Introduction
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and followed by Renaissance music; the two eras comprise what musicologists generally refer to as early music, preceding the common-practice period. Following the traditional division of the Middle Ages, medieval music can be divided into Early (500–1150), High (1000–1300), and Late (1300–1400) medieval music.
Medieval music includes vocal music, such as Gregorian chant (sung by monks during Catholic Mass), and choral music (music for a group of singers), instrumental music and music that uses both voices and instruments (typically with the instruments accompanying the voices). Rooted in the patronage of churches and royal courts in Western Europe, surviving early medieval music is chiefly religious, monophonic and vocal, with the music of ancient Greece and Rome influencing its thought and theory.
During the medieval period the foundation was laid for the music notation and music theory practices that would shape Western music into the norms that developed during the common-practice period of shared music writing practices which encompassed the Baroque era (1600–1750), Classical era (1750–1820) and Romantic era (1800–1910). The most significant of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned “by ear”, from one person who knew a song to another person. This greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how far music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music notation made it easier to disseminate songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people and to a wider geographic area. However the theoretical advances, particularly in regard to rhythm—the timing of notes—and polyphony—using multiple, interweaving melodies at the same time—are equally important to the development of Western music.
Early Medieval Music (500-1150)
Chant (or plainsong) is a monophonic sacred form which represents the earliest known music of the Christian church. Chant developed separately in several European centers. Although the most important were Rome, Hispania, Gaul, Milan, and Ireland, there were others as well. These styles were all developed to support the regional liturgies used when celebrating the Mass. Each area developed its own chant and rules for celebration.
Around the end of the 9th century, singers in monasteries such as St. Gall in Switzerland began experimenting with adding another part to the chant, generally a voice in parallel motion, singing mostly in perfect fourths or fifths above the original tune. This development is called organum and represents the beginnings of counterpoint and, ultimately, harmony. Over the next several centuries, organum developed in several ways.
Another musical tradition of Europe originating during the early Middle Ages was the liturgical drama (forms of dramatic performance that use stories from the Bible and other Christian literature), which developed, possibly in the 10th century, from the tropes—poetic embellishments of the liturgical texts.
The above playlist contains selected works by some of the composers covered in the remainder of this chapter. The numbers that appear before the names of compositions in the text below refer to their position in the playlist. There are also separate playlists for each composer which contain all the recordings available on Spotify barring those that are arrangements for modern instruments, instrumental arrangements of pieces originally scored for voices and the like.
Composers of the Early Medieval Ages
Notker Balbulus (c. 840 – 6 April 912), Notker the Stammerer or simply Notker, was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall in modern-day Switzerland. Described as “a significant figure in the Western Church”, Notker made substantial contributions to both the music and literature of his time. The anonymous pieces 4 and 5 included in the playlist originate from the St. Gall manuscripts held in the Abbey library of Saint Gall and were composed around the same time as Notker’s. Audi, benigne conditor is a Lenten hymn formerly attributed to Pope Gregory the Great, but now dated as late as the early ninth century. It was composed either in Italy or in Gaul and appears in many tenth century manuscripts from those areas, as well as in numerous German and English manuscripts of the following century.
1. Natus ante saecula
2. Ex numero frequentium – Quasi quid incredibile – Qui vobis terrigenis
Tuotilo (died 27 April 915) was a Frankish monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall. He was a composer, and according to Ekkehard IV a century later, also a poet, musician, painter and sculptor. Various trope melodies can be assigned to Tuotilo, but works of other mediums are attributed with less certainty. He was a student of Iso of St. Gallen and friends with the fellow monk Notker Balbulus. Tuotilo played several instruments, including the harp. The history of the ecclesiastical drama begins with the trope sung as Introit of the Mass on Easter Sunday. It has come down to us in a St. Gallen manuscript dating from the time of Tuotilo. According to the works catalogue of Ekkehard IV, Casus sancti Galli, Tuotilo is the author of five tropes; further research ascribed five additional tropes to him.
Fulbert de Chartres (952–970–10 April 1028) French or Italian, Bishop of Chartres in France from 1006 to 1028 and a teacher at the Cathedral school there.
3. De luscinia
Anonymous:
4. O lylium convallium (Italy – 10th Century)
5. In omnem terram (St. Gall c. 922-926)
High Medieval Music (1000–1300)
The flowering of the Notre Dame school of polyphony from around 1150 to 1250 corresponded to the equally impressive achievements in Gothic architecture: indeed the centre of activity was at the cathedral of Notre Dame itself. Sometimes the music of this period is called the Parisian school, or Parisian organum, and represents the beginning of what is conventionally known as Ars antiqua. This was the period in which rhythmic notation first appeared in Western music, mainly a context-based method of rhythmic notation known as the rhythmic modes.
This was also the period in which concepts of formal structure developed which were attentive to proportion, texture, and architectural effect. Composers of the period alternated florid and discant organum (more note-against-note, as opposed to the succession of many-note melismas against long-held notes found in the florid type), and created several new musical forms: clausulae, which were melismatic sections of organa extracted and fitted with new words and further musical elaboration; conductus, which were songs for one or more voices to be sung rhythmically, most likely in a procession of some sort; and tropes, which were additions of new words and sometimes new music to sections of older chant. All of these genres save one were based upon chant; that is, one of the voices, (usually three, though sometimes four) nearly always the lowest (the tenor at this point) sang a chant melody, though with freely composed note-lengths, over which the other voices sang organum. The exception to this method was the conductus, a two-voice composition that was freely composed in its entirety. The motet, one of the most important musical forms of the High Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, developed initially during the Notre Dame period out of the clausula, especially the form using multiple voices as elaborated by Pérotin.
Composers of the High Medieval Ages
Adam of Saint Victor (c. 1068 – 1146) was a prolific composer and poet of Latin hymns. A central figure of the sequences in high medieval music, he has been called “…the most illustrious exponent of the revival of liturgical poetry which the twelfth century affords.” Adam’s career was based in Paris, split between the Abbey of Saint Victor and Notre Dame. He was well acquainted with numerous contemporary scholars and musicians, including the philosopher and composer Peter Abelard, the theologian Hugh of Saint Victor and the composer Albertus Parisiensis, the last possibly being his student.
6. Gratulemur
Peter Abelard (c. 1079 – 21 April 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, leading logician, theologian, poet, composer and musician.
7. O quanta qualia (composed after 1130)
Hildegard von Bingen (c. 1098 – 17 September 1179) was a German Benedictine abbess active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history.
Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Catholic Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard’s music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost. This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.
One of her better-known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is uncertain when some of Hildegard’s compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. It is an independent Latin morality play with music (82 songs); it does not supplement or pay homage to the Mass or the Office of a certain feast. It is, in fact, the earliest known surviving musical drama that is not attached to a liturgy.
In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum. The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard’s own text and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories. Her music is monophonic and its style has been said to be characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of traditional Gregorian chant and to stand outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. Another feature of Hildegard’s music that both reflects the twelfth-century evolution of chant, and pushes that evolution further, is that it is highly melismatic, often with recurrent melodic units.
8. Ordo Virtutum: Prologue
9. Ordo Virtutum: Epilogue
10. Ave generosa
11. O Frondens Virga
12. O ignis Spiritus Paraclitus
13. Sequentia O, Jerusalem, aurea civitas
14. Antiphona O, tu illistrata
15. Antiphon O, quam mirabilis est
16. Antiphona, O coruscan lux 68 (IV). Psalmus 10: In Domino confido
Léonin (fl. 1135–1201) was the first known significant composer of polyphonic organum. He was probably French, probably lived and worked in Paris at the Notre-Dame Cathedral and was the earliest member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style who is known by name. All that is known about him comes from the writings of a later student at the cathedral known as Anonymous IV, an Englishman who left a treatise on theory and who mentions Léonin as the composer of the Magnus Liber, the “great book” of organum. Much of the Magnus Liber is devoted to clausulae—melismatic portions of Gregorian chant which were extracted into separate pieces where the original note values of the chant were greatly slowed down and a fast-moving upper part is superimposed. Léonin might have been the first composer to use the rhythmic modes, and may have invented a notation for them. According to W.G. Waite, writing in 1954: “It was Léonin’s incomparable achievement to introduce a rational system of rhythm into polyphonic music for the first time, and, equally important, to create a method of notation expressive of this rhythm.” The Magnus Liber was intended for liturgical use. According to Anonymous IV, “Magister Leoninus (Léonin) was the finest composer of organum; he wrote the great book (Magnus Liber) for the gradual and antiphoner for the sacred service.” All of the Magnus Liber is for two voices, although little is known about actual performance practice: the two voices were not necessarily soloists.
17. Sedit Angelus
Anonymous:
18. Nobilis humilis Magne martir (12th century – Orkney)
Albertus Parisiensis (fl. 1146–1177), also known as Albert of Paris, was a French cantor and composer. He is credited with creating the first known piece of European music for three voices. The only extant piece of his is the conductus Congaudeant Catholici. The piece was part of the Codex Calixtinus, a work intended as a guide for travelers making the Way of St. James, a pilgrimage to a shrine in Santiago de Compostela.
19. Congaudeant Catholici
Pérotin (fl. c. 1200) was a composer associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony in Paris and the broader ars antiqua musical style of high medieval music. He is credited with developing the polyphonic practices of his predecessor Léonin, with the introduction of three and four-part harmonies.
20. Mors a primi patris/Mors, que stimulo/Mors morsu nata/Mors
21. Feast of St. Stephen: Sederunt principes – Adiuva me, Domine (à 4) (Gradual)
Alfonso X of Castile (also known as El Sabio; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) commissioned or co-authored numerous works of music during his reign. These works included Cantigas d’escarnio e maldicer and the vast compilation Cantigas de Santa Maria (“Songs to the Virgin Mary”), which was written in Galician-Portuguese and figures among the most important of his works. The Cantigas de Santa Maria form one of the largest collections of vernacular monophonic songs to survive from the Middle Ages. They consist of 420 poems with musical notation. The poems are for the most part on miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary. One of the miracles Alfonso relates is his own healing in Puerto de Santa María.
22. Cantigas de Santa Maria: No. 363, En bon ponto vimos esta Sennor que loamos
Petrus de Cruce (c. 1250 – also Pierre de la Croix) was active as a cleric, composer and music theorist in the late part of the 13th century. His main contribution was to the notational system. Mensural notation had developed by fits and starts during the 13th century as the old ligatures/rhythmic modes became, for various reasons, less suited to the indication of polyphony’s new subtleties, as we shall see below. Not the least problem was that notation in individual part-books was cheaper than notation in score (since each piece took up much less overall space), so a way had to be found of doing it—this would involve the development of a reliable system by which to indicate note-by-note metrical value. The beginning of such a solution was Franconian notation, so called after the theorist Franco of Cologne, who outlined the system in his c. 1260 treatise, Ars cantus mensurabilis (The art of mensurable music). This system recognized the double-long (octuple whole note), long (quadruple whole note), breve (double whole note), and semi-breve (whole note) as the units of note value, related to one another by triple grouping; the double was always worth two longs, but a long could be perfect (and therefore worth three breves) or imperfect (and worth only two), depending on the exact sequence of notes. The breve was the “tempus”, equivalent to the ‘unit of the beat’ in modern notation (three quarters to a measure in ¾ time, etc.), or a modern measure if we consider all of the music to have been in 3/1, so perfect tempus was triple meter, and imperfect tempus would be duple once introduced. A breve could theoretically be worth either three semi-breves or two in Franconian notation, but if worth two, one or the other would be doubled in length. There was no provision in this notation for equal duple division, which (along with imperfect tempus, therefore) would have to wait until de Vitry codified the concept of prolation in his Ars nova of 1322.
By the 1280s, tripla (the top parts of motets and other polyphonic pieces) were moving more rapidly and independently than before, with the chant-based tenors becoming slower moving, supporting parts. Since composers wanted to maintain speech rhythms in their tripla, they looked for a way to divide the tempus into more than three semi-breves, which in modern notation would be the equivalent of a tuplet (triplet, quartolet, quintuplet, etc.); motets which do this bear the name “Petronian”, after the most prominent user of the style. One way of indicating this division was to line up the voices one atop another in score notation, so that the tempus could be seen by examining the lower parts, still wedded to rhythmic mode. This would have been a waste of precious resources, however, and was no more an option now than it had been before. Petrus, who often divided his breves into as many as seven semi-breves, developed the dot of division (punctum divisionis), which are dots placed in between semi-breves to group them; thus a series of five semi-breves separated by dots from those surrounding them would be understood by the reader as occurring in the space of one breve. In later, 15th and 16th century notation, confusion between dots of division and the later innovation of dots indicating extended note values creates transcription problems for editors, but it is usually possible to tell from context, as well as prevailing tempus and prolation, which is meant; indeed, the dot of division is rarely required, since a run of semi-breves coming between two ligatures is clearly a grouping.
Petrus’s free usage of the divided breve had far-reaching implications for musical style. With more notes, the triplum became the most prominent of the three voices in contemporary texture, and the other two were relegated to a supporting role. Also, more notes and more intricate subdivision led to a slowing of general tempo—the semi-breve was performed more slowly than it had been in earlier practice, becoming the true unit of the beat, and the lower voices lost their rhythmic vitality, becoming mere structural successions of breves and longs.
Composed around 1300, Petronian motets are still considered part of the Ars Antiqua. Characteristics include further division of the triplum, the motetus and triplum move toward light and elegant expression, and a lack of concern for principles of proper textual accentuation.
23. Aucun ont trouvé
24. S’amours eûst point de poer
Anonymous:
25. Verbum Patris humanatur
26. Iam nubes dissolvitur/Iam novum sydus oritur/Solem (13th century – France)
Late Medieval Music (1300–1400)
The beginning of the Ars nova is one of the few clear chronological divisions in medieval music, since it corresponds to the publication of the Roman de Fauvel, a huge compilation of poetry and music, in 1310 and 1314. The Roman de Fauvel is a satire on abuses in the medieval church, and is filled with medieval motets, lais, rondeaux and other new secular forms. While most of the music is anonymous, it contains several pieces by Philippe de Vitry, one of the first composers of the isorhythmic motet, a development which distinguishes the fourteenth century. The isorhythmic motet was perfected by Guillaume de Machaut, the finest composer of the time.
During the Ars nova era, secular music acquired a polyphonic sophistication formerly found only in sacred music, a development not surprising considering the secular character of the early Renaissance (while this music is typically considered “medieval”, the social forces that produced it were responsible for the beginning of the literary and artistic Renaissance in Italy—the distinction between Middle Ages and Renaissance is a blurry one, especially considering arts as different as music and painting). The term “Ars nova” (new art, or new technique) was coined by Philippe de Vitry in his treatise of that name (probably written in 1322), in order to distinguish the practice from the music of the immediately preceding age.
The dominant secular genre of the Ars Nova was the chanson, as it would continue to be in France for another two centuries. These chansons were composed in musical forms corresponding to the poetry they set, which were in the so-called formes fixes of rondeau, ballade, and virelai. These forms significantly affected the development of musical structure in ways that are felt even today; for example, the ouvert-clos rhyme-scheme shared by all three demanded a musical realization which contributed directly to the modern notion of antecedent and consequent phrases. It was in this period, too, in which began the long tradition of setting the Ordinary of the Mass. This tradition started around mid-century with isolated or paired settings of Kyries, Glorias, etc., but Machaut composed what is thought to be the first complete mass conceived as one composition. The sound world of Ars Nova music is very much one of linear primacy and rhythmic complexity. “Resting” intervals are the fifth and octave, with thirds and sixths considered dissonances. Leaps of more than a sixth in individual voices are not uncommon, leading to speculation of instrumental participation at least in secular performance.
Composers of the Late Medieval Ages
Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361) was a French composer-poet, bishop and music theorist in the ars nova style of late medieval music. An accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, he was widely acknowledged as a leading musician of his day, with Petrarch writing a glowing tribute, calling him: “… the keenest and most ardent seeker of truth, so great a philosopher of our age.” It is thought that very little of Vitry’s compositions survive; though he wrote secular music, only his sacred works are extant.
Philippe de Vitry is most famous in music history for the Ars nova notandi (1322), a treatise on music attributed to him that lent its name to the music of the entire era. While his authorship and the very existence of this treatise have recently come into question, a handful of his musical works do survive and show the innovations in musical notation, particularly mensural and rhythmic, with which he was credited within a century of their inception. Such innovations as are exemplified in his stylistically attributed motets for the Roman de Fauvel were particularly important, and made possible the free and quite complex music of the next hundred years, culminating in the Ars subtilior. In some ways the “modern” system of rhythmic notation began with the Ars Nova, during which music might be said to have “broken free” from the older idea of the rhythmic modes, patterns which were repeated without being individually notated. The notational predecessors of modern time meters also originate in the Ars Nova.
He is reputed to have written chansons and motets, but only some of the motets have survived. Each is strikingly individual, exploiting a unique structural idea. He is also often credited with developing the concept of isorhythm (an isorhythmic line consists of repeating patterns of rhythms and pitches, but the patterns overlap rather than correspond; e.g., a line of thirty consecutive notes might contain five repetitions of a six-note melody or six repetitions of a five-note rhythm). Five of his three-part motets have survived in the Roman de Fauvel; an additional nine can be found in the Ivrea Codex.
27. Petre Clemens, tamre quam nimine – Lugentium siccentur occuli plaudant senes
28. Tribum, que non abhorruit – Quoniam secta latronum – Merito hec patimur
29. Vos quid admiramini, virgenes – Gratissima virginis species – Gaude gloriosa
30. Tuba sacre fidei – In arboris
31. Almifonis melos – Rosa sine culpe spina (attributed to Vitry but not widely accepted)
Jehan de Lescurel (fl. early 14th century; also Jehannot de l’Escurel) was a composer-poet of late medieval music. Jehan’s extensive surviving oeuvre is an important and rare examples of the formes fixes before the time of Guillaume de Machaut; it consists of 34 works: 20 ballades, 12 rondeaus and two long narrative poems, diz entés. All but one of his compositions is monophonic, representing the end of the trouvère tradition and the beginning of the polyphonic ars nova style centered around the formes fixes.
32. A vous, douce debonnaire
Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300 – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the ars nova style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the ars nova from the subsequent ars subtilior movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century’s leading European composer.
Machaut, one of the earliest European composers on whom considerable biographical information is available, has an unprecedented amount of surviving music, in part due to his own involvement in his manuscripts’ creation and preservation. Machaut embodies the culmination of the poet-composer tradition stretching back to the traditions of troubadour and trouvère. Machaut composed in a wide range of styles and forms and was crucial in developing the motet and secular song forms (particularly the lai and the formes fixes: rondeau, virelai and ballade). Among his only surviving sacred works, Messe de Nostre Dame, is the earliest known complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer.
33. Plourez, dames, plourez vostre servant (Ballade from “Le Voir dit”)
34. Puisqu’en oubli suis de vous, dous amis (Three-voice rondeau)
35. Motet no. 16: Por coi me bait
36. Motet no. 5: Fias volontas tua
37. Motet no. 7: Ego moriar pro te
38. De Fortune me doi pleindre et loer (Three-voice ballade)
39. Mors sui, se je ne vous voy
Jacopo da Bologna (fl. 1340 – c. 1386) was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the period sometimes known as the Italian ars nova. He was one of the first composers of this group, making him a contemporary of Gherardello da Firenze and Giovanni da Cascia. He concentrated mainly on madrigals, including both canonic (caccia-madrigal) and non-canonic types, but also composed a single example each of a caccia, lauda–ballata, and motet. Jacopo’s ideal was “suave dolce melodia” (sweet, gentle melody). His style is marked by fully texted voice parts that never cross. The untexted passages which connect the textual lines in many of his madrigals are also noteworthy.
40. Lux purpurata radiis; Diligite iustitiam (Three-voice motet)
41. Nel bel giardino che l’Adige (Madrigal)
Matheus de Sancto Johanne (died after 10 June 1391), also known as Mayshuet, was a French composer of the late Medieval era. Active both in France and England, he was one of the representatives of the complex, manneristic musical style known as the ars subtilior, a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered on Paris, Avignon in southern France, and also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory. Often the term is used in contrast with ars nova, which applies to the musical style of the preceding period from about 1310 to about 1370; though some scholars prefer to consider ars subtilior a subcategory of the earlier style. Primary sources for ars subtilior are the Chantilly Codex, the Modena Codex, and the Turin Manuscript.
Six of his compositions have survived with reliable attribution. They include an unusual motet for five voices, Ave post libamina/Nunc surgunt (very few motets of the period have more than four voices), and five secular works: three ballades and two rondeaux. Two of the ballades, and one of the rondeaux, are for three voices, and these are later compositions more associated with the ars subtilior style; the others are four voices, and were possibly written earlier. That he was well-appreciated in England can be seen in late copies of his motet made there around 1430, for example, in the Old Hall Manuscript.
42. Je chante ung chant, Fol. 16 (Rondeau – isorhythmic)
43. Fortune, faulce, parverse
Bartolino da Padova (also “Magister Frater Bartolinus de Padua”) (fl. c. 1365 – c. 1405) was an Italian composer of the late 14th century. He is a representative of the stylistic period known as the Trecento. The Squarcialupi Codex, the largest source of Italian music of the 14th century, contains 37 pieces by Bartolino. A few other sources contain pieces by him, and his music was evidently widespread, indicating his reputation.
Bartolino’s music, unlike that of his contemporary Francesco Landini, shows little influence from the French ars nova. His 27 ballate are almost all vocal duets, in the Italian fashion (the French at that time were mainly writing them as a single vocal line with one or two instrumental accompanying parts). Eleven of Bartolino’s madrigals survive; like the ballate, they are mostly for two voices, however there are two pieces for three, and one of them (La Fiera Testa) has a macaronic text which is trilingual, one strophe in Italian, one in Latin and the final Ritornello section in French. This practice was common in the high Middle Ages but had become rare by the end of the 14th century.
44. Quel sole che nutrica’l gentil fiore
Francesco Landini (c. 1325 or 1335 – 2 September 1397) was an Italian composer, poet, organist, singer and instrument maker who was a central figure of the Trecento style in late Medieval music. One of the most revered composers of the second half of the 14th century, he was by far the most famous composer in Italy.
Landini was the foremost exponent of the Italian Trecento style. His output was almost exclusively secular. While there are records that he composed sacred music, none of it has survived. What have survived are eighty-nine ballate for two voices, forty-two ballate for three voices, and another nine which exist in both two and three-voice versions. In addition to the ballate, a smaller number of madrigals have survived. Landini is assumed to have written his own texts for many of his works. His output, preserved most completely in the Squarcialupi Codex, represents almost a quarter of all surviving 14th-century Italian music.
45. Chosi penoso
46. Nella partita
47. Adiu, adiu dous dame yolie
48. Che cosa e questa, amor
49. Creata fusti o vergine Maria
Johannes Symonis Hasprois (fl. 1378–1428) was a French composer originally from Arras. Four of his works of music survive in four different manuscripts. Hasprois’s early two-voice ballade “Puisque je sui fumeux” is “a prime example of the exceedingly complex style of the ars subtilior.” The text of this ballade is also preserved anonymously as “Balade de maistre fumeux”. It is similar to a rondeau by Solage, “Fumeux fume par fumee”, and both were probably written for the “highly eccentric circle” gathered around Jean Fumée. If so, then it probably dates to the time when Hasprois was at the court of Charles V.
Hasprois wrote two other ballades in the tradition of courtly love as it was being expressed circa 1400. “Ma doulce amour” is preserved in three manuscripts and is the more complicated of the two. The syllabic “Se mes deux yeux” is found in only one manuscript, alongside “Ma doulce”.
50. Ma douce amour
Johannes de Porta (c. 1350?) is associated with one work in the Chantilly Codex, the four-voice Isorhythmic motet “Alma polis religio/Axe poli cum artica.” This is one of the last motets found in the Chantilly Codex and contains the names of several poets and composers presumably belonging to the Augustan order; de Porta identifies himself as “the composer.” The text is a difficult one to interpret, and sometimes this piece has been accredited to “Egidius de Aurolia” (Gilles of Orleans) as the text states that “from him, all melody flows.” Just who is precisely meant of the many Aegidiuses or Egidiuses known from fourteenth century France is unclear, and as the otherwise unknown de Porta appears to have signed the work internally, there remains little doubt that, whoever he was, he was the actual writer of “Alma polis religio/Axe poli cum artica.” For a work composed in the fourteenth century, it demonstrates uncommon skill and is in advance of its time.
51. Alma polis religio/Axe poli cum artica
Anonymous:
52. Patrie pacis/Patria gaudentium (late 14th century – England)
Paolo da Firenze (Paolo Tenorista, “Magister Dominus Paulas Abbas de Florentia”) (c. 1355 – after September 20, 1436) was an Italian composer and music theorist of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. More surviving music of the Trecento is attributable to Paolo than to any other composer except for Francesco Landini. His music had both progressive and conservative aspects. While most of his surviving music is secular, and all of it vocal, two sacred compositions (a Benedicamus Domino for two voices, and a Gaudeamus omnes in Domino for three) have also survived.
His secular compositions are of three types: thirteen madrigals, forty-six ballate (some of which are fragmentary, and others of which have the ascription to Paolo erased in the source), and five miscellaneous secular songs. All of his music is for two or three voices, and all is datable through sources or stylistic features to the period before 1410. Whether he did any composing after 1410 is not known.
Paolo’s madrigals combine Italian and French notation, and show considerable influence of the Avignon mannerist school of the ars subtilior in their complex and intricate rhythmic patterns; however most of them are for only two voices, a conservative choice. The ballate are more progressively done overall; most are for three voices, and are lyrical, melodic, but yet use some of the extreme rhythmic intricacies of the ars subtilior school. The influence of Landini, hard to avoid for any Florentine composer late in the 14th century, is evident both in the madrigals and the ballate.
53. Altro che sospirar (Ballate)
Antonello da Caserta, also Anthonello de Casetta, Antonellus Marot, was an Italian composer of the medieval era, active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. He is one of the more renowned composers of the generation after Guillaume de Machaut. Antonello set texts in both French and Italian, including Beauté parfaite of Machaut; this is the only surviving musical setting of a poem by Machaut which is not by Machaut himself. He was highly influenced by French musical models, one of the first Italians to be so. One of his ballades quotes Jehan Vaillant, a composer active in Paris. He also made use of irregular mensuration signs, found in few other manuscripts. He also uses proportional rhythms in some ballades, a device which became more popular in later periods. His Italian works tend to be simpler, especially the ballate. Both his French and Italian works take as their subjects courtly love.
54. Amour m’a le cuer mis (Ballade)
Solage (fl. late 14th century), possibly Jean So(u)lage, was a French composer, and probably also a poet. He composed the most pieces in the Chantilly Codex, the principal source of music of the ars subtilior, the manneristic compositional school centered on Avignon at the end of the century. Stylistically, Solage’s works exhibit two distinctly different characters: a relatively simple one usually associated with his great predecessor and elder contemporary Guillaume de Machaut, and a more recherché one, complex in the areas of both pitch and rhythm, characteristic of the ars subtilior (“more subtle art”). These two styles mostly exist separately in different songs but sometimes are found mixed in a single composition, where they can be used to underscore the musical and poetic structure. In his simpler “Machaut” style pieces Solage nevertheless makes many personal choices that are very different from what Machaut typically does. Moreover, the simpler style is not necessarily an indication of an earlier date nor the complex style a reliable sign of a later date. Solage uses his techniques to link text and music together, either in terms of form or else of meaning. Nevertheless, some of his ars subtilior music was quite experimental: the best-known example in this complex style is his bizarre Fumeux fume par fumée (approx: “The smoky one smokes through [or for] smoke”), which is extravagantly chromatic for the time; it also contains some of the lowest tessitura vocal writing in any music of the period.
55. Joieux de cuer en seumellant estoye
John Forest (c. 1365 – 25 March 1446), was an English composer of the late Medieval era. There are two motets of Forest’s in the Old Hall Manuscript, but much more survives in Continental sources such as the Trent Codices. His music contrasts declamatory and melismatic passages; the conflict of rhythms between the various voices gives his music a restless quality.
56. Qualis est dilectus tuus
Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly in the service of the papal chapels in Rome and later and most importantly at Padua Cathedral.
Ciconia’s music is an eclectic blend of styles. Pieces typical of northern Italy, such as his madrigal Una panthera, appear with pieces steeped in the French ars nova. The more complex ars subtilior style surfaces in Sus un fontayne. While it remains late medieval in style, his writing increasingly points toward the melodic patterning of the Renaissance, for instance in his setting of O rosa bella. He wrote music both secular (French virelais, Italian ballate and madrigals) and sacred (motets and Mass movements, some of them isorhythmic) in form. He is also the author of two treatises on music, Nova Musica and De Proportionibus (which expands on some ideas in Nova Musica). His theoretical ideas stem from the more conservative Marchettian tradition in contrast to those of his Paduan contemporary Prosdocimus de Beldemandis.
57. Venecie mundi splendor – Michael qui stena domus – Italie
58. VI. Gloria spiritus et alme No. 6
59. XV. Albane, misse celitus – Albane doctor maxime
Baude Cordier (fl. early 15th century) was a French composer in the ars subtilior style of late medieval music. Cordier’s works are considered among the prime examples of ars subtilior. In line with that cultural trend, he was fond of using red note notation, also known as coloration, a technique stemming from the general practice of mensural notation. The change in color adjusts the rhythm of a particular note from its usual form. (This musical style and type of notation has also been termed “mannerism” and “mannered notation.”)
60. Se Cuer D’amant Par Soy Humilier