Music in the Fourteenth Century
Conflict in the church
• “Babylonian Captivity” of the Pope — 1309–
1378
• The Great Schism — 1378–1417
RESULT – rise of secularism as the church
lost credibility
Daily life and the economy
• Famines — result of poor farming and periods
of cold weather in north
• Black Plague — several outbreaks, worst in
1347–1348
RESULT — loss of faith in divine
benevolence
Political conflict
• The Hundred Years’ War — England vs.
France
• Fought on French soil
– mercenary soldiers lived off land when not actually
fighting
– Joan of Arc
RESULT — decline of knights and chivalry
Late Gothic art
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Great cathedrals
Outstanding manuscript illumination
Tapestry
Music — ars nova
Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361)
• Life
– University of Paris student and, later, teacher
– courtier, diplomat from French king (including to Avignon)
– bishop, poet, composer
• Attributed treatise(s) Ars nova — mensural rhythm
• Music — motets are all that survive — some in Roman de Fauvel
– scoring — three or four voices
• clearer separation of ranges of tenor and upper voices
• sometimes with contratenor in the same range as the tenor
– isorhythm — developed out of ordo patterns of ars antiqua motets;
gives coherence to musical structure
• color — pitch series
• talea — rhythm series
• use of proportional diminution
• numbers can be employed for symbolic values
Mensuration, new rhythmic notation —
signatures indicate relationship of values
• L-B relation called modus (1-3 perfect or 1-2
imperfect)
• B-SB relation called tempus (perfect or imperfect) —
indicated by O or C
• Addition of minim (M) and semi-minim (SM)
• SB-M relation called prolation (major or minor) —
indicated by · or nothing
• Coloration to alter mensuration
Roman de Fauvel — ca. 1316
• Satire on society, clergy, politics
– title character’s name from vices — Flattery, Avarice,
Villainy, Variability, Envy, Lasciviousness
– fauve — dull, orangey color, not bright color of virtue
– fau vel — falsehood veiled
– étriller Fauvel — curry Fauvel — curry favor
• French text, some Latin music
• Musical contents
– monophonic
• liturgical chant, Sequences, conductus
• trouvère-style songs
– motets (thirty-four) — Latin, French, or mixed texts
• variety of styles — earliest through contemporary
• 1 four-voice, 23 three-voice, 10 two-voice pieces
Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300–1377)
— poet and musician
• Court official — served Jean, Duke of Luxembourg and King
of Bohemia
• Churchman — Canon at cathedral of Rheims
• Lover — correspondence (1362–1365) with 19-year-old poet
Péronne
• Poet
– short texts — chanson lyrics, lais
– Remède de Fortune (ca. 1342) — long narrative poem with
music
– Voir dit for Péronne
• Composer
• Prepared first “works” editions of his own poetry and music
Machaut’s music
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Lais
Chansons in formes fixes
Motets
Messe de Notre Dame
Hoquetus David
Secular polyphonic pieces — formes fixes
– virelais
– rondeaux
– ballades
Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Notre
Dame (1350s)
• First surviving complete polyphonic Ordinary (including
Ite, missa est) by a single composer
• Plainsong Mass (except for Gloria, Credo) with movements
in motetlike style
• Four-part scoring
• Architecture — elaborate isorhythm, sometimes in all
parts
Machaut Mass Kyrie — isorhythmic structure
Talea (mm.)
Color (pitches)
I
T (4 x 7) – 1 = CT (12 x 2) + 3 7 x 4
II
T, CT (7 x 3) + 1
(3 x 8) + 1
IIIa T, CT (8 x 2) + 1
(2 x 10) + 1
IIIb T, CT [(7 + 7) x 2] + 1
2 x 17
Formes fixes — standard forms of
secular songs
Capitals for text refrains, lowercase for changing words
of stanzas
• Ballade
– aab C aab C aab C
• Virelai
– A bba A bba A bba A
• Rondeau (uses two-part refrain and only one stanza)
– AB a A ab AB
Ars subtilior — late 1300s
• Extreme complexity of rhythm — elaborate notation
(examples here by Baude Cordier)
• Chromatic expansion to (or beyond) limits of modal scales
Italy — the trecento
Literature — the tre corone (three crowns)
• Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Divine Comedy (ca. 1314)
• Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) love sonnets
• Giovanni Boccaccio (1312–1353) Decameron — recounts
entertainments with dance each evening
Painting — increasingly realistic
• Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1266–1337) Padua frescoes ca.
1305 — abandoned Byzantine mosaic style of figures
• Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Siena, ca. 1290–1348) — nearing
one-point perspective
Trecento music
• Music — high art, no longer functional like church
music nor popular like troubadour music
• Polyphonic composition begins ca. 1330 — possibly
under French influence in northern Italy, especially
Padua
• Sources — all later than their music (historical
anthologies)
– two major Florentine sources
• Panciatichi manuscript (ca. 1380–1400)
• Squarcialupi Codex (ca. 1420?)
Italian polyphonic genres
• Madrigal — pastoral or amorous topics
– scoring — à 2, rhythmically layered
– form — comparable to ballade or Bar
• two or three tercets with lines of seven or eleven syllables
• ritornello — one or two lines of summary or moral, with new
rhyme and mensuration
• Ballata — associated with dance
– two or three parts — cantilena texture
– form — A b b a A (comparable to virelai)
• choral ripresa (2 lines)
• solo piedi (2 + 2 lines) and volta (2 lines)
• choral ripresa (2 lines)
Italian polyphonic genres (cont.)
• Caccia — pastoral or hunt topics (later in Florence, lower
classes)
– two canonic voices and one lower part
– text treatment
• texture of “chase” (caccia) or “fleeing” (fuga)
• onomatopoeic hockets, etc. for animal sounds
• Some instrumental pieces — dances and stylized dances
Trecento composers
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Jacopo da Bologna (fl. 1340–1386)
Gherardello da Firenze (ca. 1320 to ca. 1362)
Lorenzo da Firenze (fl. ca. 1350–1370)
Francesco Landini (ca. 1325–1397)
Questions for discussion
• What advantages did mensural rhythmic notation offer
over the system that preceded it? What advantages
might it have over our standard system?
• How did music and musical thinking of the fourteenth
century challenge traditional assumptions about music?
In general, what ideas did it threaten?