Faculty Publications: School of Music

Subtilitas in the tonal language of Fumeux fume

Peter M. Lefferts — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:59:49 PDT

The late 14th-century French repertory contains music characterized by an ingenuity and great subtlety whose terms of reference are entirely derived from within the art itself. One of the best-known French chansons of the period, the rondeau Fumeux fume by Solage, contains a superabundance of artifice, a wide variety of clever and audacious musical techniques. But in contrast to the extravagances of notation and rhythmic language that are the familiar hallmarks of the ars subtilior in music, the most striking feature of Fumeux fume is the proliferation of accidentals, and the bizarre tonal behavior they indicate. In addition to F, C, G, D, A, E and B, the pitches notated include B^b, E^b, A^b, D^b and G^b, as well as F#, C# and G#. These accidentals are the cause of virtually all the editorial problems in Fumeux fume, and in order to assess clearly just what subtilitas there may be in its tonal language, this article presents (as Example 1) a new edition, together with a defense of its idiosyncracies. Of necessity, such an edition constitutes a version that irons out the source's ambiguities, and interprets its pitch notation as an indication of how this chanson was meant to go. It clearly accepts the presumption that most of the composer's intentions with respect to pitch can be recognized and restored from the existing source evidence; the problem is not so much the intractable one of musica ficta as the soluble one of musica recta.

Sources of Thirteenth-Century English Polyphony: Catalogue with Descriptions

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 20:50:42 PDT

This document catalogues the thirteenth-century English sources of thirteenth-century English polyphony, with brief mention of non-insular sources and later sources of this repertoire. Bibliographic information on each source takes RISM B/IV/1 as a point of departure, citing earlier material directly in only a few instances, while mainly attempting a full report of later, i.e., more recent, literature. All the sources using the so-called English Mensural Notation are described here, and a fresh effort is made to coherently lay out the sources associated with Worcester Cathedral, including the incorporation of new fragments found there during the recataloguing undertaken during the 1990s.

Compositional trajectories [Medieval music]

Peter M. Lefferts — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:12:02 PDT

Here, to illuminate a small set of issues in respect to style and compositional practice, we will approach the medieval composer via specific repertory, namely, some sacred chants and some two-voice polyphony.

A persistent conviction of many relative newcomers to medieval music is that all chant sounds the same - melodically vague, un differentiable, hypnotic and slightly 'New Age' - and that it is governed by a universal, monolithic, standard medieval 'theory of the modes'. Neither of these points is true, but one needs to gain a broad familiarity with some very large bodies of melodies, and the histories of their genres, to be able to come to grips with chant's diversity in all its dimensions, and it is equally important to learn some individual melodies very well.

The plainchant of the medieval Western church was, in fact, highly varied in musical language. There were different dialects, including Roman, Gallican, Mozarabic, Beneventan and Ambrosian, before and after the hegemonic rise of Gregorian chant circa 800. There are strong generic or functional fault lines within the Gregorian core itself (distinguishing prayer and reading tones, antiphonal psalmody, responsorial psalmody), and variant idioms emerged within the later Gregorian universe (e.g. the German chant tradition). On top of that, many different stylistic strands developed in all the newly composed, later medieval plainsong from the ninth century forward - melodies which over time far outdistanced the Gregorian core in sheer numbers.

England [Medieval Music]

Peter M. Lefferts — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:08:51 PDT

English musical life in the Middle Ages is often treated in standard textbook surveys as peripheral to that of France and Italy. This approach has several causes, but is rooted especially in musicology's preoccupation over the past 150 years of scholarship with medieval France. Noteworthy also in this negligence is the pairing of France and Italy late in the era in the emergence of polyphonic refrain songs as the chief new artefacts of secular high music culture in the 1300s, an attractive trend with no contemporary English-language counterpart. Musicology's paradigmatic narrative of English entrance onto the international stage, through its sacred polyphonic music, once began the story only in the second quarter of the fifteenth century.

What emerges, however, from more extended examination of medieval musical life is that modern political, geographic, linguistic and cultural boundaries are not relevant - for high culture, anyway - in the musical affairs of those parts of northwestern Europe we nowadays identify as France and England. And until this essentially homogeneous Anglo-French cultural sphere began to develop some marked regional differentiations in the thirteenth century, the elite and hermetic worlds both of courtly troubadour and trouvere song, and of the chant and polyphony of the church, spanned the English Channel effortlessly. The English were not latecomers to a game already being played elsewhere.

Lady Chapel

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:38:24 PDT

A distinctive formal feature of English Gothic church architecture; provision of a Lady Chapel was a central objective of the campaigns of choir remodeling and eastern extension that altered the floorplans of most English cathedrals and abbey churches from the later 12th through the 14th century. The Lady Chapel, a large hall church of roughly the same dimensions as the choir itself, was most frequently located in a rectangular space thrusting eastward from the east end of the choir. In churches laid out like Salisbury this was a low, projecting space emerging from the main mass of the building by only a few bays, as at Salisbury itself, or almost entirely freestanding, as at Gloucester or Westminster. High projecting Lady Chapels sustained the roofline of the main building, as at Bristol or Worcester. A second popular location for the Lady Chapel was in the place of honor immediately beneath the east window in churches with an aisled rectangle plan and flush east end, as at York. There are a number of common exceptions to these schemes of eastern axial placement, the most significant being north of the choir in a location east of the north transept, as at Ely.

Music for Holy Week and Easter

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:26:51 PDT

The later medieval church celebrated Holy Week and Easter with many unique liturgical forms and ceremonies, often of an intrinsically dramatic character. These included major processions on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; the singing of the passions during mass as the New Testament Gospel on Palm Sunday (St. Matthew Passion), Wednesday (St. Luke Passion), and Good Friday (St. John Passion); and in many locales in northern France and England, the performance of two Latin liturgical dramas—the Visitatio sepulchre performed at the end of Matins on Easter Sunday morning, and the Officium peregrinorum, performed at Vespers that same evening or on the Monday or Tuesday following. Music is a less significant if still salient component of the extraliturgical, primarily spoken vernacular dramas and cycles of Eastertide and Corpus Christi.

Harley 978

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:01:47 PDT

A well-known manuscript from Reading Abbey (BL Harley 978), compiled sometime in the period 1245–65, probably at the behest of a single individual. Its contents are eclectic and reflective of wide intellectual interests and sources, suggesting a university connection. Famous principally because it contains the canon "Sumer is icumen in," Harley 978 also possesses the unique text of the "Song of Lewes" (Calamo velociter), the best English collection of goliardic verse, the largest surviving collection of the fables and lais of Marie de France, an index to the extensive contents of an otherwise lost book of polyphony, and other items. In addition to the Sumer canon the musical contents of the manuscripts first large section include ten lengthy monophonic Latin songs of the sequence or lai type, one three-voice motet, three two-voice textless (instrumental?) pieces, and two pages of elementary music-instruction material.

Godric's Songs

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:48:16 PDT

Three monophonic religious songs of the mid-12th century ("Sainte marie viergene," "Kirieleison: Crist and sainte marie," and "Sainte Nicholas Godes druth") that are the earliest English-language lyrics to survive with their melodies; found in a number of manuscript sources, including three with music, they are also known as Godric's Hymns. Their composer, St. Godric (ca. 1070/80–1170), wrote them some time after he retired to a hermitage at Finchale, north of Durham, following a career as a merchant trader and ship's captain. Godric's life as a hermit was one of ascetic hardship, punctuated by visions in which the songs were taught to him; he later sang them to his future biographers. In respect to style the settings are reflective of certain contemporaneous Latin hymns in rhyme, meter, and melody.

Faburden

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:39:34 PDT

A distinctive English musical technique in which a simple form of three-voice polyphony is created by the addition of two extemporized voices to a preexistent plainsong. The term may also refer to the whole complex of voices, or simply to the faburden proper, the lowest voice, from which the technique takes its name. In this technique the plainsong voice, or mean (because musically it is in the middle), is doubled at the fourth above by the treble. The bass part, or faburden, proceeds mainly at the third below the chant, singing a fifth beneath at the beginning and end, and at the ends of words. Harmonically speaking, the result is a chain of parallel 6/3 sonorities, bounded and inflected by 8/5 sonorities. Continental "fauxbourdon" derives philologically and in terms of sonorous ideal (though not in the details of practice) from English faburden.

Dunstable, John (ca. 1395–1453)

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:27:07 PDT

Composer, mathematician, and astronomer. He is the author of over 70 surviving works, including music for masses, offices, Marian devotions, isorhythmic motets, and secular songs. Dunstable (or Dunstaple) stands at the head of an influential group of English composers whose music, beginning in the later 1420s and 1430s, circulated on the Continent, where it had an immense stylistic impact. Fifteenth-century musical commentators recognized Dunstable's importance, and he held a high posthumous reputation for many subsequent generations.

Of Dunstable's biography we know little. The paucity of documentation seems to be due to a career that kept him out of the records of the court, and there is no evidence of a direct association with any cathedral or monastic establishment or the Chapel Royal. He seems to have begun composing around 1415, but he is not represented in the first layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, which was copied by 1421. A few long-known pieces of evidence, along with important recent archival discoveries, suggest that Dunstable was in service to John duke of Bedford before 1427; moved into the household of the duke's stepmother, the dowager Queen Joan, from 1427 until her death in 1437; and at that point entered the familia (household) of her stepson and John's brother, Humphrey duke of Gloucester. Dunstable's relationship with Gloucester is described as that of “serviteur et familier domestique,” an appellation that probably can be extended to his previous relationships with John and Joan, suggesting a high-ranking role in administrative service while not, significantly, a member of the household chapel. Though Dunstable's music is preserved mainly in continental sources, it now appears that his personal presence in France was limited and intermittent. Thus he is not likely to be the central agent in the transmission of English music across the Channel that he was once thought to be.

Signature-systems and tonal types in the fourteenth-century French chanson

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:46:00 PDT

Beyond the standard and familiar theoretical instruction materials on notation and mensuration, on mode and hexachord, and on the rules of two-part counterpoint, information and insight about the techniques of musical composition in the later Middle Ages are hard to come by. From a modern vantage point, medieval music theory leaves many of the questions most interesting to us unanswered. And for our part, too, analysts of chansons and motets have yet to agree on many basic notions about how this music works, and therefore what is most necessary to talk about. It is symptomatic of this state of affairs that articles discussing analytical approaches to early music, even those addressed to specialists, do not start out in medias res but rather must begin with first principles, and that current textbooks ignore or skimp on all but the most superficial aspects of musical style. We need to establish for all genres the paradigms or fundamental givens, the constraints understood at the outset, the range of choices available to the composer.

One set of questions that needs to be asked of any piece of music concerns its tonal behaviour, its way of working with tones. I take this quite specifically here to mean its definition of the extent and content of musical space, its choice of pitches, and its ways of favouring certain pitches and discriminating against others. In more formal language, we may ask if and how a piece articulates varying, yet perhaps systematic and hierarchical, tonal functions among pitches. We must seek to learn in what respects pieces are unique and in what respects similar to other compositions in these regards, and whether it is possible 'to integrate existing information into a logical pattern'.

Review of Peter Wright, ed., Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, V: Settings of the Sanctus and Agnus dei.

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:41:49 PDT

Peter Wright's edition of English settings of the Sanctus and Agnus from the second quarter of the fifteenth century is the latest addition to the Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music subseries of Early English Church Music, and the second to adopt a new format for notation and editorial apparatus. ... A generous critical apparatus for each work is clearly laid out, with highly valuable commentary in the General Remarks for many items. The editor's introduction discusses the policy of selection of repertory, the styles of the works edited, their age, sources, and composer attributions, the kinds of distortions in transmission that these English works undergo in continental manuscripts, some evidence for proportional planning in selected works, and the organisation of the volume, including the justification for assembling five proposed Sanctus-Agnus pairs. ... The central corpus of this edition affirms the strength of :the consistency of the new paradigm, while offering up an instructive sense of where there was scope for play with its parameters. The EECM enterprise, and editor Peter Wright, are to be congratulated warmly on this latest volume of the series.

Chapel Royal (Royal Household Chapel)

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 08:39:38 PDT

The household chapel of the English kings, a special group of personnel always in attendance on the ruler whose principal responsibility was to perform the divine service. The Chapel Royal is to be distinguished from two other major royal chapels of fixed abode founded by Edward III, the royal chapels of St. Stephen's at Westminster and St. George's at Windsor; its clerks and their duties are further to be distinguished from the King's Chaplains (a position emerging in the 1390s). There had always been chaplains at court who served the king, holding a variety of administrative responsibilities and functioning in a liturgical or ceremonial capacity as necessary. As a more specialized body the Chapel Royal was put on a new footing in the 13th century, in particular as documented in the 1270s during the reign of Edward I, from which time it may have begun to perform daily services. Though liturgical celebration was its day-to-day role, the most important function of the Chapel Royal was in fulfilling ceremonial needs as an emblem of kingship and of the royal presence at coronation ceremonies, crown wearings, solemn entries, anniversaries and commemorations, and other major state occasions.

The adult membership of the Chapel Royal consisted of ordained chaplains and lay clerks (the "capellani et clerici capelle domini regis"), who were joined from the early 14th century onward by a contingent of boys. Their numbers varied but were always substantial by contemporary standards;there were over 30 adults and ten boys in the mid-15th century. The Chapel Royal was the primary sphere of activity for a number of known composers, and it engaged in the performance of the most challenging polyphonic scores. Nonetheless, these activities may have preoccupied only a minority of its members; others, content to sing plainsong as demanded, became engaged in additional nonmusical activities at court, using their position simply as "one of a number of appropriate starting points for clerical careers in royal service" (Wathey:83). Two 15th-century accounts of the composition and duties of the chapel are in the Liber regie capelle (1449) and the Black Book of the Household of Edward IV (ca. 1471).

Caput Mass

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 08:24:44 PDT

One of the most popular masses of the 15th century, surviving complete or in part in seven known English and continental sources, the Missa Caput is now thought to be the work of an unnamed English composer writing in the later 1430s or early 1440s. It is a cyclic mass whose five movements are unified both by a motto beginning and by the use of the same melody as structural cantus firmus in the tenor voice. Its name is taken from that cantus firmus, which is derived from a lengthy melisma on the word "caput" at the end of the responsory Venit ad Petrum, a plainsong sung at the Mandatum Ceremony on Holy Thursday in the medieval English Sarum rite. In each movement this melody is presented in its entirety twice, first in ternary mensuration and then in binary mensuration. Long believed to be a quintessential work by the leading continental composer of the era, Guillaume Dufay (ca. 1397-1474), the Missa Caput is now believed to be the "lost English Caput" hypothesized by Bukofzer. The attribution to Dufay, firmly set aside in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is still encountered in some more recent works of scholarship.

The historical significance of this masterwork is threefold. First, source evidence suggests that the Missa Caput took pride of place among a major group of anonymous English masses that circulated together on the Continent in the later 1440s and 1450s, including Salve sancta parens, Quem malignus spiritus, Fuit homo, and perhaps also Veterem hominem. Second, in a chain of direct emulation (and perhaps homage), the English Caput was drawn on as a model for Caput masses by two of the leading continental composers of the second half of the 15th century, Johannes Ockeghem (ca. 1410-1497) and Jacob Obrecht (ca. 1450-1505). Finally, the Missa Caput has a structural twin in another anonymous English mass cycle, the Missa Veterem hominem. There are other English mass twins as well, perhaps taking their point of departure from the CaputIVeterem pair, and it is believed this English practice was the stimulus for similar pairings by continental mass composers after 1450.

Angelas ad virginem

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:59:11 PDT

A devotional Latin strophic song of the first half of the 13th century in five stanzas on the Annunciation of Mary. There is memorable testimony to its widespread popularity and longevity in England in a passage from the Miller's Tale introducing Chaucer’s poor Oxford scholar “hende Nicholas,” who sings Angelus in his lodging to the accompaniment of his psaltery:

And al above ther lay a gay sautrie,
On which he made a-nyghtes melodie
So swetely that all the chambre rong;
And Angelas ad virginem he song. (MilT 3213-16)

Most sources and references to Angelus ad virginem are insular (complete report in Stevens). One tuneful melody is transmitted in four English sources, twice monophonically and twice in polyphonic settings of the later 13th and mid-14th centuries; an entirely different melody survives uniquely in a 15th-century German source. Angelus was twice translated into English, once anonymously in the later 13th century (“Gabriel fram evene king,” underlaid beneath the standard melody and Latin text in BL Arundel 248) and again in the early 15th century by John Audelay (“The angel to the vergyn said,” without music, in Bodl. Douce 302). In a reference recently discovered by Page in the anonymous 13th-century English Speculum laicorum Odo of Cheriton is said to attribute the authorship of Angelus to Philip, the chancellor of the University of Paris (ca. 1160–1236). If this is to be credited, then perhaps it was brought to England in the first half of the century by the mendicant friars. Much later in its career Angelus was “taken over by liturgical officialdom” (Stevens), appearing, for example, in the ordinal of St. Mary's, York, of ca. 1400 and in 16th-century missals of Cluny and Senlis as an Advent sequence for masses of the Virgin.

Alanus, J[ohannes] (d. 1373)

Peter M. Lefferts — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:15:00 PDT

John Aleyn, a musician and administrator in royal service, was from 1363 to 1373 a canon of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and from 1361 to 1373 a chaplain of the Royal Household Chapel of Edward III. The last decade of his career is well documented, and he enjoyed the frequent and lucrative patronage of Edward and Queen Philippa, holding numerous benefices. Upon his death he bequeathed a book of music to the chapel at Windsor. Though the surname is common, this individual is the strongest candidate for the J. Alanus who wrote the extraordinary musicians' motet Sub arturo plebs and possibly also the motet O amicus sponsi primus. It is likely that he is the Alanus or Magister Alanus four of whose songs are preserved in the Strassburg Manuscript. Further, it is not ruled out on the basis of musical style that he is the Aleyn (or in the second case, less probably, the W. [?] Aleyn) to whom a lively cantilena-style Gloria (no. 8) and a smooth discant setting of a Sanctus (no. 128) are attributed in the Old Hall Manuscript.

Agincourt Carol

Peter M. Lefferts — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:26:46 PDT

The best known of all English carols (also called the Agincourt Song), this composition celebrates the victory of Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 and was probably written shortly thereafter. It survives in two of the most important collections of 15th-century carols, the Trinity Roll (Cambridge, Trinity College 0.3.58) and the Egerton Manuscript (BL Egerton 3307). Reference is made to the siege ofHarfleur, success on the field at Agincourt, and the return to London in triumph with hostages. As is often the case, this carol mixes two languages. The burden, or framing refrain, is in Latin ("Deo gratias Anglia, redde pro victoria"), and the five strophes of verse are in English ("Owre Kynge went forth to Normandy," etc.). Also as in a number of other carols, there are in fact two settings of the burden. These are presumably to be sung together, one after the other, in alternation with the verses. The first begins in unison and expands to two voices while the second is for three voices throughout. The verse is for two voices, with a memorable tune in the lower part. This tune has been retexted and reharmonized for congregational singing in some modern Protestant hymnals, where it is identified as "Deo gratias."

The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century

Peter M. Lefferts — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:02:10 PDT

The history of polyphonic music in late medieval England is difficult to reconstruct on account of the paucity of intact sources, the concomitant lack of a substantial number of complete pieces, and the difficulty with which the surviving repertoire can be associated with any specific institutions or social milieu. Nonetheless, there are significant scattered remains, and this study endeavors to examine in detail one important genre, the motet, in light of all surviving music, placing a great deal of weight on the analysis of fragments. The evidence suggests that the motet was cultivated for the larger abbeys and monastic cathedrals, primarily Benedictine, Cistercian, and Augustinian houses. It was a sacred genre, and in typical larger collections there was probably provision of a motet for all major feasts of the Temporale and Sanctorale, though the precise role of the motet in the liturgy, whether as an interpolation or as a direct substitute for ritual plainchant, is not yet established. The thesis is organized in four large chapters and two appendices. Chapter One discusses the validity of the temporal limits imposed on the thesis (ca.1300-1400) , the problems of the definition of the motet genre and its function, and the problem of establishing a chronology for sources and individual pieces. Chapter Two establishes a typology for motet structures; demonstrating that the English intensely cultivate a few clear archetypes for motet form in the earlier part of the century, producing pieces of high musical interest and fascinating detail, and showing also that indigenous features were not entirely eradicated under French influence in the latter half of the century. The third chapter reviews the notational systems that developed in England in the 14th century, both in relationship to earlier English mensural notations and also to contemporaneous continental systems. The fourth chapter discusses features of the motet texts, concentrating on subject matter, sources and models for text language, and certain aspects of versification. A lengthy first appendix contains critical reports, texts, and transcriptions for most of the 14th-century repertoire; a short second appendix lists the 13th-century English motet repertoire with two transcriptions.

994 pages; 25 MB pdf

A RIDDLE AND A SONG: PLAYING WITH SIGNS IN A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY BALLADE

Peter M. Lefferts — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:02:01 PDT

In a rich and learned article, Lawrence Gushee explored the tabula monochordi of Magister Nicolaus de Luduno. The tabula, which was copied into a music theory manuscript of c. 1400 of southern Italian provenance (Rome/St. Paul), consists of three associated parts. The first and third I shall call, following Gushee, the tabula figurarum (an elaborate musical example) and the tabula numerorum (an extremely elaborate table of corresponding information). Between them lies the enigmatic text of a six-stanza musical puzzle poem, 'Ut pateat evidenter', with which Gushee wrestled inconclusively. A concordance to the poem unknown to Gushee in an English music theory manuscript of about the same age (Bodley 842) associates these cryptic verses with a polyphonic chanson, a two-voice ballad, that has never been published. The ballade is a sophisticated demonstration piece for tonal and mensural behaviours, and I believe that this song is the original complement and key to the poem's meaning, It also offers a significant new point of entry into the complicated world of Anglo-French tonal theory as it developed in treatises and compositions of the fourteenth century,

Review of Yolanda Plumley, The Grammar of 14th Century Melody: Tonal Organization and Compositional Process in the Chansons of Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars Subtilior.

Peter M. Lefferts — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:11:18 PDT

This book is a revised and retitled version of a doctoral thesis presented to Exeter University in 1991. It appears in the Garland series, Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities. In reviewing it I must acknowledge that I am not a disinterested party. Work of my own from the mid-1980s, which Dr Plumley first encountered in the form of a conference paper read at Southampton University in 1987, and which in modified guise was only just recently published ('Signature-systems and tonal types in the fourteenth-century French chanson', Plainsong and Medieval Music 4/2 (1995), pp. 117-47), forms a central point of departure for her work. The resulting volume, which I believe is a highly important contribution to the field, is very much to my taste in terms of the approach to the material, the kinds of questions asked, and the kinds of results that were found. ... Upon its publication this book has become the central work of scholarship in its field.