convincing evidence for assigning English authorship to anonymous works has turned out to be either essentially non-musical (e.g. the presence of a piece in an insular source, the use of a distinctively English variant of a given plainsong, the presence of telescoping in settings of the Credo, the use of characteristic notational procedures) or concerned with relatively superficial aspects of style (e.g. the use of a standard mensural scheme, the appearance of one or more of a handful of melodic clichés). Since there are clearly much easier ways of recognizing English music than from the niceties of musical style, efforts at more specifically stylistic analysis have lagged behind somewhat, despite the important work of such scholars as Brian Trowell and Margaret Bent. Certainly, it has not proved possible to tease out that arcane quality, the contenance angloise, which has sometimes been assumed to infuse the entire repertory from the Old Hall Manuscript onwards.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 109 , 1982 , pp. 23 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Martin le Franc, Le champion des dames, as quoted in e.g. Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (London, 1954), 12–3; Johannes Tinctoris, Proportionale, in Opera theoretica, Corpus scriptorum de musica, xxii, IIa (Rome, 1978), 10, familiar in translation in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Musical History (New York, 1950), 195.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Charles Hamm, ‘A Catalogue of anonymous English music in continental manuscripts’, Musica discipline, xxii (1968), 47–61, and Four Anonymous Masses, ed. Margaret Bent, Early English Church Music, xxii (London, 1979), introduction and critical commentary.Google Scholar

3 Brian Trowell, ‘Proportion in the Music of Dunstable’, Proceedings of the R.M.A., cv (1978–9), 100–41, and Margaret Bent, Dunstaple (London, 1981). See also Sylvia Kenney, Walter Frye and the Contenance Angloise (New Haven, 1964), especially 91–122 and 176–87; Craig Monson, ‘Stylistic inconsistencies in a Kyrie attributed to Dufay’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxviii (1975), 245–67; and Hamm, op.cit.Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Bent, Dunstaple, 14, n.2, and Four Anonymous Masses, x; also Alejandro Planchart, ‘The relative speed of tempora in the period of Dufay’, R.M.A. Research Chronicle, xvii (1981), 33–51, especially 34–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Cursiva is the technique whereby two parts alternate in singing phrases of text as follows:

1: phrase 1 vocalise phrase 3

2: vocalise phrase 2 vocalise etc.

and it applies in a number of late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century settings of the Gloria and Credo: see Schoop, Hans, Entstekung und Verwendung der Handschrift Oxford Bodleian Library, Canonici misc. 213, Publikationen der Schweizerischen musikforschenden Gesellschaft, Ser. II, xxiv (Berne and Stuttgart, 1971), 50–1.Google Scholar

6 Benet's Kyrie ‘Deus Creator’ (I-TRmu 87, 107–8) and Standley's mass (I-TRmu 89, 436–40) are canonic For the two isorhythmic pieces, see below.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, Leonel's Credo ‘Opera nobis’, no. 84 in The Old Hall Manuscript, ed Andrew Hughes and Margaret Bent, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, xlvi (Rome, 1969–73) — henceforth referred to as OH.Google Scholar

8 The Masses ‘Da gaudiorum premia’, ‘Rex seculorum’ and ‘Sine nomine’ are published as nos. 17–18, 69, 72, 19–22, 70, 56–9, 71 in John Dunstable, Complete Works, ed. Manfred Bukofzer, rev. Ian Bent, Margaret Bent and Brian Trowell, Musica Britannica, viii (London, 1970) — henceforth referred to as JD; the most recent edition of the Mass ‘Alma redemptoris mater’ is Lionel Power, Mass Alma Redemptoris Mater, ed. Gareth Curtis, Antico Church Music RCMI (Newton Abbot, 1982); the ‘Caput’ Mass is in Dufay, Opera omnia, ed. Heinrich Besseler, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, i, Tom. ii, Missarum pars prior (Romé, 1960), 75–101. The strictest type of rhythmicization has sometimes been described, somewhat misleadingly, as isorhythmic, e.g. by Bukofzer in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 222–3.Google Scholar

9 See, for example, Kenney, op.cit., 138–9, and Margaret and Ian Bent, ‘Dunstable, Dufay, Plummer — a New Source’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxii (1969), 394–424, especially 409–12. Note that in this style there are only two common mensural schemes, viz. O-C and O-C-O; both are essentially bipartite, since even in the latter the first change of mensuration comes about halfway through a given movement and the concluding O-time passage merely constitutes a brief adjunct to the C-time section.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 As in, for example, OH22 and 77.Google Scholar

11 As in, for example, OH40, 115, and the paired 38 and 92, the cyclic mass in GB-Ob Univ.Coll.192 and GB-Omc 267, Leond's isorhythmic Gloria in I-AO A1D19, ff231v-3, and Dunstable's Gloria ‘Spiritus et alme’ JD9.Google Scholar

12 As in, for example, OH19 and 88, and the anonymous unpublished Gloria I:BcQ15, ff156v-7. The only anomalous piece is the again anonymous and unpublished Credo in I-Bc Q15, ff159v-61 and I-AO A1D19, ff176v-9 — see n. 39 below.Google Scholar

13 This explains, for example, the existence of pairs where one part is texted in the Gloria and two in the Credo (e.g. OH38/92 and 39/93). Incidentally, telescoping is by no means universal in Credo settings belonging to type (i).Google Scholar

14 There are also pieces where all three parts can be texted, e.g. the Kyrie JD1.Google Scholar

15 There are also a few pieces with high/middle/two-low and two-high/middle/low configurations, and even one Gloria in GB-Lbl Add. 40011B (f.10) scored for one high and three low voices. Sometimes, four-part pieces have three texted voices to facilitate telescoping (e.g. OH86 and 90).Google Scholar

16 A fact unfortunately ignored by several authoritative editions, e.g. that of the Old Hall manuscript.Google Scholar

17 See Hamm, op.cit., 58–9.Google Scholar

18 No mention has been made here of the settings by Pycard, since recent research suggests that he was not English but French: see Sandon, Nick, ‘Mary, meditations, monks and music’, Early Music, x (1982), 43–55, especially 49 and 55, n. 18. However, it would obviously be injudicious to imply that many of the stylistic characteristics outlined here are not also present in the mass music of Pycard and other continental composers of the period — they undoubtedly are, at least in pieces of the first two types. Equally, one might reasonably expect there to be many significant differences in convention and stylistic detail, a question which, as has already been stated, lies beyond the scope of this study.Google Scholar

19 See also Bent, Dunstaple, 14; cf. Planchart, op.cit., 34.Google Scholar

20 Hemiolae are still used, now at the breve level, though perhaps because of the slower tempo they do not carry quite the same driving force as in €-time music.Google Scholar

21 Bent, Dunstaple, 20.Google Scholar

22 Other pieces of this type include OH73, 83 and 115, all by Leonel, and the much ampler Credo I-TRmn 92, 1472 by Forest. This usage should probably be regarded as distinct from the conventional use of half values in some cantus firmus tenors, e.g. those of the Masses ‘Da gaudiorum premia’, ‘Alma redemptoris mater’, and ‘Requiem eternam’.Google Scholar

23 Margaret Bent tentatively ascribes this piece to Forest: ‘Forest’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), vi, 705–6. Nothing in the present study either confirms or contradicts the suggestion.Google Scholar

24 This is really at the root of Monson's reasoning about the English rhythmic style, op.cit., 262–4.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, Monson, op.cit., 255.Google Scholar

26 Though they are a little more complex rhythmically and their dissonance treatment corresponds more closely with that of the third style.Google Scholar

27 Obviously some of these figures may be distorted by manuscript errors; JD1 is a particularly difficult piece to assess in this respect.Google Scholar

28 Monson, op. cit., and Bent, Dunstaple, passim, but especially 31–9.Google Scholar

29 This raises obvious difficulties about the writings of Martin le Franc, who (a) dates from c 1440, and (b) seems to be referring to relatively early music by Dufay and Binchois; one possible explanation is that he is thinking mainly of their secular music.Google Scholar

30 JD7 and 8 belong to the first type, 3 and 13 to the second; the hybrid pieces include 5, 11/12 etc.Google Scholar

31 The remainder are anomalous and hybrids of the first two styles. The anomalous pieces approximate most closely to the first style.Google Scholar

32 Though note that the last additions to Old Hall also include motets by Forest which are in the third style.Google Scholar

33 e.g. bars 45–8, 57–60, 118–24, etc.Google Scholar

34 e.g. JD2. The first signs of this situation can just be seen in some of the later Old Hall pieces, e.g. OH38 by Cooke.Google Scholar

35 The Gloria is published in Sieben Trienter Codices, Fünfite Auswahl, ed. Rudolf Ficker, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, lxi (Jg. xxxi) (Graz, 1924), 85, and the Sanctus and Agnus in H. E. Wooldridge, Early English Harmony (London, 1897–1913), ii, 120.Google Scholar

36 JD15/16 and I-TRmd 93, 1731/1776 (also I-TRmu 90, 921/945) respectively. Cf. also Hamm's final comment on the pair ‘Herdo herdo’, op. cit., 70.Google Scholar

37 See ‘Forest’ in The New Grove, the piece is published in Sieben Trienter Codices, Fūnfte Auswahl, 92.Google Scholar

38 The Mass ‘Requiem eternam’ is in GB-Ob Add.C87∗, and its Credo (the only complete movement) is published in Ernst Apfel, Studien zur Satztechnik der mittelalterlichen englischen Musik, (Heidelberg, 1959), ii, 142–5. The Gloria-Credo pair is I-TRmn 90, 1036/7, and among its English characteristics are the use of a stria ground plan based on the O-C-O mensural scheme, the omission or telescoping of parts of the Credo text, and certain notational problems typical of English music as it appears in continental manuscripts.Google Scholar

39 The only really problematic piece in continental sources is the Credo cited in n. 12 above. If this is English at all, one is tempted to place it with the anomalous Old Hall works. For Tinctoris' strictures, see Tinctoris, op.cit., 10, and Strunk, op.cit., 195.Google Scholar

40 Trowell, op.cit.Google Scholar

41 In addition to the pieces mentioned in n.22 above, Leonel's isorhythmic Gloria I-AO A'D19, ff231v-3, and Mass ‘Alma redemptoris mater’ combine different mensurations. So also do, for example, OH82 (probably by Cooke), Forest's Credo cited in n.22, and Soursby's Sanctus I-AO A1D19, ff251v-3, which combines O time in different proportions with C, C and O.Google Scholar

42 Published in Jean Pullois, Opera omnia, ed. Peter Gülke, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, xli (Rome, 1967), 1–18; for a discussion of its likely English origins, ssee Gareth R. K. Curtis, ‘Jean Pullois and the Cyclic Mass — or a Case of Mistaken Identity?’, Music and Letters, lxii (1981), 41–59.Google Scholar

43 See n.9 above.Google Scholar

44 e.g. Gloria, bars 48–53, 62–7; Credo, bars 52–7, 67–72; Sanctus, bars 52–63; Agnus, bars 51–61; also, more subtly, Kyrie, bars 77–80 and Agnus, bars 122–5.Google Scholar

45 Published in Four Anonymous Masses, see, for example, the use of the tenor in passages of reduced scoring (e.g. Sanctus, bars 51–8, and Agnus, bars 52–9), and the double cursus of the chant, a rare occurrence among the stricter English cantus firmus Masses.Google Scholar

46 1710, 1768 and 1796; also I-TRmn 90, 900, 938, 967.Google Scholar

47 Like, for example, the Credo ‘Letare Jerusalem’ (I-TRmd 93, 1783, and I-TRmn 90, 952).Google Scholar