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CHAPTER 9
MUSIC IN THE CATHEDRAL
CLOSE AND UNIVERSITY:
CONDUCTUS AND MOTET
• The thirteenth century witnessed the advent of
polyphony not tied exclusively to the church. At
Paris polyphony spread from the confines of the
cathedral and the liturgy to the close (a residential
precinct next to the church), the fledgling
university, and ultimately to purely worldly
environments.
Île de la Cité
The Île de la Cité (an island in
the middle of the Seine River)
and the close of Notre Dame of
Paris as they appear in the
earliest map of Paris. The area
of the close is to the north (left)
of the cathedral.
The Latin Quarter
• In the twelfth century the various schools located
in the close and elsewhere near the cathedral of
Notre Dame began to move across the Seine
River to the Left Bank (south bank). Because the
one language known universally by the students
was Latin, the area came to be called the Latin
Quarter.
• In 1215 the pope gave formal recognition to a
new Universitas in Paris—a unified collection of all
the schools and colleges under a single
administrative head called the chancellor.
Phillip the Chancellor
• The most famous chancellor in the thirteenth
century was Philip of Nemours, called Philip the
Chancellor (c1160-1236). Some seventy musical
settings with religious or moralistic texts are
attributed to Philip. Most of these belong to the
genre of medieval music called conductus.
CONDUCTUS
• The term “conductus” derives from the Latin infinitive
ducere, to lead.
• As the name suggests, the conductus was sung as the
clergy moved from place to place or was engaged in
some other type of kinetic activity, such as dance.
• Conducti appear as processional pieces, as insertions
into liturgical dramas, as accompaniments to dances,
and as songs to celebrate Easter and Christmas, much
as Christmas carols do today.
• Conducti for one, two, three, or occasionally even four
voices survive. Unlike organum and the later motet,
all voices of a conductus are newly composed, even
the tenor.
Orientis partibus
• Orientis partibus is a semi-humorous conductus
associated with the Feast of Fools, a day coming
soon after Christmas when the lower (and
generally younger) clergy took over the service of
the church.
• The ass in Orientis partibus is the humble beast
that carried Mary and the Christ child to
Bethlehem, and a legacy of this melody (the
lowest voice) and text survives today in the
Christmas carol The Friendly Beast.
Orientis partibus
Dic, Christi veritas
• Philip the Chancellor’s conductus Dic, Christi veritas
(Speak Christian Truth) is longer, more serious, and
even vindictive in tone.
• In it Philip delivers a blistering sermon railing
against those, including the pope, who seek to
curtail his authority at the University.
• His is a highly learned text that makes frequent
illusion to ancient and biblical history.
• The music is periodically punctuated by caudae,
passages of florid, melismatic singing.
Motet
• The motet first appeared in Paris around 1200.
• Originally the term (diminutive of the French mot
meaning “word”) signaled a discant clausula to
which sacred and eventually vernacular words had
been added. (By the fifteenth century the motet
had come to connote almost any vocal work setting
a sacred Latin text.)
• The purpose of the added words (mots) was to
expand upon the religious theme presented in the
tenor voice (a Gregorian chant).
• Sometimes the vernacular texts of the upper voices
were very worldly, but even the most profane text
could be interpreted as a spiritual message by
means of an allegorical reading.
Examples 9-2A, 9-2B and 9-2C demonstrate how first Latin and then
French texts were added successively to the upper voices of what was
originally a two-voice discant clausula.
Parisian Motet
•
•
Eventually the motet spread beyond the cathedral, close, and
university to the streets of Paris. Even the sacred tenor, which up
to now had been a portion of a Gregorian chant, might be
replaced by a secular tune. The three voice motet On parole de
batre/A Paris/Frese nouvele extols the pleasures of urban living in
medieval Paris. Here the tenor is a street cry of the sort a fruit
vendor used to advertise his produce.
The late thirteenth-century Parisian motet On parole de batre/A
Paris/Frese nouvele in which all voices are in French.
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