Everist Metz Fragment

Reception and Recomposition in the Polyphonic "Conductus cum caudis": The Metz FragmentAuthor(s): Mark EveristSource: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 125, No. 2 (2000), pp. 135-163Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3250668 .Accessed: 19/12/2010 09:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rma. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Royal Musical Association and Taylor & Francis, Ltd. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Journal of the Royal Musical Association.

http://www.jstor.org

Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 125 (2000) ? Royal Musical Association

Reception and Recomposition in the Polyphonic Conductus cum caudis: The

Metz Fragment MARK EVERIST

DEFINITIONS of the conductus that seek to explain the entire genre seem doomed to failure. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century song generally set stanzas of accentual poetry called rithmi, consisted of anything between one and four parts, and was not normally based on, nor made reference to, pre-existing musical or literary material.1 The function of the conductus is the most open of all the questions that surround the genre, and - with the exception of those that implicitly admit that a single explanation cannot account for the entire repertory - few proposals approach a workable definition for the genre as a whole. The most per- vasive description of the function of the conductus centres on the idea that the work was in some sense associated with processions, and that its very name, conductus, could be harnessed etymologically in support of this claim.2 However well received initially, the evidence on which this view was based has been subjected to vigorous challenge, and it has been alternatively proposed that the term conductus explains the origins of the genre, as music that results from the 'joining together' of disparate elements, and that it may well have been a contraction of

The term conductus cum caudis is derived from Anonymous IV's description of a 'volumen de dupli- cibus conductis habentibus caudas' and other conducti 'sine caudis' (Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4, ed. Fritz Reckow, 2 vols., Beihefte zum Archiv ffir Musikwissenschaft, 4-5, Wiesbaden, 1967), i, 82). This article is based on a paper read at the Annual Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music, University of Southampton, July 1996. I am grateful to Jean-Paul Montagnier (Universite de Nancy), Philippe Hoch (Bibliotheque de la Ville de Metz) and Jocelyne Barthel (Archives Municipales, Metz) for assistance. Research towards this publication was supported by the British Academy, which funded a visit to Metz in spring 1996. I would like to thank, in addition to the anonymous reviewers of this article, Rebecca Baltzer, Nicky Losseff, Dolores Pesce, Christopher Page, Craig Wright, and particularly Thomas B. Payne, who read an early draft of this article and contributed immeasurably to its development.

1 This definition is based on Leonard Ellinwood, 'The Conductus', Musical Quarterly, 27 (1941), 165-204. Poems that were not rithmi were often not newly composed; a good example is the three-part Pater noster in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteo 29.1, ff. 215-216. See Robert Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus: A Study of the Repertory, Musicological Studies, 33 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1981), 230. For exceptions to the principle that the conductus is newly composed, see the study of intertextual reference between conductus and clausula in Manfred Bukofzer, 'Interrelations between Conductus and Clausula', Annales musicologiques, 1 (1953), 65-103, and the individual commentaries to compositions in Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus, 178-256.

2 See Ellinwood, 'The Conductus', 167, and Janet Knapp, 'Conductus', The New Grove Diction- ary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), iv, 651-6 (p. 653).

136 MAR EVERIST

materials related to the hymn and sequence.3 Others have suggested that the conductus functioned as a substitute for the Benedicamus domino (certainly plausible for some works),4 while more recently it has been suggested that ' Conductus, as a genre, is about conduct.'5 While the latter claim certainly holds true for the two works used to exemplify it, both with texts by Philip the Chancellor, it is difficult to see how this explains the wider repertory of conducti.6

The conductus cum caudis plays off two clearly marked discursive modes: music cum littera, where the bulk of the text is declaimed, and music sine littera, where strictly musical concerns govern the construc- tion of the parts of the work called caudae.7 It is possible to view the interplay of the two discursive modes within the context of other so-called 'mixed' forms or prosimetra that characterized much literary production and reception in the Middle Ages.8 Identification of such

3 See Bryan Gillingham, 'A New Etymology and Etiology for the Conductus', Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer, ed. Bryan Gillingham and Paul Merkley, Musicological Studies, 53 (Ottawa, 1990), 100-17 (p. 101).

4 Frank Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958; 4th edn, Buren, 1980), 124, and idem, 'Benedicamus, Conductus, Carol', Acta musicologica, 37 (1965), 35-48. It seems possible, however, that Harrison was not seeking to provide an all-embracing function for the conductus when he wrote: 'What is suggested here is the probable ritual position of those conductus which are related to the seasons and feasts of the church' (Music in Medieval Britain, 124, n. 2).

5 Nancy van Deusen, Theology and Music at the Early University: The Case of Robert iosseteste and Anonymous IV, Brill Studies in Intellectual History, 57 (Leiden, etc., 1995), 37-53 (p. 44). For a bold attempt to separate cantio from conductus, see John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050-1350, Cambridge Studies in Music (Cambridge, 1986), 56-63.

6 The two works are Fontis in rivulum and Associa tecum in patria. For the latter, see also Thomas B. Payne, 'Associa tecum in patria: A Newly Identified Organum Trope by Philip the Chancellor', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), 233-54.

7 For a discussion of these two concepts, see Ernest Sanders, 'Sine littera and Cum littera in Medieval Polyphony', Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor ofPaul Henry Lang, ed. Edmond Strain- champs, Maria Rika Maniates and Christopher Hatch (New York and London, 1984), 215-31. However pragmatic the distinction between 'music with words' and 'music without words' might be, it does not do justice to the subtle complexity of the two types of music. They are described here as contrasting 'discursive modes' in an attempt to emphasize the fact that neither texture, word setting, harmonic procedures nor rhythm can alone account for the differences between them.

8 The juxtaposition of music cum littera and sine littera in a conductus may be investigated by analogy with the presence within the same literary work of, for example, prose and poetry. The literary medieval tradition is long, and stretches back to The Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella and Boethius's The Consolation ofPhilosophy. It received a major new impulse in the twelfth century, just as the new mixed forms of conductus and organum were emerging, from such texts as Hildebert of Lavardin's Querimonia, Adelard of Bath's De eodem et diverso, Bernard Silvestris's Cosmographia and the De planctu naturae of Alan of Lille. Recent studies on the mixed form are Peter Dronke, Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixaed Form (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1994) and Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narratie in Prose and Verse, ed. Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl (Woodbridge, 1997). The best bibliography of the subject is Bernhard Pabst, Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwirsen Sptanike und Spiitmittelalter, Ordo - Studien zur Literatur und Gesellschaft des Mittelalters und der frifhen Neuzeit, 4 (Cologne, etc., 1994). For a fuller account of the ways in which the conductus cum caudis may be read as a mixed form, and for analogies with the prosimetrum, see Mark Everist, 'Drying Rachel's Tears: The Two-Part Conductus as Mixed Form' (International Musicological Society, London, 14-20 August 1997, and American Musicological Society, Boston, 29 October to 1 November 1998); in this paper and in the current article the approach to the prosimetrun is

RECEPTION AND RECOMPOSITION 137

contrasting discursive modes not only opens up opportunities for a more sophisticated typology of the conductus but also permits the development of an analytical methodology that does justice to the complexity of the individual compositions.

Sources for the conductus are shared with the other principal forms of twelfth- and thirteenth-century polyphonic music: organum, and - to a lesser extent - the motet. The large manuscripts of polyphony of this period, in Wolfenbfittel, Florence and Madrid, all preserve various parts of the conductus repertory.9 In addition, a wide range of lesser sources preserves smaller numbers of compositions; each adds a little to our knowledge of this superficially transparent, but in fact sophisticated and complex, musical genre.10

The view that the conductus was superseded by the motet in the middle of the thirteenth century is now becoming more difficult to

different from that employed in Anna Maria Busse Berger, 'Mnemotechnics and Notre Dame Polyphony', Journal ofMusicology, 14 (1996), 263-98 (pp. 281-2). There is a significant difference in intellectual and sonic comparisons between the conductus and the prosimetrum. The difference in sound between music cum littera and music sine littera in the conductus cum caudis is clear; however, it is far from certain that in the late Middle Ages there would have been any difference between the spoken delivery of prose and quantitative verse (carmina) in a prosimetrum that mixed the two. Nevertheless, the difference between carmina and prose was intellectually as clear as that between music sine littera and music cum littera: 'Equally important was the intellectual challenge of writing a carmen now that the length and brevity of Latin vowels existed in the mind alone' (Christopher Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm in Medieval France, Royal Musical Association Monographs, 8, London, 1997, 18-19).

9 The four principal manuscript sources for this repertory are Wolfenbiittel, Herzog August Bibliothek, 628 Helmst. (W1); Wolfenbiittel, Herzog August Bibliothek, 1099 Helmst. (W2); Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteo 29.1 (1); and Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 20486 (Ma). Facsimiles of all four have been published: James H. Baxter, An Old St Andrews Music Book (Cod. Helmst. 628) Published in Facsimile with an Introduction, St Andrews University Publi- cations, 30 (Oxford and Paris, 1931), and Die mittelalterliche Musik-Handschrift W1: Vollstiindige Reproduktion der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbiittel Cod. Guelf 628 Helmst, ed. Martin Staehelin (Wiesbaden, 1995) (W1); Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscript Wolfenbiittel 1099 (1206), ed. Luther Dittmer, Publications of Mediaeval Musical Manuscripts, 2 (Brooklyn, NY, 1960) (W2); Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscript Firenze, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana Pluteo 29,1, ed. Luther Dittmer, 2 vols., Publications of Mediaeval Musical Manuscripts, 10-11 (Brooklyn, NY, [1966]-7) (f); and Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscript Madrid 20486, ed. Luther Dittmer, Publications of Mediaeval Musical Manuscripts, 1 (Brooklyn, NY, 1957) (Ma). The most complete list of sources for the conductus is in Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus, 140-52. Although the inventory drawn up in Gordon Anderson, 'Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: A Catalogue Raisonn6', Miscellanea musicologica, 6 (1972), 153-229, and 7 (1975), 1-81, includes a wider range of material, Anderson's study includes no listing of manuscripts; contents of the sources have to be gleaned from each of the individual critical commentaries to his editions in Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: Opera omnia, ed. Gordon Anderson, 10 vols., Collected Works, 10 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1979-86; vol. vii did not appear). For sources that have appeared since Falck's and Anderson's inventories, see Mark Everist, 'A Reconstructed Source for the Thirteenth-Century Conductus', Gordon Athol Anderson (1929-1981): In memoriam von seinen Studenten, Freunden und Kollegen, ed. Luther Dittmer, 2 vols., Musicological Studies, 49 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1984), i, 97-118; Martin Staehelin, 'Conductus-Fragmente aus einer Notre-Dame-Handschrift in Frankfurt a. M.', Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in GC6ttingen, i: Philologisch-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1987 (G6ttingen, 1987), 179-92; and Mark Everist, 'A New Source for the Polyphonic Conductus. MS 117* in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge', Plainsong and Medieval Music, 3 (1994), 149-68.

10 See below for an account of sources for the polyphonic conductus where only single voices or texts are preserved.

138 MARK EVERIST

sustain.11 Certainly it seems likely that compositional energies were being redirected into polytextual works based on borrowed tenors by the middle of the thirteenth century: the latest datable composition among the surviving conductus collections suggests a terminus post quem of 1236.12 This is not to say, however, that the conductus had fallen into any sort of decline, nor that it was no longer a living tradition. Conducti were copied in the second half of the thirteenth century and recast in ways that betray a great deal of how contemporary musicians thought about questions of notation - and therefore perhaps rhythm, addition or subtraction of voice-parts and musical structure. The two principal characteristics of the reworking of the conductus towards 1300 were a mode of transmission that reduced the work to either a monody or sometimes just the poetry alone,13 and an interest in imparting a notational precision to those parts of the conductus that, in the notation of their earliest sources, remained imprecise.14

The opposition between music cum littera and music sine littera, central to the structure of the conductus cum caudis, has almost always been couched in terms of rhythm. Although it has always been agreed that the rhythm of music sine littera was subject to the control of - or at least explainable in terms of - rhythmic modes, the rhythm of music cum littera remains one of the most hotly contested areas in musicology of the Middle Ages.15 Sections of conducti sine littera are always notated

" See, for the conventional view, Janet Knapp, 'Polyphony at Notre Dame of Paris', The Early Middle Ages to 1300, ed. Richard Crocker and David Hiley, The New Oxford History of Music, 2 (Oxford, 1990), 632-5 (p. 632): 'the conductus did not survive the old [modal] style. The new was to find its most striking example in the motet.' Knapp's comments are set in the context of a deeply rooted belief in the applicability of modal rhythm to cum littera sections of the conductus. This view, as conventional as the view on the relationship between conductus and motet, has come under challenge (see below).

12 This work, Aurelianis civitas, is monophonic, and therefore stands at some distance from the polyphonic conducti cum caudis discussed in this article. See Thomas B. Payne, 'Aurelianis civitas: A Conductus and Student Unrest in Medieval France', forthcoming in Speculum, 75 (2000).

13 In addition, a very few conducti were modified in highly irregular and atypical ways. Perhaps the best examples of this are the two motets in the notated version of the Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds franCais 146) whose texts rework those of conducti. See Lorenz Welker, 'Polyphonic Reworkings of Notre-Dame Conductus in BN fr. 146: "Mundus a mundicia" and "Quare fremuerunt"', Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothdque Nationale de France, MS ftangais 146, ed. Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford, 1998), 615-36.

14 This particular characteristic has been an important point of departure for those who seek to argue, by backward extrapolation, that the cum littera sections of conducti were modal, and this has dominated discussions of the source material. See, for example, Gordon A. Anderson, 'The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections of Polyphonic Conductus in Mensural Sources', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 288-304; idem, 'The Rhythm of the Monophonic Conductus in the Florence Manuscript as Indicated in Parallel Sources in Mensural Notation', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 31 (1978), 480-9; and E. Fred Flindell, 'Syllabic Notation in Isolated Voices', International Musicological Society: Report of the Eleventh Congress, Copen- hagen 1972, ed. Henrik Glahn, Soren Sorensen and Peter Ryom, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1974), i, 378-84. For a recent assertion of the same view, but argued at substantially shorter length than that of Anderson and others, see David Wulstan's reviews of Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm, in Music and Letters, 79 (1998), 103-5 (p. 104), and in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, 55 (1999), 643-5 (p. 643).

15 These observations do not relate to the monophonic conductus or to polyphonic conducti sine caudis.


modally, and present a rhythmic profile in keeping with the precepts of the rhythmic modes; they develop rhythmic patterns using combi- nations of ligatures cum perfectione et cum proprietate. No single rhythmic transcription can satisfy all those who dispute the rhythm of the cum littera sections of the conductus. In this article, cum littera sections are presented in unstemmed noteheads; this is in the expectation that a committed modalist will be able to decide which rhythmic mode, or modification of rhythmic mode, is to be imposed on the original notation, or (alternatively) that each syllable of the text, or note of the melody, will last more or less the same amount of time.16 Such a mode of presentation accomplishes two things. It permits the assimilation of a range of rhythmic ideologies in a way that modal transcriptions of music cum littera do not. It also allows the presentation of a rhythm without metre, which is an interpretation of the original notation of sources close in time to the composition of the music that demands preservation (for obvious reasons, this excludes the mensurally notated sources discussed elsewhere in this article, including the one which is its subject). There are many other potential rhythmic solutions to these passages. For example, in many instances unmeasured notation (where longae and breves are not distinguished) is inflected by the elongation of particular pitches. This might be used by committed modalists as evidence that such pitches are in fact longae or, more plausibly, that within a broadly isosyllabic delivery elongation of such notes may be read as an indication that they should be of greater duration, but not simply as a doubling of length.17 Of all the possibilities for the interpretation of the notation of cum littera sections in conducti, the one that has received

16 It is erroneous to regard this style of presentation to be 'no rhythm at all', as claimed by Wulstan in the second of the two reviews cited in note 14 above; the mistake is to confuse metre with rhythm. Unstemmed noteheads do not prescribe an unequivocal metrical performance, but they do permit rhythmical ones. The notes may be interpreted as being of equal duration, in a binary or ternary relationship to one another, or - and this is what Wulstan seems so unwilling to comprehend - in a much less rational and less easily quantifiable set of durational relation- ships that have been espoused by many over a long period of time. For a useful recent summary of these issues from the perspective of a scholar of troubadour song, see Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1996), 240-54 (the quotation that Wulstan imputes to p. 236 of this work (Notes, 55 (1999), 644) is found on p. 260). Significantly, almost all the editions and examples in Aubrey's book are notated in exactly the same way as proposed here for the earliest notated conducti. The only exceptions are late redactions from around 1300 which are notated mensurally in their original sources (again, exactly the same treatment as proposed in this article). For a similar view, but one that starts from a very different set of premisses, see Edward H. Roesner, 'The Emergence of Musica mensurabilis', Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of an LaRue, ed. Eugene K. Wolf and Edward H. Roesner (Madison, WI, 1990), 41-74 (pp. 70-4).

17 Within an isosyllabic context, these notes may be treated as freely as the state of development of the original performer's imagination permitted, or (to read the notation the other way around) it may be argued that such elongation should be treated as reflections of medieval performances (admittedly much mediated by a literate codicological tradition), and that that is the way in which they should be treated today. Accordingly, such elongations are transcribed in the examples in this article in the same manner as in the ongoing edition of the Magnus liber organi, with a horizontal stroke above the unstemmed notehead. See, for the latter, Les organa a deux voix pour la Messe (Noiljusqu 't la fete des Saints Pierre et Paul) du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1, ed. Mark Everist, Le magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris, 3 (Monaco, forthcoming), xxviii.

140 MARK EVERIST

most exposure (the thoroughgoing use of modal rhythm) is the one that has come under the greatest challenge.

The single complete edition of this music, however, subjects these passages cum littera to an interpretation which - like the sections sine littera - depends on the use of the rhythmic modes.18 The problem is that cum littera sections are not written in modal notation; the argument that modal rhythm is applicable to these sections depends on views on the nature of the delivery of rithmus,19 on statements from contemporary theory that are open to alternative interpretations,20 on the presence of cum littera music from one conductus in the sine littera music of another,21 and on the retrospective interpretation of much later sources that use a type of notation that can project measured rhythms.22 The last of these views is important for the interpretation of the manuscript that this article describes, since this new source is one that reinterprets the original notation of the music contained within it in a strictly modal fashion.23

The fragment Metz, Bibliotheque de la Ville, reserve precieux, MS 732bis/20 is an important new source for the polyphonic conductus cum caudis. In 1996, Bernard Ravenel published an inventory of binding fragments containing music in libraries in the Metz region, and MS 732bis/20 was among them. The fragment was exhibited as part of a colloque entitled 'L'art du chantre carolingien: D couvrir l'esth tique premiere du chant gr gorien' at the Arsenal, Metz, in March 1996, and a brief report on the fragment was published in the house journal of the Bibliotheque de la Ville de Metz.24 The source must have been in

18 The apparent self-evidence of the view that the cum littera sections of conductus should be transcribed in modal rhythm is well demonstrated by the fact that Anderson never felt the need to describe or defend his policy and methodology as part of the editorial project (Anderson, Notre- Dame and Related Conductus). Descriptions of the missing seventh volume of his publication lead one to believe that this was to be more a study of the repertory than the explanation of editorial method.

19 The argument that the prosody of conductus texts (aside from the tiny handful that are not rithmi) can be used to, and indeed did, determine the rhythm of the cum littera sections of conducti has been laid to rest in Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm.

20 Such theoretical statements are vigorously examined in Ernest Sanders, 'Conductus and Modal Rhythm', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 439-69.

21 See the summary of these phenomena, and the presentation of a new but unique example, in Janet Knapp, 'Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? Some Reflections on the Relation- ship between Conductus and Trope', Essays in Musicology: A Tribute to Alvin Johnson, ed. Lewis Lockwood and Edward Roesner (n.p., 1990), 16-25.

22 The arguments in Anderson's article ('The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections') are reviewed below.

23 A full review of the evidence for and against the imposition of modal rhythm on the cum littera sections of the conductus is outside the scope of this study. The most extreme view is presented by Anderson (Notre-Dame and Related Conductus) but condoned by most of his contem- poraries; see, for example, Janet Knapp, 'Musical Declamation and Poetic Rhythm in an Early Layer of Notre-Dame Conductus', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 32 (1979), 383-407. Ernest Sanders was one of the first to suggest that this mode of thinking was unconvincing; see his 'Conductus and Modal Rhythm'. Nevertheless, the view that modal rhythm - no matter how loosely applied, nor how loose the argumentation used to support the view - should be used as the basis for performing cum littera sections of the conductus still has its adherents.

24 Ravenel's report was published in Bernard Ravenel and Liliane Ravenel, 'Un patrimoine meconnu: La musique dans les manuscrits medievaux conserves ia Metz', Bibliothzque de la Ville de


Metz from at least as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, since it was used as the binding of a register whose title is still legible on the fragment; it reads 'Registre du grefz de la Chambre/des Sauvet s commence le/iii may 1607'. The original volume was the register of the so-called Chambre des Sauvetes that covered the years 1607-9; it is now Metz, Archives Municipales, FF 522, and its dimen- sions match exactly the folds in the conductus fragment.25 The Chambre des Sauvet s was a committee that dealt with the affairs of minors, the assignment of tutors and children's education.26 It was abolished when the Baillage was established in 1634.27 All the other surviving registers in this category, and as many similarly sized Messine documents from the first 20 years of the seventeenth century as possible, were searched in a hunt for fragments of the original conductus manuscript.28 There was no return on this investigation. The manuscript from which the conductus fragment was taken may have been broken up and used for binding in the first decade of the seventeenth century. It is unlikely that the manuscript, and the music contained in it, would have had any currency around 1600; it may well have been used for binding another book before then, which would account for the fact that no other parts of the conductus manuscript seemed to be circulating in Metz around 1600.

The fragment consists of a bifolium - not the centre of a gathering - that preserves parts of four three-part conducti. Figures 1 and 2 are views of the fragment. On the front (Figure 1) may be seen where the spine of the host manuscript lay, as may the dates 1607, 1608 and 1609 at the top of the spine; also visible is the title of the register, given twice on the right-hand leaf. The music on the right-hand leaf consists of the end of a three-part setting of Sursum corda and the beginning of the three-part Premii dilatio; both are known from other sources. On the left-hand leaf is most of the second half of the conductus Ego reus confiteor, it breaks off during the sixteenth line of a 24-line poem. On the back (Figure 2) may be seen, on the left-hand leaf, the end of Premii dilatio that began on the front. On the right-hand leaf is the end of an

Metz: Cahiers Elie Fleur, 10 (1994), 13-33 (pp. 30-2). This publication includes a number of errors that require clarification. The title of the host volume for the fragment, Metz, Bibliotheque de la Ville, reserve pr6cieux, MS 732bis/20, is given (p. 27) as 'Registre du Gref de la Chambre des [Experts] (?)'; the final word of the title is, however, 'sauvetes'. This volume is also incorrectly dated (p. 30) 1667, not 1607; on the same page is the surprising claim that the compositions in the fragment exhibit a 'rythme homophone' (hardly true for the music sine littera contained here) and that the fragment contains parts of two (not four) compositions. The claim that Ego reus confiteoris unedited is manifestly incorrect: it is found in Anderson, Notre-Dame Conductus, iii, 130-4 (published in 1981).

25 See 'Archives Municipales de Metz: R6pertoire numerique de la s6rie FF' (typescript, 1992), unpaginated.

26 See Auguste Prost, Les institutionsjudiciaires dans la citi de Metz (Paris and Nancy, 1893), 9 and 33-5.

27 [Jean Francois and Nicolas Tabouillot], Histoire genrale de Metz par des religieux b~nzdictins, 6 vols. (Metz, 1769-90), ii, 343 and 344 n. f.

28 The entire series of registers of the Chambre des Sauvetes, from 1574 to 1634, is in Metz, Archives Municipales, FF 47-74.

quomw . o itnbt nkmi punmum i At4

*-. . ,I -" . .

- -

4 '

, at , ,

?is iq

' " ;L

:. .

:.r .

.

a.

a-t. i

.

.,

, *

.

a

-

-

".

c a t alt imts a)c

at.

43 1114:1 1

Figure 1. Metz, Bibliotheque de la Ville, r6serve pr6cieux, MS 732bis/20, ff. 2v-1. Reproduced by kind permission of the Biblioth que de la Ville de Metz. H!

IR~ .'.z fj& A

II

Irt,?1 P t~nf(?i-at_ t- - - -; i ?--?~a ? ir41

1 wr

1 l ? ?a 7 T ?;"s~r ?'NT7

Figure 2. Metz, Bibliotheique de la Ville, reserve pr6cieux, MS 732bis/20, ff. lv-2. Reproduced by kind permission of the Biblioth que de la Ville de Metz.

0 n

0

Zj

n 0 4 I'd 0

z

?)

144 MARK EVERIST

TABLE 1

METZ, BIBLIOTHEQUE DE LA VILLE, RESERVE PRECIEUX, MS 732BIS/20: CONTENTS

f. 1 staves 1-3 end of Sursum corda '. .. [pa]-cem' f. 1 staves 4-12 beginning of Premii dilatio to '... ne recepto ...' f. l" staves 1-12 remainder of Premii dilatio f. 2 staves 1-3 end of unidentified three-part conductus '. .. -veret

time nobilitas' f. 2 staves 4-12 beginning of Ego reus confiteor to '. .. et vereor ...' f. 2v staves 1-12 continuation of Ego reus confiteorfrom '. .. quod

mereor...' to '... precibus a [filio] ...

unidentified three-part conductus and the beginning of Ego reus confiteor, the continuation of which is also on the front. Table 1 is an inventory of the music in the fragment.

The original manuscript is laid out with 12 staves to a page, divided into four systems of three-part music. The book measures 39.5 X 29.0 cm., substantially larger than any of the principal thirteenth-century sources for the conductus, or for any other genre except liturgical chant. The written block measures 27.5 X 19 cm. Each system consists of three staves, each of five lines; each stave is 15 mm. deep, and the overall depth of the system is 7 cm. The minor initials are elaborate and, as usual, executed in red and blue (the more solid colours in Figures 1-2 are red). Line endings and extensions of melismas are also red and blue with a touch of white.

In the Metz fragment, the notation of the sine littera section - as in earlier sources for these pieces - is measured, and conforms to the patterns controlled by the rhythmic modes. What is striking about the notation of this fragment is the presentation of the music cum littera. Unmeasured in earlier sources, here the notation is measured to the extent that longae and breves are clearly differentiated. In this respect - the mixing of modal notation for sine littera music with mensural notation for music cum littera - the notation of the Metz fragments is similar to that of other sources from around 1300 that preserve the conductus discussed below. Many ligatures in the cum littera sections - especially those sine proprietate et sine perfectione - are presented according to the principles laid out in treatises on mensural theory from the second half of the thirteenth century.29 The result is that it is possible to distin-

29 Trying to match the exact notational usage in a single source with the writings of a single theorist is an impossible task. The theoretical sources that form the basis of these comments are the treatises ofJohannes de Garlandia (Johannes de Garlandia, De mensurabili musica: Kritische Edition mit Kommentar und Interpretation der Notationslehre, ed. Erich Reimer, 2 vols., Beihefte zum Archiv ffir Musikwissenschaft, 10-11, Wiesbaden, 1972); Dietricus (Eine Abhandlung iiber Mensuralmusik in der Karlsruher Handschrift St. Peter pergamen. 29a, ed. Hans Mfiller, Mittheilungen aus der Gross- herzoglich Badischen Hof- und Landesbibliothek und Mfinzsammlung, 6, Karlsruhe, 1886); Lambertus (Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series a Gerbertina altera, ed. Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker, 4 vols., Milan and Paris, 1864-76; repr. Hildesheim, 1963, i, 251-81); the St Emmeram Anonymous (De musica mensurata: The Anonymous of St Emmeram, Complete Critical


guish, for example, between a three-note ligature reading longa- brevis-longa and one reading brevis-brevis-brevis without having to refer to contrapuntal context. There are two types of rest: those for the longa and those for the brevis. This is not as elaborate as the scheme laid down in some of the treatises noted above, but it is a significant advance on the way this music is presented in sources from the first half of the thirteenth century.3s

In assessing the date of the Metz fragment, there are three available criteria: notation, handwriting and decoration. The notation of the cum littera sections puts the copying of this music - at the very earliest - later than the appearance of notations that distinguish between longae and breves (c.1260-80); and some fourteenth-century sources and repertories do not employ a larger notational vocabulary than that found here.31 There is no obstacle, then, to proposing a date between 1260-80 and 1300 - or later - for the notation of this source. An analy- sis of the handwriting and decoration suggests a date in the late thirteenth century or around 1300, with none of the early fourteenth- century Parisian forms present. In addition, the so-called I-chain-filler (most visible between the words 'sequio' and 'qui' in Premii dilatio in Figure 1) points to such a date. As far as provenance is concerned, the manuscript exhibits the common rosette decoration found all over north-eastern France at the end of the thirteenth century and, given the quantity and quality of production in the city during the period 1280-1320, Metz itself cannot be ruled out of consideration. None of the 'triple-dot' motifs that characterize Parisian manuscripts of this period are present in this fragment.32 However, it is difficult to recon- cile the notation of the Metz conductus fragment with what has been known variously as Messine, Lorraine or Laon notation. It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that the most likely provenance of the

Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. Jeremy Yudkin, Bloomington, IN, 1990); Anonymous VII (Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, ed. Coussemaker, i, 378-83); Anonymous IV (Der Musik- traktat des Anonymus 4, ed. Reckow); Franco of Cologne (Franconis de Colonia Ars cantus mensurabilis, ed. Gilbert Reaney and Andre Gilles, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 18, n.p., 1974); and the Discantus positio vulgaris (Janet Knapp, 'Two XIII Century Treatises on Modal Rhythm and the Discant: Discantus positio vulgaris and De musica libellus (Anonymous VII)', Journal of Music Theory, 6 (1962), 201-15).

30 For an examination of the use of rests in musical (as opposed to theoretical) sources in an essentially Franconian context, see my 'Music and Theory in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris: The Manuscript Paris, Biblioth6que Nationale, fonds lat. 11266', Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 17 (1981), 52-64 (p. 59).

31 The date of the appearance of notational systems differentiating between longae and breves in musical rather than theoretical sources appears to coincide with the copying of the corpus ancien of Montpellier, Bibliotheque Interuniversitaire, Section M6decine, H 196. This is, however, contested territory. See the cautious view in Mark Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France: Aspects of Sources and Distribution (New York and London, 1989), 110-34; a view contra in Mary Wolinski, 'The Compilation of the Montpellier Codex', Early Music History, 11 (1992), 263-301; and my response in 'The Polyphonic Rondeau c.1300: Repertory and Context', Early Music History, 15 (1996), 59-96 (p. 89 n. 48).

32 I am grateful to Patricia Stirnemann for giving a reading of the Metz fragments, their decoration and handwriting, on which parts of this paragraph are based (private communication to the author, 2 July 1998).

146 MARK EVERIST

original manuscript was somewhere to the east and south-east of Paris, where square notations might be found.33

Such a date for the Metz fragment is much later than the date of the composition or most of the copying of the music. The main sources that preserve this repertory - F, W1, W2 and Ma - mostly date from the period 1230-50;34 at least some of the music contained in those sources goes back to the closing years of the previous century. It is difficult to judge when the music in the Metz fragment was composed beyond retreating behind the terminus ante quem of the earliest surviving source.35 Nevertheless, it seems clear that if the Metz fragment was copied c.1300, it contained music nearly a century old.

The versions of the four conducti preserved in the Metz fragment raise four issues central to the reception of the genre c.1300: (1) the presentation of the cum littera sections in mensural notation; (2) the func- tioning of the rhythmic modes within these mensural versions; (3) the addition of a third voice-part or triplum to a two-part original; and (4) the eliding of discursive modes that characterize the mixed form.

The investigation may begin with an examination of the concordance base for the conducti preserved in the fragment (see Table 2).36 The three identifiable pieces are preserved in one or more of the so-called central sources. Premii dilatio, which is also found in the Jesus College fragments and the Rawlinson text anthology in the Bodleian Library, presents few problems; it survives either in three parts or as a text alone. The settings of Ego reus confiteor and Sursum corda are in only two parts in all other sources; in the Metz fragment, however, they are in three. The chronological gap between older known sources - F, W1, and so on - and the Metz fragment is so great, and the levels of textual agree- ment between readings in the known sources so high, that the

33 See Jacques Hourlier, 'Le domaine de la notation messine', Revue grigorienne, 30 (1951), 96-113; Solange Corbin, 'Neumatic Notations, IV, 5: Western Europe - Aquitaine', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, xiii, 137-41 (p. 137) (Lorraine) and the map on p. 138); and David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford, 1993), 347 and 351 (especially the map on p. 350, and p. 349, where Hiley proposes the terminology 'Laon').

34 See, for F, Rebecca Baltzer, 'Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Miniatures and the Date of the Florence Manuscript', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 25 (1972), 1-18, glossed in Mark Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France, 58-86; and, for W2, ibid., 99-109. The date of W1 has perhaps generated the most discussion: see Edward Roesner, 'The Origins of WI', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 29 (1976), 337-80; Julian Brown, Sonia Patterson and David Hiley, 'Further Observations on WI', Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 4 (1981), 53-80; and Mark Everist, 'From Paris to St. Andrews: The Origins of WI', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 1-42. For the dating of Ma, and the claim that it was written in Spain by a French copyist, see Jutta Pumpe, Die Motetten der Madrider Notre-Dame-Handschrift, Miinchener Ver6ffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte, 48 (Tutzing, 1991), 14, and Michel Huglo's review in Scriptorium, 47 (1993), 169.

35 Dating conductus texts is a contentious matter. For the most sensitive contribution to the subject, see Ernest Sanders, 'Style and Technique in Datable Polyphonic Notre-Dame Conductus', Gordon Athol Anderson (1929-1981), ii, 505-30.

36 Full collocations for manuscripts not mentioned in note 9 above are: (CaJ) Cambridge, Jesus College, QB 1; (Rawl) Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C 510. A concordance for Sursum corda among the Worcester Fragments (Worcester, Chapter Library, MS 68, fragment xxxv, f. dv [WF 63] is often cited. Although the poetry begins similarly to the Notre Dame Sursum corda, there is no certainty that it continues in the same way, and the music differs substantially from what is found in the Notre Dame sources. It is therefore omitted from Table 2.


TABLE 2

METZ, BIBLIOTHEQUE DE LA VILLE, RESERVE PRECIEUX, MS 732BIS/20: CONCORDANCES

Metz F WI W2 Ma CaJ Rawl Sursum corda 342v-344 172-173v 107v-110 94-96v

(163-164v) Premii dilatio 206v-207v 74v-75v no. 6 no. 33

(67v-68v) ... -veret time nobilitas'

Ego reus confiteor 324-325 147v-148v 87-89 (138v-139v)

inescapable conclusion is that these are two-part originals to which a third part - a triplum - has been added later by the musician responsible for the Metz fragments. The composition that remains unidentified could have been composed in three parts originally; alternatively, and like Egos reus confiteor and Sursum corda, it might have been a two- part original to which the Metz composer again added a third voice. Whoever put together these versions of these pieces did two things: they recast all the music of the sections cum littera in a measured notation and they wrote new tripla.

Example 1 gives the opening cauda of Ego reus confiteor in the version found in the Metz fragment.37 It is in three parts, and shares its lower two parts with three sources from earlier in the thirteenth century.38 The added voice carefully overlaps the simultaneous phrase-endings of the Foriginal, and creates a seamless flow of polyphony up to the point when the texted section cum littera begins (see Example 2).39 In this example, the unmeasured notation of F is replicated by the use of unstemmed noteheads, and may be compared with the more precise rhythmic indications of the notation in the Metz fragments. The cum littera sections are now rewritten in a fully measured notation. With a couple of exceptions, the declamation of the poetry is clearly characterized as being in the first rhythmic mode.40 As a consequence of this

37 There is an etymological inconsistency associated with using the term cauda to describe a passage of music that begins a composition, but its modern use and the sources on which it is based are described and defended in Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus, 9 and 138-40; they are followed here.

38 F, ff. 324-325; WI, ff. 147v-148v (138v-139v); Ma, ff. 87-89. 39 The point of reference for the 'original' version of the two-part conducti cum caudis in this

article is F. Given the current state of knowledge concerning date and centrality/peripherality of the main sources for this repertory, this seems the most logical place to locate such a point of reference. This does, however, entail certain methodological problems in that the readings in other early sources (WI, W2 and Ma) are often different in two critical ways: the slight graphic elongation of otherwise unmeasured note-shapes, and the placement of suspirationes, rests and phrase-endings. For an attempt to take these differences into account, see below.

40 The exceptions are on the syllables 'De-um' and 'iu-di-co'. The implications of these changes will be discussed below.

148 MARK EVERIST

Example 1. Ego reus confiteor Metz version, opening cauda. I I I - I I -- r -

I I f44 i i

triplum1

A .IF I I

duplum VL'L

A . II I

tenor

E

A r ~ I 7 m I, I l II I I I

8

r - 1 '

lr

__ I I fl I I __ I II

r r 1 i A -

Ig II II II

N II A I Fl m I m ,-I mI

6m 1I [ 8F

A 7 T 7 F---- I r ---- m ---

A I m m I WWII e

A I m I 1I Ir n I I

44 F- L - r- -fm g

rhythmicization, the four phrases in the F version ('Deum et proximum'; 'in publico'; 'me publico'; 'reum valde me iudico') are elided into a single utterance in the Metz version.41

Examples 1 and 2 show how both the versions of the cum littera and

41 This is a clear case in point where the phraseological structure of the version of the work in F is different from those of W, and W2. The poetry of this passage is as follows: 'Sepe Deum et proximum/In publico me publico/Reum valde me iudico.' The F version of these slightly less than three poetic lines consists of four phrases: 'Deum et proximum/In publico/[Me publico]/Reum valde me iudico'; WI, notwithstanding a slight lexical shift, divides the lines into six phrases: 'Deum/et proximum/In publico/Reum/Me [sic] valde/iudico'; Ma gives a third version in three phrases: 'Deum et proximum in publico/ [Me publico]/Reum valde me iudico.'


Example 2. Ego reus confiteor in F and Metz: 'Deum et proximum' to 'iudico'.

F

De um et pro - xi-mum In pub li - co

0 /

Metz

De - um et pro - xi-mum In pub -li - co

A

Me pub - li- co Re-uum valde me iu - di - co

[Me pub - i co] Reum val -de meiu di co

sine littera sections of Ego reus confiteor in the Metz fragments typically differ from the versions in the original sources. Example 3 contrasts a passage from later in the work in the two versions from F and Metz.42 The Metz composer again adds precision to the notation of the F version (indicating a thinly veiled mode I), and the added third voice

42 Example 3 also shows the use of imperfect ligatures in the notation of the Metz fragments (the shapes are given above the stave). On the syllable 'Ma-tri' are ligatures cum proprietate et sine perfectione and on the syllable 'pi-is' ligatures sine proprietate et cum perfectione.

150 MARK EVERIST

Example 3. Ego reus confiteor in Fand Metz: 'Matri' to 'precibus'.

F W A

'I

Ma - tri Ihe - su cum ce te - ris Ce - les - tis

ii

Ma tri Ihe- su cum ce te - ris Ce - les - tis

au -

le ci -

vi-bus Pi -

is im -

plo -

ret pre-ci-bus

au

-

le ci - vi-bus Pi

-

is im

-

plo - ret

pre-ci-bus

in Metz simply mirrors the rhythmic structure of the two lower parts. Three phrases in the Fversion are elided into two in the Metz version. The transformation of the declamation - as already noted in Example 2 - is again not entirely consistent. In some cases, the Metz version exhibits a rate of declamation that is analogous either to extensio modi or to mode V, in contrast to the prevailing first-mode declamation.43

43 The commentary here is focused on the declamation of the words however the rhythmic foreground might be described; in other words, there exist two modal layers in play: that of the rhythmic foreground and that on the level of the declamation of the poetry.


There are two important points: the first syllables of the words 'Matri' and 'piis'. The composer in each case was aiming to extend the phrase. In the case of the music for 'Matri' he placed a longa perfecta where the rhythmic ordo would have dictated a longa imperfecta, and in the case of the music for 'piis' he placed two longae perfectae where one might have expected a longa imperfecta followed by a brevis. Although each of the extensions occurs at the beginning of a line of the poetry, and therefore at the beginning of a phrase in the Foriginal, the Metz composer has given an inconsistency to these two phrases: one is lengthened by one longa perfecta, the other by twice that value. This is more evidence of the idiosyncratic nature of the revising process of the Metz composer. It might be suggested that the lengthening of the first syllable of 'Matri' is the result of the presence of the ternaria in the duplum of the two-part original, but this is only one of many instances of such a con- figuration where the others are assimilated, in Metz, into more regular modal patterns. In the second instance, at 'piis', the unequivocal ligature sine proprietate et cum perfectione which results in two longae is built out of a double plicated note in earlier sources. This time, there is a similar instance in the Metz transmisson of Ego reus confiteor. Such slavish replication of notational shapes from one type of notation to another is visible in an examination, for example, of the ways in which plainsong notational shapes (which result in an imprecise rhythm) recur in the fully measured tenors of organum, clausulae and thirteenth- century motets.

The Metz version of Ego reus confiteor both compresses and extends the rhythmic structure of the original state of the composition: it compresses the phraseological structure by the elimination of phrase endings and extends the modal declamation of the poetry. The effect of this procedure is to loosen up the regularly repeating modal ordines that would have arisen from the purely mechanical imposition of modal rhythm on the unmeasured notation of the original. Exactly why the Metz composer might have wanted to do this is a question to be addressed at the end of this article.

Taking a two- or three-part conductus that uses a modal notation for its cauda sine littera and an unmeasured notation that might be interpreted in a wide range of manners for its cum littera sections - and modifying the latter - is not unknown. Examples of a similar procedure are found in the sets of fragments now preserved in Heidelberg, in a few pieces preserved in the Las Huelgas manuscript, and in the monophonic transmissions of conducti in the notated copy of the Roman de Fauvel.44 Broadly speaking, the versions in these sources take the unmeasured notation of cum littera sections and impose a more modern modal notation onto it. In doing so, they exhibit the same sorts of

4Heidelberg, Universitditsbibliothek, 2588; Burgos, Monasterio de las Huelgas, MS without shelfmark; Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds francais 146. Anderson's inclusion of the textless additions in Fand the fragmentary concordance in Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschul- bibliothek, 3471, adds little to his argument, and is not relevant to the current discussion (see Anderson, 'The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections', 293).

152 MARK EVERIST

practices visible by comparing the two versions of Ego reus confiteor. In short, and in general terms, the recasting of unmeasured notation cum littera in notation with longae and breves in the Metz fragment fits into a pattern of reworking that characterizes the preservation of the conductus at the end of the thirteenth century.

Each of the musicians responsible for the modal rewriting of the conductus at the end of the thirteenth century took a different view of the subject and its treatment. An examination of the revisional strategies that each editor of a modal version of a conductus adopted helps to bring the musical preoccupations of the Metz editor into focus. The editor of the Fauvel pieces rhythmicized the notation of the cum littera sections, reduced them to monodies and adjusted the texts; the Heidelberg musician recast three two-part works and, of the two three-part originals, copied all three parts of Transgressus legem domini except for the final cauda (which was left in two parts as in earlier sources) and copied all three parts throughout of Ave presul glorie.45 Of the six revisions in the Heidelberg manuscript, five consistently translate the original notation into what has been variously described as mode V or longa-syllabic rhythm: each single note of the original is rendered as a longa perfecta or its equivalent.46 The exception is the revision to the cum littera sections of Transgressus legem, where the setting of two lines (out of 24) atypically switches to a setting in mode I.47 The editor of the Fauvel conducti takes a more eclectic approach: two works are reconfigured in a longa-syllabic style, four are modal, and two (Heu! Quo progreditur and Clavus pungens acumine) mix both styles within a single composition.48

What emerges from a consideration of other sources that revise the notation of the cum littera sections of Notre Dame conducti at the end of the thirteenth century is a sense that individual editors were aware of two different procedures as they reworked the earlier material: each syllable-bearing note was either treated as a longa perfecta or brought into the domain of one of the other rhythmic modes. With the exception of the Heidelberg transmission of Transgressus legem, each of these two principles is restricted to individual compositions; the technique of turning each note into a longa perfecta was the most popular. The principles guiding the editor of the Metz fragments stand some distance

45 Ibid., 288-92. This sketch hardly doesjustice to the complexity of the Heidelberg transmission of Transgressus legem domini, which falls outside the scope of this study.

46 For the purposes of this discussion, Anderson's distinction (ibid., 289) between longa-syllabic and longa-ftactio is not relevant.

47 This is Anderson's Example 3 (ibid., 291). 48 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MSf fr 146 (Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de

Pesstain), ed. Edward Roesner (New York, 1990), 22-4. See also Hans Tischler and Samuel N. Rosenberg, The Monophonic Songs in the Roman de Fauvel (Lincoln, NE, 1991); Gregory Alexander Harrison, 'The Monophonic Music in the Roman de Fauvel' (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1963); Myrta Cereghetti, 'Le monodie del Roman de Fauvel' (Tesi di diploma, Univer- sita degli Studi di Pavia, 1989); andJoseph Morin, 'The Genesis of Manuscript Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds franCais 146, with Particular Emphasis on the Roman de Fauvel' (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1992). Morin's paper 'Thirteenth-Century Conducti in the Hands of a Fourteenth-Century Scribe: Aspects of Rhythm in the Fauvel Conductus Repertoire' (Fifty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Montreal, 3-7 November 1993) is an important source for the comments in this paragraph.


Example 4. Ego reus confiteor Metz setting of 'Addictus pene teneor/et vereor'.

IIO

Ar

A

I- '

Ly V- F -

_ _

A II I

'I

I -

Sp-e

A Op

I I I V I'

- - - - -dic - tus

A d I

A

W I\ p O O pe- e teneor t __ _ ye - re-oo

away from those of the other manuscripts in two ways: first, the Metz editor prefers a single modal interpretation of his original material, usually in mode I and usually treated flexibly, as is clear from Examples 1-3; second, he mixes those modal interpretations with Anderson's 'longa-syllabic' treatment promiscuously within a single work, in a way almost unknown to the musicians at work in the other sources discussed above. Example 4 gives an extract from Ego reus confiteorwhere these two policies are brought into close juxtaposition. The words 'Addictus pene

154 MARK EVERIST

teneor' are set in mode I, whereas the declamation of the following phrase, 'Et vereor', is in longaeperfectae. Exactly how one might describe the rhythmic organization of the music accompanying 'Et vereor' is open to question: mode I with extensio modi is perhaps the most likely.

The reworking of the notation of conducti at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth is an important feature of the musical culture of the period and one of the clearest bodies of material that inform our understanding of the reception of late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century polyphony. From the time of the copying of such manuscripts as F, W, and W2 - between 1240 and 1260 - and the end of the century, there must have been substantial experimen- tation with unmeasured notation.49 Some of this has survived from later in the century as fully worked-out notational revisions. Although this evidence has been used - until very recently - for the purpose of claim- ing that the delivery of the unmeasured cum littera sections of conducti was modal,50 it is instructive to refocus this question and to ask what the composers of these versions thought they were doing when they reworked these compositions. It is as part of the answer to this question that the Metz fragment provides significant new evidence.

When a composer invoked modal rhythm in the context of music cum littera he was doing more than simply exploring a way of organiz- ing musical time that had been available since the beginning of the century: he was examining concepts of notation and rhythm that brought the conductus into closer alignment with the motet. By the last quarter of the thirteenth century, although the conductus was still alive as a performing tradition, its currency as a product of composition was over. In contrast, not only was the motet a vibrant cultural force but, if the number and quality of the sources are to be believed, it was the single most prestigious musical genre in thirteenth-century France. It assumed the musical primacy that organum duplum and the conductus itself had achieved a century before.

Modal notation and the modal organization of rhythm had been known - depending which authorities are followed - since between

49 This comes close to the view expressed by Edward Roesner that 'by the time of the earliest surviving Notre Dame sources, towards the end of the first half of the thirteenth century, all parts of the Parisian repertory were viewed as "modal" by cantores and theorists alike. But these sources are a half century and more younger than the early stages of the repertory they transmit' ('The Emergence of Musica mensurabilis', 43). This view may be too extreme, and a more cautious (and demonstrable) view might be that after the copying of the earliest Notre Dame sources musicians began experimenting with modal interpretations of unmeasured notation found in those sources.

50 Anderson ('The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections', 293) is typical of this procedure. On the sole basis that there are uncomplicated melodic correspondences between the conducti in the Heidelberg fragment and other Notre Dame sources, Anderson turns a leap of faith into 'the following conclusion [that] seems inescapable: the mensural transmissions in Heid may be used to give exact rhythms cum littera for at least these six pieces [in their "original versions"]'. Sanders's devastating critique of the imposition of modal rhythm onto the cum littera sections rejects Anderson's view: 'Moreover, the versions of Notre Dame conducti in ... mensural sources ... must be viewed with at least the same degree of caution regarding their reliability as, for instance, Czerny's version of The Well-Tempered Clavier. In fact, no mensurally notated source of a Notre Dame conductus can be automatically regarded as dependable evidence for its original rhythms' (Sanders, 'Conductus and Modal Rhythm', 454).


1180 and 1220.51 It was of course central to the sine littera sections of the polyphonic conductus, as well as to the clausulae embedded in organum duplum and to all parts of organum triplum and quadruplum. But all these genres were sine littera, and in them modal notation is restricted to melismatic music. It fell to the composers of the earliest motets to align modal rhythms with syllabic music cum littera; they first used non-mensural notation and then progressively more precise mensural notation. Modal notation using contextually contingent ligatures cum perfectione et cum proprietate was not available for music cum littera. Composers of motets therefore put a distance between syllabic polyphony and those musical genres that, in part, employed syllabic monophony: secular song and liturgical chant. So when musicians around 1300 reworked their originally unmeasured conductus notation, they were creating a type of relationship between notation and declamation that more closely approached the style of the contemporary motet than that of the conductus on which they were ostensibly building. This is not to say that they were building motets out of conducti; the latter were still primarily homorhythmic, and still independent of a borrowed tenor. The motet depended on a liturgical or secular tenor and, almost since its inception, had developed the idea that learned music should exploit asymmetrical phrases and voice-parts that overlap regularly. But the modally notated conductus around 1300 was beginning to sound - especially in its cum littera sections - more like a motet than the conductus - in its original form - ever had.52

Musicians at work recasting the notation of the conductus were also relaxing the modal constraints of the rhythmic patterns that served as the tools for undertaking the reworking of these compositions. In Ego reus confiteor the Metz composer was treating his modal reinterpretation of the notation of his F original with a significant degree of flexibility, and was compressing or extending phrases in a way that his precursor in Fcould not have done because the latter did not enjoy a graphic distinction between longae and breves cum littera.53 Here again, the composer of the Metz version of Ego reus confiteor was behaving very much like a composer of motets, juggling the details of modal rhythm to create rhythmic patterns that are almost impossible in notation cum littera without longa-brevis differentiation. 20 years ago it might have been assumed that text delivery was the most obvious explanation for this procedure, but in the light of more recent reading of medieval and

51 See Roesner, 'The Emergence of Musica mensurabilis', and the sources cited there for the most up-to-date reading of this particular problem.

52 There are ways in which the modally notated conductus could never sound entirely like the motet: the presentation of a single text and the homorhythm of all voices would always mark out the two genres. Furthermore, there are (admittedly very rare) exceptions where a reasonable case can be made for the fully measured performance of original conducti, especially where their texts are quantitative.

53 The same is true of the musician responsible for the reworkings of the conducti in the Heidel- berg fragments; this is the background to Anderson's terms 'melismatic-text', 'longa-syllabic' and 'modal syllabic' ('The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections', 289). These comments are not meant to imply that the scribe of Fdid not attempt to present cerain types of modifications to the framework of modal rhythm, since there is abundant evidence of just such attempts.

156 MARK EVERIST

modern writing about rithmus by Sanders, Page and Fassler, such an explanation becomes perhaps a little less obvious.54 It is now possible more respectably to suggest that these shifts in rhythm, permitted by the use of a notation that distinguishes between longae and breves, may have been motivated by more exclusively musical concerns - possibly also as a result of the reinterpretation of the original notational shapes - and may be largely independent of the text. In this respect, again, the style of the conductus around 1300 was approaching that of the motet.

Adding a third part to a two-part original is the most striking characteristic of the Metz fragment. This characterizes at least two of its four pieces, furnishing a rare instance where one can clearly show that a two- part conductus from the so-called Notre Dame sources has been reworked in three parts by the addition of a new triplum. Conducti survive in varying numbers of parts, but the patterns of transmission of two-part works generally seem to work in one way only: when copied in later sources, or in musical environments far removed from the centres of production, they are stripped of voice-parts rather than being fur- nished with additional ones. Two-part conducti are regularly transmitted in one or both of two forms - either as monodies or as texts.55 An example will make the point.

The conductus Ave nobilis is found in the seventh fascicle of F in a version in two parts.56 It is found in a monophonic version in four separate manuscripts, from a wide range of locations and copied at very different times, which are now in Donaueschingen, Munich, Limoges and Paris.57 In addition, the text of the work is found in manuscripts in Maihingen and Trier.58 Although it is possible to be reasonably certain that the two-part version was copied in Paris between 1245 and 1255,59 it is impossible to judge the date of its composition. Little is known of the exact dates of the other sources apart from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660, the so-called 'Codex Buranus', which seems to have been copied before F, either in the South Tyrol or in Bavaria.60 There is no evidence to suggest any other explanation that that all sources, including F, depend on a lost archetype that was

54 Sanders, 'Rithmus', Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. Graeme M. Boone, Isham Library Papers, 4 (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 415-40; Margot E. Fassler, 'Accent, Meter, and Rhythm in Medieval Treatises De rhythmis',Journal of Musicology, 5 (1987), 164-90; and Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm.

55 Appendix 1 below is a handlist of sources that preserve versions of two-part conducti that give the text only; Appendix 2 lists those that preserve versions in a monophonic form.

56 F. 363v. It is listed as J46 in Anderson's inventory ('Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: A Catalogue Raisonne', 172) and no. 35 in Falck (The Notre Dame Conductus, 185).

57 Donaueschingen, Ffirstliche Bibliothek, 882, ff. 175v-177v; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbiblio- thek, Clm 4660, f. 111; Limoges, Bibliotheque Municipale, 17, f. 282v; and Paris, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, 3517-18, f. 13'.

58 Miihingen, Schloss Harburg, Ffirstliche Bibliothek, II, 2 80, ff. 132v-133; and Trier, Stadt- bibliothek, 1878, f. 154'.

59 See above, note 9. 60 For the dating and provenance of the Codex Buranus, see Georg Steer, '"Carmina Burana"

in Sfidtirol: Zur Herkunft des Clm 4660', Zeitschriftfiir deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 112 (1983), 1-37; Peter Dronke, 'A Critical Note on Schumann's Dating of the Codex Buranus', Beitrdge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprachen und Literatur, 84 (1962), 173; and John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages, 517-18.


in two voices; the version in F was then copied in more or less the same format, while others were pared down to monodies. Exactly how the other surviving sources related to this lost archetype remains an open question.61

The appearance of two-part conducti stripped down either to monodies or to texts alone varies. In some cases, the text alone is embedded in a collection of Latin lyrics where it is the only one of its type. In others, substantial numbers of conductus texts appear in such collections (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Additional A 44 and Rawlinson C 510, for example). Or again, monodies may appear among collections dedicated to other genres or sub-types: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, 102 and 314,62 and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660 are good examples.63 Again, the medieval editors of those sources that reduced two- part conducti to texts or to monodies each took a different view on how the task should be undertaken. Although, when two-part works were reduced to monodies, the single parts are always the lower of the two polyphonic voices, there are radically different policies with regard to the editing, presentation and composition of the poetry." To find a conductus where it can be reasonably certain that a composer is adding voice-parts to a two-voice original many decades after its composition is rare indeed.65 To find that this applies to two or perhaps even three compositions out of four in a single source demands that this procedure be treated with some degree of importance.

61 Other works that share similarly wide concordance bases with sources in which they are preserved as monodies or texts are Beate virginis (Anderson H15; Falck no. 43); Austro terris influente (Anderson Gi; Falck no. 26); and Fraude ceca (Anderson G4; Falck no. 133).

62 See Engelberg Stiftsbibliothek Codex 314, ed. Wulf Arlt and Mathias Stauffacher, Schweizerische Musikdenkmdler, 11 (Winterthur, 1986).

63 Rudolf Flotzinger, 'Reduzierte Notre-Dame-Conductus im sogennanten Codex Buranus?', Muzikologki zbornik, 17 (1981), 97-103.

64 In some instances (in the manuscripts Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660, and Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek, HB I Asc. 95, for example), it is difficult to identify which of the voices is preserved, or even whether the monody belonged to the original polyphonic setting at all. In the case of Beate virginis (H15), the monodies that survive preserve two different melodies not found in the polyphonic version (see Anderson, Notre-Dame Conductus, iii, 213).

65 There are two further examples that deserve mention in this context. The Deus in adiutorium found in Montpellier, Bibliotheque Interuniversitaire, Section de M6decine, H 196, f. 350, Turin, Biblioteca Reale, vari 42, f. Dv, and Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale, 19606, face, is in three parts in all sources except the Brussels rotulus, where a fourth part has been added; see Ursula Gfinther, 'Les versions polyphoniques du Deus in adiutorium', Cahiers de civilisation midiivale, 31 (1988), 111-22. Given that all the sources for the three-part form of the composition date from c.1300, and that the addition dates from later in the fourteenth century, comparisons with the Metz fragments (made when this article was delivered orally) are strained from a chronological point of view, and are possibly motivated by a mistaken belief that the absence of a Gregorian tenor means that the piece must be a conductus- 'il s'agit d'un vrai conduit sans cantusfirmus au tenor' (ibid., 118). Gfinther's reference to 'vrai conduit' is intended to distinguish this composition from the work setting the same text that opens fascicle 1 in the Montpellier manuscript (f. 1, wrongly called the beginning of the old corpus by Gfinther (ibid., 111); the old corpus begins on f. 23, as Rokseth pointed out 60 years ago (Polyphonies du treizieme smicle, 4 vols., Paris, 1935-9, iv, passim, cited throughout by Gfinther)). Much more germane are a pair of readings of the conductus Mater patris etfilia preserved in two parts in Ma, ff. 117v-118, and in three parts in Hu, ff. 147-150. It seems reasonable to assume that the Hu version represents both a modalization of the Ma model, and that it adds a third part to the two-part original. What sets it apart from the other sources discussed in this article is that both sources are Iberian, raising the possibility that this is an exclusively Spanish tradition that should be considered alongside the Metz tradition, and not subsumed into it. I am grateful to Rebecca Baltzer for drawing this pair of concordances to my attention.

158 MARK EVERIST

The effect of the musical changes wrought on the conducti in the Metz fragment, especially the translation of the music cum littera into modal notation and the concomitant relaxing of that modal treatment, is to smooth over the distinctions between music cum littera and sine littera. The presentation of the text still remains different in the two sections: cum littera sections still declaim the bulk of the text while the sine littera sections present melismas over single syllables; as the unmeasured notation of the original cum littera section is replaced with a mensural notation that flexibly projects modal rhythms, the discursive modes approach one another more closely, and one of the clearest defining characteristics of the conductus, its 'mixed' form, begins to blur.66

Many of the musical changes carried out on the conducti in the Metz fragment exemplify a move towards those processes that are more normally associated with other genres around 1300, especially the motet. The addition of voice-parts to a polyphonic texture - not a characteristic of the conductus - had been a fundamental part of the history of the motet since its origins, and would remain so for much of its exist- ence.67 When the Metz composer added tripla to Sursum corda and Ego reus confiteor, he was acting much as had composers of motets throughout the thirteenth century. Trying to associate the conductus with the motet, again, was an attempt to give a currency to a genre whose tradition of composition had ended but of which the music was still deemed worthy of cultivation.

The versions of conducti in the Metz fragments point to a sort of generic overlapping of the motet and conductus between about 1280 and 1320. To evoke such an idea is to elicit all sorts of resonances from other repertories. Three immediately spring to mind: the presentation of Notre Dame organum in Franconian notation, the trouvere chansons in Paris, Biblioth6que Nationale, fonds fran


reinterpreted much later in the thirteenth century in a radically different style of notation, one that, by then, characterized the motet.68

The redactions of Notre Dame organum in the first fascicle of the Montpellier Codex and the Copenhagen fragment undertake slightly different tasks, but both share the same impulse as the versions of conducti in the Metz fragment. In the first fascicle of the Montpellier Codex, three-part music - that was originally fully measured in modal notation - is carefully rewritten and its notation updated to reflect theoretical preoccupations with ligature shapes around 1270; the rhythms of the music are not really changed. More important for the current study is the attitude taken by the musician whose editorial work is found in the Copenhagen fragment.69 Here, exactly as in the case of the Metz fragments, the organum per se, which was originally presented in an unmeasured notation, is now recast in longae and breves. The free rhapsodic lines that characterized this music around 1200 have, by 1300, taken on a rhythmic cast that again begins to approach that of the motet. As has already been observed in the Metz conducti, organum begins to lose its profile as a mixed form.

The chansons in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds fran;ais 846 are, in many respects, no different from those found in all other trouvere chansonniers. However, they are different in three important respects, all of which point to an alignment with the motet and the types of book in which it is found. The songs are all preserved in the Paris manuscript in a notation that distinguishes between longae and breves;, this notation has created severe problems for those who have chosen to try to view this manuscript as evidence for the original interpretation of trouvere song in modal rhythm. The notation often makes little sense in modal terms since, although the alternations of longae and breves give a sense of measured organization, they are fre- quently haphazard or confused. The change in notation can equally well be viewed as a cosmetic attempt to make the music look like up- to-date measured polyphony. This accords with the fact that the compositions are not organized according to author (as is the case with almost every other trouvere source) but are arranged alphabetically, and that the size of the volume (smaller than most other trouvere books) aligns this source with those for the motet.70

68 There is a further repertory which bears comparison with the Metz redactions of the two- part conductus cum caudis, and that is the body of conducti in insular manuscripts from around 1300 in which, it has been argued, there is a differentiation between longae and breves, and in which the distinction between the discursive modes of cum littera and sine littera is further blurred. See Nicky Losseff, The Best Concords: Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century Britain, Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities (New York and London, 1994), 95-188 and passim.

69 See John Bergsagel, 'The Transmission of Notre-Dame Organa in Some Newly-Discovered "Magnus liber organi" Fragments in Copenhagen', Atti del XIV Congresso della Societt Internazionale di Musicologia: Trasmissione e recezione delleforme di cultura musicale, ed. Angelo Pompilio et al., 3 vols. (Turin, 1990), iii, 629-36. A facsimile edition of these fragments does not accompany this article.

70 See, for a fuller account of the context for the production of fonds fr. 846, Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France, 201-3.

160 MARK EVERIST

Modifying the notational foreground of the cum littera sections of the conductus cum caudis blurs boundaries and, smoothing over generic con- fines, is a characteristic of a great deal of musical activity around 1300; this is evident in the motet itself, where secular tenors begin to replace sacred ones, and where repeating patterns derived from secular song begin to appear in all parts of the polyphonic fabric. All these features are present in the work of Adam de la Halle. This is not the first occasion on which the wide range of generic overlap in Adam's oeuvre - particularly between polyphonic rondeau, motet and refrain - has been pointed out. Not only do the composer's attributed works encompass motets, polyphonic rondeaux, grands chants and jeus partis,71 but the manuscript in which Adam's works are collected also includes - in a way that makes clear that this was not haphazard - romances (themselves including music), dits and other literary texts.72 Again, around 1300, a generic curiosity - a willingness to explore the generic boundaries that had been so strong around the middle of the thirteenth century - is as visible here as it is in the conducti in the Metz fragment.73

The Metz fragment constitutes a new source for the polyphonic conductus, and it preserves late redactions of music written perhaps a century earlier. The Metz versions of these conducti rework passages cum littera in mensural notation that use the longae and breves of later thirteenth-century notation, and very probably give a high level of precision to what was a much more flexible original rhythmic organization. They also give a precise sense of how the underlying basis of the modal system can function flexibly in support of the declamation of the text. In at least two cases, a composer added new tripla to earlier thirteenth- century two-part originals. The treatment of conducti around 1300, as witnessed in the Metz fragments and its counterparts, reflects a more wide-ranging and eclectic approach to generic boundaries at the dawn of the fourteenth century.

University of Southampton

APPENDIX 1 TWO PART CONDUCTI IN F REDUCED TO TEXTS

Bern, Bfirgerbibliothek, 211 Porta salutis (12) Boulogne-sur-mer, Bibliotheque Municipale, Beate virginis (H15)

107 (98) Cambrai, M diatheque Municipale, 764 (860) Porta salutis (I2) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 468 Omni pene curie (134) Cambridge, University Library, Ff VI 14 Ave maris stella (J53)

71 See idem, 'The Polyphonic Rondeau c.1300', 59, and the sources cited in note 2 above. 72 See Silvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative

Poetry (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1987), 64-74. 73 There is an interesting parallel here as the conductus at the end of its career began to assimi-

late characteristics of the motet and other genres in a similar way to that in which the motet, at the beginning of its career, drew on the conductus and other genres.


Cambridge, University Library, Hh VI 11 Omni pene curie (134) Fulda, Hessische Landesbibliothek, C 11 Fraude ceca (G4) Graz, Universititsbibliothek, 409 Nove geniture (113); Sol

sub nube (116); Veni creator spiritus (J41)

Leiden, Universitditsbibliothek, Vulc. 48 Porta salutis (12) Leipzig, Universitditsbibliothek, 225 Sol sub nube (116) London, British Library, Royal 7.A. VI Sol sub nube (116); Dum

sigillum (J24) Mfiihingen, Schloss Harburg, Ffirstliche Ave nobilis (J46)

Bibliothek, Cod. II, 2, 8' Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 11333 Veni creator spiritus (J41) Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4600 Deduc Syon (G8); Nulli

beneficium (H7) Oxford, Bodleian Library, Additional A 44 Nulli beneficium (H7); In

rosa vernat (H9); Sol sub nube (116); Virtus moritur (J12); Heu! Quo progreditur (J26); Ver pacis aperit (J32)

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.5.16 Porta salutis (12) Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C 510 Gratuletur populus (H6);

Veri vitis (H14); Puer nobis est natus (H25); O qui fontem gratie (H28); Si deus est animus (H32); Regnum dei vim patitur (H33); Porta salutis (12); Artium dignitas (14); Ut non ponam (I5); Redit etas aurea (18); Debet se cir- cumspicere (110); In occasu sideris (Ill); Cum ani- madverterem (112); Ex creata non creatus (114); Pange melos (115); De nature (118); Omni pene curie (134); Heu! Quo progreditur (J26); O varium fortune (J27); Veneris pros- peris (J28); Non habes aditum (J29)

Oxford, Trinity College, 18 Porta salutis (12) Paris, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, 526 Centrum capit circulus

(J38) Paris, Bibliothbque de l'Arsenal, 758 Porta salutis (12) Paris, Bibliothbque Nationale, fonds latin, 1544 Porta salutis (12); Omni

pene curie (134) Paris, Bibliothbque Nationale, fonds latin 3639 Porta salutis (12) Paris, Bibliothbque Nationale, fonds latin 4880 Sol sub nube (116) Paris, Bibliothbque Nationale, fonds latin 18571 Beate virginis (H15) Prague, Archiv Metropolitni Kapituly, 1479 Porta salutis (12)

(M118/2)

162 MARK EVERIST

Prague, Chramovni Knihovna, N.VIII Centrum capit circulus (J38); Regis decus et regine (J47)

Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 3324 Verpacis aperit (J32) Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, urbs lat. 602 Ave maris stella (J53) Rouen, Bibliotheque Municipale, A408 Veni creator spiritus (J41) St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 383 Verpacis aperit (J32) St Omer, Bibliotheque Municipale, 351 Sole sub nube (116); Ver

pacis aperit (J32) Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1878 Ave nobilis (J46) Troyes, Bibliotheque Communale, 1840 Porta salutis (12) Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, 4119 Porta salutis (12) Wfirzburg, Universititsbibliothek, M. Ch. Auctor vite virgine (H13) Zfirich, Stadtbibliothek, C58/275 Austro terris (Gi); Rose

nodum (I1); Cortex occidit (16); De nature fracto iure (118); Novum sibi textuit (122)

APPENDIX 2

TWO PART CONDUCTI IN F REDUCED TO MONODIES

Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Ms Mus. 40580 Beate virginis (H1115) Beromfinster, Stiftsbibliothek, C 2 Fraude ceca (G4) Cambridge, Trinity College, R.9.11 Nove geniture (113) Donaueschingen, Ffirstliche Bibliothek, 882 Ave nobilis (J46) Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, 102 Austro terris (G1) Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, 314 Beate virginis (H15) Graz, Universitfitsbibliothek, 756 Beate virginis (H1115) Innsbruck, Universitditsbibliothek, B 457 Beate virginis (H1115) Limoges, Bibliotheque Municipale, 2 (17) Ave nobilis (J46) London, British Library, additional 22604 Beate virginis (H15) Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660 0 varium fortune (J27);

Vite perdite (J35); Ave nobilis (J46)

Munich, Universitfitsbibliothek, 156 Nove geniture (113) Paris, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, 3517-18 Ave nobilis (J46) Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds francais 146 Nulli beneficium (H7);

Redit etas aurea (18); Omni pene curie (134); Virtus moritur (J12); Heu! Quo progreditur (J26); O varium fortune (J27); Clavus pungens (J39)

St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 383 (122) Hac in die gedeonis (H126) Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek, HB I Asc. 95 Austro terris (Gi); Fraude

ceca desolata (G4); Quod promisit ab eterno (G6)


ABSTRACT A membrane fragment in the Bibliotheque da la Ville de Metz (reserve precieux, MS 732bis/20) contains parts of four works (Premii dilatio, Ego reus confiteor, Sursum corda and one as yet unidentified composition), of which three are known from the Florence manuscript (Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Pluteo 29.1). The notation, decoration and handwriting of the fragment suggest that the manuscript from which they were taken dates from c.1300. The notation of the fragment clearly distinguishes between longae and breves in passages cum littera; in sine littera sections, the graphic presentation of ligatures reveals attempts to reflect changing concepts of notational precision from the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The Metz fragment is therefore analogous with other late thirteenth-century redactions of conducti. Although all four compositions in the Metz fragment are in three parts, concordances for two of the works from earlier thirteenth-century sources are in two parts only. While normal practice in the late thirteenth-century transmission of the conductus was to strip away voices, the versions of Ego reus confi- teornand Sursum corda in the Metz fragment added a new third part to a two-part original. Such a practice was more typical of the motet repertory, and in this as well as its use of mensural notation the Metz fragment shows how the conductus was beginning to approach the compositional priorities of the motet c.1300.

Article Contentsp. [135]p. 136p. 137p. 138p. 139p. 140p. 141p. 142p. 143p. 144p. 145p. 146p. 147p. 148p. 149p. 150p. 151p. 152p. 153p. 154p. 155p. 156p. 157p. 158p. 159p. 160p. 161p. 162p. 163

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 125, No. 2 (2000), pp. 135-338Front MatterReception and Recomposition in the Polyphonic "Conductus cum caudis": The Metz Fragment [pp. 135-163]Prophets Looking Backwards: German Romantic Historicism and the Representation of Renaissance Music [pp. 164-204]The Provenance of the "Londonderry Air" [pp. 205-247]Schubert's Homecoming [pp. 248-270]'Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt': Refle

Everist Metz Fragment

Documents

Transcript of Everist Metz Fragment