From maker to composer: Improvisation and musical authorship in the low countries, 1450-1500

Journal of the American Musicological Society

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 409-479

  Wegman, Rob C ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009756394     PISSN: 00030139     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/831769     Document Type: Review

References (303)

1. see René Lenaerts, Het nederlands polifonies lied in de zestiende eeuw (Mechelen: Het kompas, 1933), 155-59;
2. Bonnie J. Blackburn, "The Lupus Problem" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1970), 5-6;
3. and Glenda G. Thompson, "Music in the Court Records of Mary of Hungary," Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 34 (1984): 132-64. Guillaume Richafort died on 13 March 1540, Lupus Hellinck before 14 January 1541.
4. In this respect there is a noteworthy contrast between the conversation manual and the Middle Dutch pilgrimage account of the Delft barber Arent Willemsz, dated 1525, which includes a detailed eyewitness description of polyphony being performed at St. Mark's, Venice: Willemsz employs such musical terms as contrepoont and fabridon, but his narrative is devoid of any interest in composers and works, and (significantly, for the present article) could be consistent with the polyphony having been extemporized. See Iain Fenlon, "St. Mark's Before Willaert," Early Music 21 (1993): 547-63.
5. J. A. N. Knuttel et al., eds., Woordenboek der Nederlandschen Taal, 25 vols. to date (The Hague and Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff and A. W. Sijthoff, 1902-), vol. 3, pt. 2, cols. 2098-99, gives as the earliest source for the Dutch "componist"
6. and "componeren" P. de la Croix, Crispijn Musikant (Amsterdam, 1685): "ik ben een komponist."
7. On late medieval perceptions of musical authorship and the emergence of "the composer," see Edward E. Lowinsky, "Musical Genius - Evolution and Origins of a Concept," The Musical Quarterly 50 (1964): 321-40 and 476-95;
8. reprinted with postscript in Edward E. Lowinsky, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1:40-66;
9. Ludwig Finscher, "Die 'Entstehung des Komponisten': Zum Problem Komponisten-Individualität und Individualstil in der Musik des 14. Jahrhunderts," International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 6 (1975): 29-45 (with discussion on 135-42);
10. Paula Higgins, "Musical Politics in Late Medieval Poitiers: A Tale of Two Choirmasters," in Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music, ed. Paula Higgins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming);
11. idem, "Musical 'Parents' and Their 'Progeny': The Discourse of Creative Patriarchy in Early Modern Europe," in Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: A Festschrift in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Anthony M. Cummings and Jessie Ann Owens (Detroit: Harmonie Park Press, 1996), 169-86;
12. and idem, Parents and Preceptors: Authority, Lineage, and the Conception of the Composer in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming).
13. On orality and literacy in general, and the different ways they condition and structure mentalities and consciousness, see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), which deals with many of the issues discussed here.
14. For the practice and its conceptual basis, see Richard L. Crocker, "Discant, Counterpoint, and Harmony," this JOURNAL 15 (1962): 1-21;
15. and Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, Der Contrapunctus im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zum Terminus, zur Lehre und zu den Quellen, Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 13 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1974). The word discant, as it appears in fifteenth-century documents from the Netherlands (many of which will be cited in this text), normally means polyphony according to the rules of counterpoint, and by itself does not specify whether the music is written or extemporized. Other Middle Dutch words that are synonymous to discant are musike (the expression "discant ende musike" is frequently used in alter-nation with either of the two nouns), and the rare contrepoont (and again one sometimes encounters "contrepoont ende discant"). Thus, an Ave Maria "in discant" or "in musike" can mean either a polyphonic rendering of the plainchant or, in a copying payment, a written setting. I will argue below that this ambiguity was to give way, around 1500, to a perceived opposition between composition and improvisation. However, the words discant, musike, and contrepoont, in the fifteenth century, are as yet innocent of any such perception: depending on context they can refer to both written and unwritten music. It is the contention of this article that in most cases, the context either plausibly or definitely implies extemporized singing. The most obvious exceptions are copying payments for music "in discant" or "in music," and references to " discant boucken," "libri discantus," "livres de musique," and so on.
16. For the appointment contract discussed here see Christiaan C. Vlam and Maarten Albert Vente, eds., Bouwstenen voor een geschiedenis der toonkunst in de Nederlanden, 3 vols. (Utrecht: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1965-80), 1:171-73.
17. Craig Wright, "Performance Practices at the Cathedral of Cambrai, 1475-1550," The Musical Quarterly 64 (1978): 295-328, at 313-14: seven chapter decisions from the period 1485-1534, in which the expression for oral polyphony is "to sing upon the book" (cantare super librum; more on this usage below).
18. Vlam and Vente, eds., Bouwstenen 1:172;
19. for a translation of the relevant passage, see Rob C. Wegman, Born for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecbt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 59 n. 27.
20. C. Lingbeek-Schalekamp, Overbeid en muziek in Holland tot 1672 (Poortugaal: Blok & Flohr, 1984), 208.
21. For Tick's compositions, none of which appears to have survived, see Wegman, Born for the Muses, 63 n. 35.
22. Similarly, on 9 March 1481 Maximilian I rewarded the "chantre de musique" Adrien van Hove for having "chanté de musique avec sa femme et deux de ses filles devant lui à son disner pour sa plaisance"; see Georges Van Doorslaer, "La Chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau," Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art 4 (1934): 21-57 and 139-65, at 34.
23. On women singers and musicians in late medieval courts, see Paula Higgins, "Parisian Nobles, A Scottish Princess, and the Woman's Voice in Late Medieval Song," Early Music History 10 (1991): 145-200, and the extensive bibliography cited therein.
24. Lingbeek-Schalekamp, Overbeid en muziek, 203-4.
25. Tick was also active as succentor at St. James, Bruges, from August to December 1463. See Alfons Dewitte, "Zangmeesters, Organisten en schoolmeesters aan de Sint-Jacobparochie te Brugge, 1419-1591," Biekorf 72 (1971): 332-49, at 347;
26. and Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 123.
27. David Nicholas, The Domestic Life of a Medieval City: Women, Children, and the Family in Fourteenth-Century Ghent (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 128-29.
28. On musical instruction to boys and girls in schools in Brabant and Flanders, see Barbara Helen Haggh, "Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony in Brussels, 1350-1500," 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988), 1:149-52;
29. and Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 288-89.
30. Gerard Nijsten, Het hof van Gelre: Cultuur ten tijde van de bertogen uit het Gulikse en Egmondse huis (1371-1473) (Kampen: Kok Agora, 1992), 122: "die onser burgerkynderen dyscant geleert had."
31. Exceptions are documented as well. On 15 October 1482 the dean and chapter of the church of Our Lady at Tholen agreed with the magistrates of that city on a number of new regulations concerning the duties and rewards of the choirboys. The ordinance had become necessary because many parents of schoolchildren "do not wish to have their children taught in any muzike or discant." (Muzike, in Middle Dutch, was used as a synonym for polyphony, usually in opposition to simpelsanck, plainchant.) In order to encourage local parents, "that they might more willingly have their children taught in song," the city undertook to pay for tabards to be given annually to the four principal choristers. See Vlam and Vente, eds., Bouwstenen 3:223-25. Interestingly, Antoine Busnoys held a canonry in absentia at this church;
32. see Paula Marie Higgins, "Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture in Late Fifteenth-Century France and Burgundy" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1987), 120-21.
33. It must not pass unnoticed here that Adrian Petit Coclico, in his treatise Compendium musices of 1552, says this explicitly about his own training: "As a mere boy I was entrusted to the protection of the most noble musician, Josquin, where, when I had perceived those elementary precepts of our art, incidentally, from no book (nullo ex libro), I began at once to sing and in singing to observe those things with which today many precepts deal, and to form my song and all my models after his example." See Adrian Petit Coclico (d. 1563), Musical Compendium (Compendium Musices), trans. Albert Seay (Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press, 1973), 7;
34. and Adrian Petit Coclico: Compendium Musices, facs. ed. Manfred F. Bukofzer, Documenta musicologica 9 (Kassel and Basel: Bärenreiter, 1954), Biij. However, the fact that this needed stating (as if readers would have assumed the opposite by default) would suggest that the kind of training "from no book" that Coclico received (and of which he evidently was rather proud) had become relatively unusual by the mid-sixteenth century. This would be in line with the changing status of writing and literacy in musical practice after about 1500, discussed in more detail below. I am grateful to Paula Higgins for pointing out this and the other passages from Coclico referred to below.
35. me, quintedecime, ende met desen es men sculdich te beghinnenne ende te inden, ende deesen en machmen gheen twe setten deen na dander, als twe unisones oft twe quinten oft enich vanden .v. perfecten, daer en sijn imperfecten tussen, der welke siin .iiij. Dats te wetenne, terce, sexte, decime, terdecime, ende deser mach men wel setten .iiij. oft .iiij. deen naer dander. Als die musike gradatim clempt ofte daelt, ende die achterste so es sculdich dan perfecte te siin, na dat die imperfecte accorde sij altoes nemen die naeste. Ende als die musike clempt soe sal sal [sic] dat contrepoont dalen, ende als die musike daelt soe sal dat contrepoont clemmen nader torgelen die voer gheseet." The question of the function, readership, distribution, and cultural status of counterpoint manuals is exceedingly complex, and probably cannot be answered for the treatises as a genre. I am arguing here that counterpoint was generally taught and transmitted as an oral practice, and that written codifications served mainly to record the basic rules for reference.
36. For examples, see Thrasybulos Georgiades, Englische Diskanttraktate aus der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Mehrstimmigkeit im Mittelalter (Inaug.-Diss., Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität Munich, 1935), 12-30;
37. Sanford B. Meech, "Three Musical Treatises in English from a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript," Speculum 10 (1935): 235-69;
38. Manfred Bukofzer, Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons nach den theoretischen Quellen (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1936), 132-60.
39. By the procedure known as incorporation. For a detailed discussion of this procedure at Antwerp in the early fifteenth century, see Josef van den Nieuwenhuizen, "De koralen, de zangers en de zangmeesters van de Antwerpse O.-L.-Vrouwekerk tijdens de 15e eeuw," in Gouden jubileum gedenkboek, ter gelegenheid van de viering van 50 jaar heropgericht Knapenkoor van de Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkatedraal te Antwerpen, ed. Paul Schrooten (Antwerp: Choraelhuys, 1978), 29-72.
40. On the reallocation of benefices in general see Pamela F. Starr, "Rome as the Centre of the Universe: Papal Grace and Music Patronage," Early Music History 11 (1992): 223-62, at 238-46 and 261-62.
41. Dinant Petrus Oosterbaan, "Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft," Haarlemse bijdragen: Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis van het bisdom Haarlem 65 (1958): 215-16, publishes the following chronicle entry for the year 1455 (my trans.): "Concerning the first discant and musiic that was sung here. Anno LV, master Zibrant, the schoolmaster, began to sing musiic on high feast-days in the church, for which he taught some of his pupils as well as some priests, and laymen who took pleasure in this. And they received nothing from the church but a pittance or gift, which they could spend together in merriment."
42. Musical collaboration between laymen and priests is also suggested by Maître Pierre Pathelin's claim, in the well-known play named after him (written before 1470), "mais je m'ose vanter que je say aussi bien chanter ou livre avecques nostre prestre"; Jean Dufournet, ed., La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), 50.
43. On lay participation in liturgical services at Brussels, see Haggh, "Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony," 1:191-92.
44. Margaret Bent and Roger Bowers, "The Saxilby Fragment," Early Music History 1 (1981): 1-27.
45. The success of such attempts at popularization is shown by the survival of the Saxilby mass in a set of fragments at Bologna; see Charles Hamm, "Musiche del Quattrocento in S. Petronio," Rivista italiana di musicologia 3 (1968): 215-32.
46. For another example, see Hugh Benhain, " 'Salve Regina' (Power or Dunstable): A Simplified Version," Music & Letters 59 (1978): 28-32.
47. For stroke notation in general, see Jan van Biezen and Kees Vellekoop, "Aspects of Stroke Notation in the Gruuthuse Manuscript and Other Sources," Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 34 (1984): 3-25.
48. Tinctoris may have referred to this and similar practices in his definition of suppositio: "the introduction of certain bodies (corpora) in order that they may signify sounds in the place of notes"; see Johannes Tinctoris, Terminorum musicae diffinitorium: A Facsimile of the Treviso Edition (ca. 1494) (New York: Broude Brothers, 1966).
49. For music in French plays, see Howard M. Brown, Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400-1550 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), esp. 101-5;
50. e (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1940), 124-32.
51. Arthur C. Cawley, ed., Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays (London: J. M. Dent, 1974), 85.
52. Tenor, mean, and treble are, of course, standard designations for the "sights" in improvised English discant of the kind described in the treatises by Leonel Power and others. See, for an excellent summary, Sylvia W. Kenney, Walter Frye and the Contenance Angloise (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964), 91-122.
53. For three-part singing among ordinary citizens in fifteenth-century England, see also John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 285-87.
54. Marcel Hoebeke, ed., Het Spel van de V vroede ende van de V dwaeze Maegden (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 117-19;
55. w. 251-75 (my trans.). On polyphonic songs in Flemish morality plays see also Wegman, Born for the Muses, 156-57.
56. Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, 257.
57. For a contemporary description of a two-part counterpoint on L'ami Baudichon, see Brown, Music in the French Secular Theater, 104.
58. It might be objected that these latter examples concern secular rather than sacred music, yet I would argue that this distinction was not perceived as relevant to "discant" as a general musical practice and idiom: the notion of an intrinsically ecclesiastical musical style did not become established until the seventeenth century; see Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 109.
59. Tinctoris, meticulous in his formulations as always, talks only of polyphony whose text is sacred (as in his definitions of "missa" and "motetus"; Terminorum musicae diffinitorium), or whose precious sound quality demands that it be reserved for "sacred things" (as with the music of the fiddle and rebec; see Karl Weinmann, Johannes Tinctoris (1445-1511) und sein unbekannter Traktat "De inventione et usu musicae": Historisch-kritische Untersuchung [Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1961], 46). (The apparent absence of any perception that music might be intrinsically sacred as music - rather than carry sacred text, or be suitable for worship - ties in directly with the question of the meaning and the effects of music, discussed in section 8 below.) From this perspective, the melody of L'ami baudichon, for instance, would have been just as "secular" in the example cited above as it became "sacred" by being underlaid with Ordinary text in the mass attributed to Josquin: the perception of musical incongruity or incompatibility appears to be a later development (early sixteenth century), one that is of considerable interest for the history of musical aesthetics.
60. See Ernest T. Ferand, "'Sodaine And Unexpected' Music in the Renaissance," The Musical Quarterly 37 (1951): 10-27, at 17, 19, and 25.
61. See Karl Stehlin and Rudolf Thommen, "Aus der Reisebeschreibung des Pero Tafur, 1438 und 1439," Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 25 (1926): 45-107, at 54.
62. Guillelmus Monachus, De preceptis artis musicae, ed. Albert Seay, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 11 (American Institute of Musicology, 1965), 29-44.
63. See also Georges Chastellain's report about trumpeters, minstrels, and other instrumentalists at the royal court of Portugal in the late 1440s, "jouans a la mode du pays"; Jeanne Marix, Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420-1467) (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1939), 83.
64. All of the citations in the present section are examples of what contemporary' observers heard, and how they accounted for their aural impressions in terms of perceived national or regional styles. Since I am concerned here with the apparent indifference, prevailing up to about 1500, as to whether heard polyphony was extemporized or sung from mensural notation, it is unnecessary to establish for every citation that performers were extemporizing, even though this was probably true in most cases. The point is that observers themselves showed little apparent concern to clarify this, and did not seem to regard the distinction as particularly relevant; this was to change later on. An interesting early exception is in the executors' account of the estate of John, duke of Bedford (d. 1435), which lists a "livre de motetz en la maniere de France" among his movable effects: "motet" is one of the few designations for polyphonic music in the late Middle Ages that positively rule out the possibility of extemporization (the genre involves written construction by definition), and the national "manner" is evidently established here through an act of reading rather than one of hearing. See Andrew Wathey, "Dunstable in France," Music & Letters 67 (1986): 1-36, at 12.
65. Johann Carl von Fichard, ed., "Johanns von Soest eigne Lebensbeschreibung," Frankfurtisches Archiv für ältere deutsche Litteratur und Geschichte 1 (1811): 103-7.
66. The fullest account of Soest's life and literary works is in Gerhard Pietzsch, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Musik am kurpfälzischen Hof zu Heidelberg bis 1622 (Mainz and Wiesbaden: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1963), 678-82 (96-100).
67. To Pietzsch's account can be added a report by the organist and humanist Rudolph Agricola, in a letter written at Heidelberg on 7 June 1484, that Soest "composes vocal works for nine and even for twelve voices, but of his works for three or four voices I have heard nothing which pleases me much. But I should not like to present my taste as the judge. After all, it is possible that they are better than I can understand"; see Elly Kooiman, "The Biography of Jacob Barbireau (1455-1491) Reviewed," Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 38 (1988): 36-58, at 37 and 45 n. 21;
68. and Sabine Žak, "Die Gründung der Hofkapelle in Heidelberg," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 50 (1993): 145-63, at 155-63.
69. Weinmann, Johannes Tinctoris, 45-46 (my trans.): "A little time ago [this is in the early 1480s] I heard at Bruges two blind brothers from Flanders, men no less educated in literature than experienced in music, of whom one was called Carolus and the other Johannes [Fernandes], sounding together on this kind of viol, the former the top parts and the latter the tenors of many songs, in so skilled and so pleasing a manner, that I have truly never found greater delight in any euphony."
70. The counterpoints of the Fernandes brothers (described by Tinctoris as "the top parts and ... tenors of many songs") were performed on instruments, yet this does not diminish their relevance in the present context: after all, it would be anachronistic to project on this period a perceived generic difference between vocal and instrumental music such as to turn "counterpoint" into an exclusively vocal phenomenon. For the crucial importance of oral counterpoint traditions to fifteenth-century instrumental music, see Keith Polk's significant study, German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons, and Performance Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
71. Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959), 51.
72. For more on these viol players see Marix, Histoire de la musique et des musiciens, 29-30, 117-18, and 182;
73. Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 88-89;
74. and Paula Higgins, review of the same, this JOURNAL 42 (1989): 150-61, at 159 n. 20, where Jehan Fernandes is identified as the father of the viol players mentioned by Tinctoris.
75. See also the report by the Castilian nobleman Pero Tafur, who visited the Burgundian court at Brussels in 1438/39 and wrote: "At this court I encountered two blind men from Castile who played the lute, and whom I have seen again since in Castile"; Stehlin and Thommen, "Aus der Reisebeschreibung," 67.
76. The Fernandes brothers visited Frank van Borselen, count of Oostervant, in 1455 (Lingbeek-Schalekamp, Overbeid en muziek, 201, my trans.): "Item, on 8 November [1455], given to two players who belonged to my gracious lord of Burgundy and who were blind, and who visited my lord [of Oostervant] in his room in The Hague, 6 sc. 6 d. gr."
77. Sachs, Der Contrapunctus im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, 57-122.
78. Hertha Schweiger, "Archivalische Notizen zur Hofkantorei Maximilians I.," Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 14 (1932): 363-74, at 365. At the wedding of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary with Beatrice of Aragon, in Székesfehérvàr (Stuhlweissenburg) in 1476, the singers of his chapel were reported (by the delegate of the Elector of Saxony) to have sung Mass "mit löblichem Gesang mit frantzösischem gesetzten." The formulation "gesetzten" seems to imply the performance of written music, which cannot be entirely excluded in the case of Leo X's entertainment either (see below, n. 37).
79. See Emile Haraszti, "Les Musiciens de Mathias Corvin et de Béatrice d'Aragon," in La Musique instrumentale de la renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1955), 35-59, at 39. During his visit to Barcelona, on 1 March 1519, the Flemish singers of Emperor Charles V were said to have sung Matins after the Roman manner: "Y aprés de vespres, foren dites matines ben trossades more romano";
80. see Emilio Ros-Fábregas, " Music and Ceremony During Charles V's 1519 Visit to Barcelona," Early Music 23 (1995): 374-91, at 388 n. 20.
81. Bonnie J. Blackburn, "Music and Festivities at the Court of Leo X: A Venetian View," Early Music History 11 (1992): 1-37, at 5 and 12-17.
82. Tinctoris in P Prologus 12 (who echoes public opinion by observing that the English "are commonly said to jubilate"), and Frank Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 171.
83. Von Fichard, ed., "Johanns von Soest eigne Lebensbeschreibung," 97: "Und ted mych bald in dy sangschol, da lert ich bald dy konst fur fol, das ich kunstlich kont solnysyrn, auch contrapunckt kont iubylyrn; dar tzu so lernt ich componyrn."
84. Wright, "Performance Practices at the Cathedral of Cambrai," 322.
85. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, "De koralen," 67-68.
86. Thomas Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, ed. R. Alec Harman (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 206.
87. Manfred Schuler, "Die Musik in Konstanz während des Konzils, 1414-1418," Acta musicologica 38 (1966): 150-68;
88. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 243-45;
89. Wathey, "Dunstable in France";
90. Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 106-24.
91. For this and the following citations from Le Franc, see David Fallows, "The contenance angloise: English Influence on Continental Composers of the Fifteenth Century," Renaissance Studies 1 (1987): 189-208.
92. Reinhard Strohm, for example, argues that Le Franc associated the contenance angloise exclusively with composition, to the exclusion of English traditions of extemporized polyphony: "In the lines containing the term contenance angloise and the name of Dunstable, [Le Franc] expresses respect for musical works, not for [the performing techniques of] faburden or English discant" (The Rise of European Music, 128-29).
93. Schuler, "Die Musik in Konstanz," 158.
94. Significantly, at the cathedral of Troyes it required a formal prohibition by the chapter, on 1 July 1448, to discontinue the singing of gymel ("ille cantus anglicus") in the daily psalmody of the singers and vicars; see Arthur-Émile Prévost, Histoire de la maîtrise de la cathédrale de Troyes (Troyes, 1906; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), 155.
95. For one example among very many, see the contract between the town magistrates of Middelburg and the Westmonsterkerk, dated 1 November 1500, in which it was decided to have "an honest, solemn song of discant with a choirmaster, tenorist, contrabass, soprano and treble (triple) as well as six little choristers" at Mass and Vespers on all major feasts, as well as in the Salve every evening; the city was to pay all the expenses. See Willem Sybrand Unger, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van Middelburg in den landsbeerlijken tijd, 3 vols., Rijks geschiedkundige publicatiën 54 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1923-31), 1:510-11.
96. For another example, see Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 89-91: in 1466, the Bruges barber Jean Basin was charged with allowing his eleven-year-old nephew Jan Huissen to play instruments at public feasts and masked balls without being a member of the guild or a citizen of the town.
97. Some time in the late 1460s, when he was a singer at the church of Our Lady at Maastricht, Johann von Soest "conceived the plan ... to travel away to Italy, to Rome, where the companions (gesellen) were singing so well in the Papal chapel" (von Fichard, ed., "Johanns von Soest eigne Lebensbeschreibung," 112). He did not travel further than nearby Cologne, where the provost of St. Gereon sent for him and offered him employment, which he immediately accepted.
98. See Higgins, "Musical Politics in Late Medieval Poitiers," in Antoine Busnoys (forthcoming).
99. Hugh Baillie, "A London Gild of Musicians, 1460-1530," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 83 (1956-57): 15-28.
100. J. H. Hofman, "Het gilde der zangers in de Lieve Vrouwen-kapel te Zwolle," Archief voor de geschiedenis van bet aartsbisdom Utrecht 13 (1896): 102-7.
101. e siècle," Bulletin de l'Institut historique belge de Rome 17 (1937): 72-88, at 80-85 and 87-88.
102. A concrete example is Pieter Hueribloc, a Ghent citizen who was elected guild deken or representative in 1452, and of whom a contemporary observed, "when he took office, he was so poor in estate and property that he used to go singing in company for profit in public houses and taverns"; see A. G. B. Schayes, ed., Dagboek der Gentsche Collatie (Ghent: L. Hebbelynck, 1842), 220 (my trans.).
103. Albert Smijers, ed., De Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap te 's-Hertogenbosch (Amsterdam: G. Alsbach, 1932).
104. "Aussi ne sçait lire ne chanter et n'entent ou aulcune chose qui die en lisant"; Michel Brenet, Les Musiciens de la Sainte-Chapelle du Palais (Paris: Picard, 1910), 60.
105. Present-day apologists of improvisation highlight precisely this as its defining aspect. See, for instance, Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (London: The British Library, 1992), 35: "It may be that opponents and supporters of improvisation are defined by their attitude towards the fact that improvisation embraces, even celebrates, music's essentially ephemeral nature. For many of the people involved in it, one of the enduring attractions of improvisation is its momentary existence: the absence of a residual document."
106. The relationship between improvisation and musical literacy is also addressed in Robin Moore, "The Decline of Improvisation in Western Art Music: An Interpretation of Change," International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 23 (1992): 61-84.
107. "Since the eighteenth century ... music as art has been separated from handicraft by a gulf that may be felt as a misfortune but cannot be denied.... instructions in craft and recipe books of musica practica, ever since Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, have been sinking more and more into mere exercises in a dead language, to studies that of course transmit some concept of disciplined musical grammar, but fall short of real composing" (Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William W. Austin [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], 14).
108. By the early eighteenth century, survivals of the practice of "singing upon the book" in French cathedrals struck contemporary observers as both strange and absurd. See Craig Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500-1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 352-53;
109. Jean Prim, "Chant sur le livre in French Churches in the Eighteenth Century," this JOURNAL 14 (1961): 37-49;
110. e siècle: Les Traités de Louis-Joseph Marchand et Henry Madin," Revue de Musicologie 81 (1995): 36-63.
111. See, for example, Wright, Music and Ceremony, 174-75: "As was typical of most formal education in the Middle Ages, the choirboys at Paris learned the bulk of their material not by reading and writing, but through oral presentation by a preceptor.... The capitular acts at Notre Dame, furthermore, make no mention of slates or wax tablets upon which to write, and it was not until the seventeenth century that the canons of Paris provided an instructor in writing for the boys.
112. The only possible exception known to me is in a document discovered by Paula Higgins: in 1407/8 the Sainte-Chapelle at Bourges paid for six tablets "pour faire le contrepoint desdiz enffans." See her "Tracing the Careers of Late Medieval Composers: The Case of Philippe Basiron of Bourges," Acta musicologica 62 (1990): 1-28, at 9 and 25.
113. Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi, Contrapunctus, ed. Jan Herlinger (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 32-33.
114. C II.xx.2-3; trans, quoted, with slight changes, after Bonnie J. Blackburn, "On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century," this JOURNAL 40 (1987): 210-84, at 248-49.
115. but note the comments in Allan Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 76-77.
116. Duarte I, Leal conselbeiro, ed. José Ignacio Roquete (Paris: J. P. Aillaud, 1842), 453.
117. (I am grateful to Manuel Pedro Ferreira for pointing out this reference to me.) This is also the situation as ethnomusicologists frequently find it. See, for instance, Bruno Nettl, "Thoughts on Improvisation: A Comparative Approach," The Musical Quarterly 60 (1974): 1-19, at 6: "Alan Merriam, in discussing composition in a number of tribal societies, does not bring out that these cultures single out the improvisatory nature of any of their musical products; and this applies even to those among them that articulate ideas about composition.
118. Similarly, an explicit term for improvisation seems not to be used in various Asian cultures." See also Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice, xii: "The word improvisation is actually very little used by improvising musicians. Idiomatic improvisers, in describing what they do, use the name of the idiom. They 'play flamenco' or 'play jazz'; some refer to what they do as just 'playing.' " Similarly, the typical early fifteenth-century usage is to "sing discant."
119. See especially Ferand, " 'Sodaine and Unexpected' Music." The earliest document known to me where improvisation is explicitly described in opposition to composition is a letter by Thomas Oedenhofer, written at Vienna on 13 March 1460: "He [Caspar Gossembrot], and also his daughter Sibilla, can compose counterpoint as well as fashion immediately, in the act of singing, what may be brought under [their] eyes" ("seit et filia sua Sibilla contrapunctum facere et e vestigio, que subiecta fuerint oculis, cantando formare"). See Gerhard Pietzsch, Zur Pflege der Musik an den deutschen Universitäten bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1971), 34.
120. In his Compendium musices of 1552, Adrian Petit Coclico still ascribed an essentially oral musical pedagogy to Josquin, allegedly from firsthand experience. Although his account may be of questionable value for Josquin's biography, it is unlikely to be significantly at odds with standard mid-sixteenth-century practice: "My teacher, Josquin des Pres, never rehearsed or wrote out any music, yet in a short time made perfect musicians, since he did not hold his students back in long and frivolous precepts, but taught precepts in a few words at the same time as singing through exercise and practice.... When he had seen his students firmly grounded in singing, able to pronounce neatly, to sing ornately and to put the text in the correct place, he taught them the perfect and imperfect types (of consonances) and the manner of singing counterpoint on plainchant with these types" (Coclico, Musical Compendium, trans. Seay, 16, with minor revisions after the Latin original in Adrian Petit Coclico: Compendium Musices, ed. Bukofzer, p. Fij verso).
121. As late as 1552, Coclico still made a point of arguing that improvisation was the indispensable prerequisite to composition: "There are many who pride themselves on being composers because they have composed many pieces, having followed the rules and types of composition but making no use of counterpoint; my master Josquin thought little of them and held them as a laughing-stock, saying they wish to fly without wings. The first requirement of a good composer is that he should know how to sing counterpoint by improvisation (contrapunctum ex tempore canere). Without this he will be nothing" (Coclico, Musical Compendium, ed. Seay, 24,
122. with minor revisions after the Latin original in Adrian Petit Coclico: Compendium Musices, ed. Bukofzer, p. Lij verso).
123. However, the fact that Coclico needed to argue this, and that there were "many" who apparently thought otherwise (against whom he invoked the authority of Josquin), would only seem to confirm the normative conceptual status that composition had acquired in the early sixteenth century. By the end of that century, in fact, an observer like Morley was unable to imagine that improvised polyphony (which evidently was no longer practiced in England) would have sounded at all well - a perception that has also prevailed in our own time: "which causeth me to marvel how men acquainted with music can delight to hear such confusion as of force must be amongst so many singing extempore. But some have stood in an opinion which to me seemeth not very probable, that is that men accustomed to descanting will sing together upon a plainsong without singing either false chords or forbidden descant one to another, which till I see I will ever think impossible" (Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction, 206-7).
124. Printed in Gustav Nottebohm, Beethovens Studien (Leipzig and Winterthur: Rieter-Biedemann, 1873).
125. As Dahlhaus stresses, "The idea that music is exemplified in works [rather than in performances], no matter how firmly rooted it has become in the past century and a half, is far from self-evident.... Even up to the present time this idea is foreign to listeners who restrict their musical experience to popular music. And we would be blind captives of a habit of speaking were we to minimize the resistances met by this idea and pass over them lightly" (Esthetics of Music, 10-11).
126. For a recent study of the emergence of the work-concept and associated musical-aesthetic values after ca. 1800, see Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
127. For similar developments in the sixteenth century (Germany in particular), see Walter Wiora, "Musica poetica und musikalisches Kunstwerk," in Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Heinrich Hüschen (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1962), 579-89.
128. The concept of the musical work is much more problematic in the fifteenth century; for two significant studies, see Martin Staehelin, "Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis von Werkcharacter und Filiation in der Musik der Renaissance," in Datierung und Filiation von Musikhand-Schriften der Josquin-Zeit, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance 2; Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 26 (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassovvitz, 1983), 199-215;
129. and David Fallows, "Embellishment and Urtext in the Fifteenth-Century Song Repertory," Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 14 (1990): 59-85.
130. See Rob C. Wegman, "Sense and Sensibility in Late-Medieval Music: Thoughts on Aesthetics and 'Authenticity,'" Early Music 23 (1995): 298-312.
131. See also Martin Staehelin, "Euphonia bei Tinctoris," in Report of the Twelfth Congress: Berkeley 1977, ed. Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981), 621-25.
132. For a different interpretation, see Christopher Page, "Reading and Reminiscence: Tinctoris on the Beauty of Music," this JOURNAL 49 (1996): 1-31.
133. This is not to imply, of course, that theorists before the fifteenth century would never have used the words componere, compositor, or compositio in connection with music, only that such early occurrences are too incidental to add up to an established usage, and that the words tend to be used in their most literal sense, without the social and cultural overtones they acquired later on. For examples, see Ernest T. Ferand, "Komposition," in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 7:1423-55, at 1427-28;
134. and idem, "Zum Begriff der 'compositio' im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert," in Bericht über den siebenten Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress, Köln 1958, ed. Gerald Abraham et al. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1959), 104-7, at 105.
135. In Middle English and Middle Dutch, composicioun and compositie had principally denoted a contract, agreement, or settlement, never a musical work. See Hans Kurath with Sherman Al. Kuhn, eds., Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956-88), ii/i. 471-72;
136. Henry Holland Carter, ed., A Dictionary of Middle English Musical Terms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961);
137. and Eelco Verwijs and Jacob Verdam, eds., Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1885-1952), 3:1747.
138. e eeuw," in Sint-Donaas en de voormalige Brugse Katedraal (Bruges: Jong Kristen Onthaal voor toerisme Brugge, 1978), 61-95, at 90-95;
139. Jules Houdoy, Histoire artistique de la cathédrale de Cambrai, ancienne église métropolitaine Notre-Dame (Lille: L. Danel, 1880), 193-95, 198, and 200.
140. In French, one of the earliest known attestations of "to compose" (in its specifically musical sense) is found in a description of two music manuscripts made for the French royal court in 1471: "et commence ladicte table Noel de Okeghan per totum adventum Et après ledit Noel, Asperges me Domine, et ledit Asperges composé par Bunoys ainsi que porte ladicte table" (Higgins, "Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture," 141).
141. Martin Staehelin, Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs, 3 vols. (Berne: Paul Haupt, 1977), 2:46-47;
142. Schweiger, "Archivalische Notizen," 368-70 and 372-73.
143. Lewis Lockwood has traced the combined designation cantadore compositore in accounts of the court of Ferrara as early as 1473. See his Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 154-55;
144. and below, section 9. A musician can also be designated as composer in accounts when he is rewarded specifically for the writing of new music but not otherwise employed at the establishment. Such paid commissions are, however, exceedingly rare before 1500. The earliest example known to me is at Siena cathedral: in 1484, "maestro Pietro Bordone, chonpositore di chanto figurato" is rewarded "per conponitura di motetti, credi, e altri chanti fighurati"; see Frank A. D'Accone, "A Late Fifteenth-Century Sienese Sacred Repertory: MS K. 1.2 of the Biblioteca Comunale, Siena," Musica disciplina 37 (1983): 121-70, at 131-32;
145. The earliest examples known to me are from the payment lists of the confraternity of Our Lady at 's-Hertogenbosch: "eenen sanger ende componist geheyten Clemens non Papa" ("[paid] to a singer and composer called Clemens non Papa"; 1 October 1550) and "vyff vreempde sangeren die mede gesongen hadden, wair aff dat drie componisten wairen" ("to five foreign singers who joined in the singing, of whom three were composers"; 21 October 1562); see Maarten Albert Vente, "De Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap te 's-Hertogenbosch, 1541-1615," Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 19 (1960-63): 32-43, at 39-40. It is also in the sixteenth century that "componeren" and related words begin to be used in a specifically musical sense in the Dutch language. One of the earliest documented instances is in the appointment contract of Claudin Patoulet as choirmaster at the church of St. Bavo, Haarlem, on 31 January 1546: "Des so moet hij de coraelen ... hoer musycke leeren ende oick leeren componeren, als zij daer bequaem toe wesen sullen" ("And he must teach the choristers their musycke and also teach them to componeren, if they have an aptitude for this";
146. For this and the next sentence, see Roger Bowers, "Obligation, Agency, and Laissez-faire: The Promotion of Polyphonic Composition for the Church in Fifteenth-Century England," in Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. Iain Fenlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)', 1-19, at 10-11.
147. Different conditions may have obtained in France, however, as persuasively argued by Paula Higgins in "Musical Politics in Late Medieval Poitiers."
148. Moreover, even in England and the Low Countries, churches did sometimes appoint choirmasters with the condition that they compose new music each year for one or more specified feast-days. For examples, see Bowers, "Obligation, Agency, and Laissez-faire," 11 (Durham, 1487 and 1496);
149. and, for the Low Countries, Désiré Van de Casteele, "Extraits des Registres capitulaires de Saint Sauveur," Annales de la Société d'Émulation de Bruges 22 (1870): 142-57, at 143-44: on 20 January 1507, the canons of St. Saviour's, Bruges, appointed a new cantor who would be required, "after old custom," to compose a novum motetum every year for the feast of St. Eligius (1 December), a nova missa every year for the Feast of Cripples (Thursday after Pentecost), and nova carmina for the feast of Holy Innocents (28 December).
150. In the Low Countries, the earliest unequivocal evidence of the
151. and Joseph Schmidt-Görg, "Die Acta Capitularia der Notre-Dame-Kirche zu Kortrijk als musikgeschichtliche Quelle," Vlaams Jaarboek voor Muziekgeschiedenis (1939): 21-80, at 65.
152. Financial rewards (over and above the regular salary) tend to remain rare, however; in 1565/66 Jacob Bruneau, choirmaster at St. John's, Ghent, was rewarded for "having composed some canticles amounting to 30 folios or more" ("ghecomponeert hebben eeneghe canticquen draghende 30 bladeren ofte bet"). See Paul Trio and Barbara Haggh, "The Archives and Confraternities in Ghent and Music," in Musicology and Archival Research, ed. Barbara Haggh, Frank Daelemans, and André Vanrie (Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1994), 44-90. at 77 n. 128.
153. The document is printed in the exhibition catalogue Johannes Ockeghem en zijn tijd (Dendermonde: Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Dendermonde, 1970), 115.
154. See also the letter of recommendation from Maximilian I to Queen Beatrix of Hungary, dated 8 January 1490, in which Jacobus Barbireau is introduced as "musicus prestantissimus" (Kooiman, "The Biography of Jacob Barbireau," 51).
155. P. Gerlach, "Het testament van de Bossche bouwmeesters Alart Duhameel en Jan Heyns," Bossche bijdragen: Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis van het bisdom 's-Hertogenbosch 30 (1971): 206-14, at 211-12.
156. A polyphonic Requiem by Paulus de Roda was copied by the confraternity of Our Lady at 's-Hertogenbosch in 1496/97 (Smijers, De Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap, 202).
157. For surviving compositions by him, see Thomas Noblitt, "Additional Compositions by Paulus de Rhoda?" Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 37 (1987): 49-63.
158. The composer, who according to the obituary of the confraternity was the son of a Laurentius de Roda ('s-Hertogenbosch, Archief van de Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap, MS 48, fol. 34r), had matriculated at the University of Louvain on 6 June 1474 (Joseph Wils, Matricule de l'Université de Louvain [Brussels: Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, 1946], 2:304).
159. Dragan Plamenac, "Autour d'Ockeghem," Revue musicale 9 (1928): 26-47, at 38.
160. Guillaume Cretin, Déploration de Guillaume Cretin sur le trépas de Jean Okeghem, ed. Ernest Thoinan (Paris: A. Claudin, 1864), 37. In formal contexts Ockeghem is usually identified either as a cleric or as the first chaplain of the king of France.
161. David Fallows, Dufay (London: J. M. Dent, 1982), 73-74 and 288 n. 5.
162. See also the statement by the Burgundian court official Philips Wielant: "He also took pleasure in music and was himself a musician. He could compose and sing willingly though he by no means had a good voice" (Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy [London: Longman, 1973], 162).
163. Bonnie J. Blackburn, Edward E. Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller, eds., A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 336 and 345.
164. Wegman, Born for the Muses, 72 n. 8.
165. For the illumination, see Fallows, Dufay, ill. 7, facing p. 21.
166. For academic dress in general, see Aleksander Gieysztor, "Management and Resources," in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1, Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 108-43, at 139-41;
167. and Jacques Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 125.
168. Fallows, Dufay, ills, 1 and 2, facing p. 20;
169. This view was universal, backed as it was by the authority of Boethius: "sound is defined as a percussion of air remaining undissolved all the way to the hearing"; trans, after Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, trans. Calvin Al. Bower (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 11.
170. For the correlation between such concepts and parts of speech in ordinary language, see Frederick C. Copleston, Aquinas (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), 84-85.
171. Margaret Bent has stressed that the only nouns related to cantare super librum denote either the singers or the act of singing (cantatio and concentus, cantantes or concinentes); Bent, "Resfacta and Cantare Super Librum," this JOURNAL 36 (1983): 371-91, at 381-82.
172. See also Blackburn, "On Compositional Process," 256.
173. For the following paragraph, see particularly Blackburn, "On Compositional Frocess 262-65.
174. To make or to compose is to work on or put together material provided by nature, which is what the artist does. To write, finally, is to copy (scribere). For this see Copleston, Aquinas, 141-46;
175. Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 95-97;
176. and idem, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 173-80.
177. These and related issues are further explored in Ruth Hannas, "Humanistic Light on 'What Is Res Facta,' " Revue belge de musicologie 22 (1968): 51-63, esp. 53-56.
178. Blackburn, "On Compositional Process," 261-62;
179. Ernest T. Ferand, "What Is Res Facta?" this JOURNAL 10 (1957): 141-50;
180. Markus Bandur, "Res facta/chose faite," Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1972- ).
181. For more examples, and for an archivally based discussion of res facta and counterpoint, see Wright, Music and Ceremony, 344-54.
182. Josquin des Prez, in his well-known motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, uses fattura as an apparent synonym of res facta; see Josquin des Prez, Werken, ed. Albert Smijers (Amsterdam: G. Alsbach, 1922-69), Motetten, Bundel 5, Aflevering 14, 140.
183. Franz Xaver Haberl, "Wilhelm du Fay: Monographische Studie über dessen Leben und Werke," Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1885): 397-530, at 443.
184. Nicolle Le Vestu's poem on Ockeghem's motet in thirty-six parts opens with the line "Ung facteur fut Okghem nommé" and continues "qui feist ... ung motet"; Plamenac, "Autour d'Ockeghem," 37.
185. Similarly, François Villon, sometime around 1460, speaks of "faiseurs de laiz, de motés, et rondeaux"; Villon, Complete Poems, ed. and trans. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 268.
186. Helmuth Osthoff, Josquin Desprez, 2 vols. (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1962-65), 1:211.
187. Schweiger, "Archivalische Notizen," 373.
188. Smijers, De Illustre Lieve Vrouwebroederschap, 202.
189. Andrew Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England: Studies of Sources and Patronage (New York: Garland 1989) 278.
190. Bent, "Resfacta and Cantare Super Librum," 378: "To remove the presumption ot improvisation from [Tinctoris's comments on counterpoint and res facta, quoted below] is to present unwritten and written composition or counterpoint as stages in a continuous line of endeavor, based on the same training, rather than as the separate elements implied by our written-versus-improvised antithesis." It seems doubtful however, that this antithesis is necessarily ours. Rather, Bent's own perception of a continuous line of endeavor" seems to be the modern view, as articulated for instance, by Jean-Jacques Nattiez: "There is a continuum of possible cases, running from strict reproduction (but does that ever exist?) to completely free improvisation (does that, also ever exist?)";
191. see his Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, trans. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 88.
192. Reservations about Bents interpretation have been expressed by Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, "Arten improvisierter Mehrstimmigkeit nach Lehrtexten des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts," Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 7 (1983): 166-83, at 181-83;
193. Improvisation in oral traditions almost always involves well-defined models (thematic material, formulas, schemes, cantus firmi) and agreed rules of realizing the performance, even if these are not verbally articulated or codified in writing; see Bernard Lortat-Jacob, "Improvisation: Le Modèle et ses réalisations," in L'Improvisation dans les musiques de tradition orale, ed. B. Lortat-Jacob (Paris: SELAF, 1987), 45-59.
194. Edmund A. Bowles, Musikleben im 15. Jahrhundert, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, III/8 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1977), 103 and 109.
195. Salomon described the practice of cantus super librum in four parts, which was to be led by a conductor (rector), who could be either one of the four singers or a fifth participant and in which the singers were required to be in contact with and see each other ("notandum, quod inter se habeant notitiam vocum suarum et quod alter alterum vident cantare); see Ernst (sic) T. Ferand, Die Improvisation in der Musik (Zürich: Rhein Verlag, 1939), 136-38;
196. idem, "The 'Howling in Seconds' of the Lombards: A Contribution to the Early History of Polyphony," The Musical Quarterly 25 (1939): 313-24, at 315;
197. and Joseph Smits van Waesberghe, "Singen und Dirigieren der mehrstimmigen Musik im Mittelalter," in Diapason de omnibus: Ausgewählte Aufsätze von Joseph Smits van Waesberghe, ed. C.J. Maas (Buren: Frits Knuf, 19176), 165-87.
198. Frank A. D'Accone, "The Performance of Sacred Music in Italy During Josquin's Time, c. 1475-1525," in Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky widi Bonnie J. Blackburn (Lon-don: Oxford University Press, 15176), 601-18, at 604.
199. David Fallows, "Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400-1474," in Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, ed. Stanley Boorman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1099-59, at 116.
200. Frank A. D'Accone, "The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence During the Fifteenth Century," this JOURNAL 14 (1961): 307-58, at 341.
201. Lille, Archives départementales du Nord, Registre de la Chambre des Comptes, B 2127, fol. 225v (July 1482). I am grateful to Paula Higgins for drawing my attention to this document, which is published, though without explicit date, call number, or foliation, in Edmond Vander Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXe siècle, 8 vols. (Brussels, 1867-88; reprint, New York: Dover, 1969), 7-302.
202. For more on De Vos see Van Doorslaer, "La Chapelle musicale," 143.
203. Wegman, Born for the Muses, 67-68 ("tenoriste sConincx van Napels").
204. Ghent, Stadsarchief (hereafter SAG), 400.27, fol. 35r: "Philips du Passage, tenoriste in de cappelle ons harde gheduchts heeren ende princhen, van zekere catteylen hem toebehorende, die hij uter stede dede voeren, iij sc. iiij den. gr." See more on Du Passaige in Paula Higgins, "In
205. and particularly Van Doorslaer, "La Chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau," 32.
206. Leeman L. Perkins, "Musical Patronage at the Royal Court of France under Charles VII and Louis XI (1422-83)," this JOURNAL 37 (1984): 507-66, at 520-22 and 553.
207. For his Burgundian activities, see Van Doorslaer, "La Chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau," 23;
208. Wegman, Born for the Muses, 150, 153, and 154.
209. see also Tinctoris, Terminorum musicae diffinitorium: "Tenor est cuiusque cantus compositi fundamentum relationis. Tenorista est ille qui tenorem canit."
210. Rob C. Wegman, "Music and Musicians at the Guild of Our Lady in Bergen op Zoom, c.1470-1510," Early Music History 9 (1989): 175-249, at 185.
211. Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 322-24.
212. Secus autem, ubi multis 'ad librum' (ut aiunt) concinentibus, tenorista verba explicans pro omnibus satisfacit"; after Joseph Smits van Waesberghe, ed., Herbeni Traiectensis De natura cantus ac miraculis vocis, Beiträge zur rheinischen Musikgeschichte 22 (Cologne: Arno Volk Verlag, 1957), 58.
213. For the "nonmade" nature of the artist's conception, known as the exemplary form or idea, see Eco, Art and Beauty, 107-11;
214. and idem, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 166-72. Bent, however, argues implausibly that res facta is "usually but not necessarily written" ("Resfacta and Cantare Super Librum," 380 and 391).
215. See, in general, Ong, Orality and Literacy, which deals with many of the issues discussed here.
216. They would discover a thousand errors committed against the common rules, and could see all the endless dissonances of which those parts are replete" (Ernest T. Ferand, "Improvised Vocal Counterpoint in the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque," Annales musicologiques 4 [1956]: 129-74, at 154-55). Evidently, for Zarlino authority resided principally in "the common rules," for which reason even improvisations needed to be imagined as if written down as "works." By contrast, for a late medieval theorist like Tinctoris authority resided principally in the human ear, for which reason even compositions needed to be imagined as if heard in sound. This might explain his permissive attitude to parallel fifths and octaves in certain contexts (Wegman, "Sense and Sensibility," 312 n. 4), and his willingness to accept that what sometimes looks incorrect on paper may still sound pleasing to many listeners (as in Ockeghem's lost Missa la belle se seit; C II.xxxii.5-6).
217. Bent further explored this issue in "Editing Early Music: The Dilemma of Translation," Early Music 22 (1994): 373-92.
218. For a good example, see Theodor Göllner, "Notationsfragmente aus einer Organistenwerkstatt des 15.
219. Jahrhunderts," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 24 (1967): 170-77, at 172-74 and pl. 2.
220. See Wegman, "Sense and Sensibility."
221. Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, 11: "Sound is not produced (redditur) without some pulsation and percussion; and pulsation and percussion cannot exist by any means unless motion precedes them ... if all things remained still and motion was absent, it would be a necessary consequence that no sound would be made (fieri). " See also Tinctoris's" definitions of instrumentum ("corpus naturaliter aut artificialiter soni causativum") and musica organica ("illa quae fit in instrumentis flatu sonum causantibus"; Terminorum musicae diffinitorium).
222. Tinctoris, Opera theoretica 2:159-77.
223. In a fragmentary source for the Complexus effectuum musices, surviving at Cambrai, the list was expanded from twenty to twenty-seven effects; see Ronald Woodley, "The Printing and Scope of Tinctoris's Fragmentary Treatise De inuentione et usu musice," Early Music History 5 (1985): 239-68, at 251-54 and 263-66.
224. The treatise is also discussed, edited, and translated (in Italian and German, respectively) in Luisa Zanoncelli, Sulla estetica di Johannes Tinctoris (Bologna: Forni, 1979),
225. and Thomas A. Schmid, "Der Complexus effectuum musices des Johannes Tinctoris," Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 10 (1986): 121-60.
226. For other evidence concerning the effects popularly attributed to music, see Isabelle Cazeaux, French Music in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), 81-88.
227. idem, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 6-15 and 134-36;
228. and Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1955), 253-61.
229. Denis's comments are summarized in Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, 256.
230. The following translation is based on Jan A. Bank, "Uit het verleden van de Nederlandsche kerkmuziek," Sint-Gregorius-Blad 64 (Feb. 1939): no pagination: "Some, who were wont to sing [polyphony] from time to time, confess that there is pride and a certain lasciviousness of mind in such song. If, therefore, it should be excused in any way, then it would not seem permissible or commendable unless it served and was practiced to inspire devotion. For melodies do provoke some people most strongly to contemplation and piety. That is why the church allows organs. Yet if it is practiced to please the hearing, and to divert those present, the women in particular, then it is undoubtedly objectionable.... Finally, although discant does inspire some people to devotion and to a contemplation of the heavenly things, it would seem to distract the senses too much from attention to actual prayer."
231. For examples of this expression (itself a widely reiterated commonplace), see, for example, Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 171 ("more divine than human");
232. and Schuler, "Die Musik in Konstanz," 159 ("angelically sweet singing").
233. Adam von Fulda, Musica (1490): "Nam musica est etiam philosophia, sed vera philosophia, meditatio mortis continua";
234. Martin Gerbert, ed., Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra, iii (Saint-Blaise, 1784), 335.
235. Edward MacCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (London: Duckworth, 1954), 2:401.
236. e siècle 49 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1986), 383-84;
237. Craig Wright, "Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions," this JOURNAL 28 (1975): 175-229, at 216 and 228.
238. Guillaume Dufay possessed such an image; see his executors' account, Lille, Archives du Nord, 4G 1313, pp. 9 ("Item, j. drap de painture en le cambre qui fu Sainte Alexandre, iij s. ensamble et le figure d'un mort xviij d.") and 21 ("Item, a maistre Gobert le Mannier dit Gobin fu fait legat de le figure de le mort, estimée xviij d.")
239. Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (New York: Oxford University Press 1981), 130 and 132.
240. See also the description of Ockeghem's Requiem Mass as "exquise et très-parfaicte" in Cretin, Déploration, ed. Thoinan, 34.
241. Trans. after Osthoff, Josquin Desprez 1:222.
242. For the modernist aesthetic of the author, see Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author,"
243. and Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?" in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London and New York: Longman, 1988), 166-72 and 196-210.
244. The gradual emergence of a medieval sense of authorship in prologues to glosses and commentaries, in the period 1100-1400, is traced in Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 2d ed. (Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1988).
245. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992) 223.
246. An interesting exception is the chapter decision, made at Cambrai cathedral on 8 January 1515, that "henceforth the motet which is usually sung at the feast of Epiphany is to be removed and in its place is to be sung another one suitable for this season taken from the works [opera] of the late Dufay"; Wright, at "Dufay at Cambrai," 220 and 229.
247. See Rob C. Wegman, "Miserere supplicanti Dufay: The Creation and Transmission of Guillaume Dufay's Missa Ave regina celorum," The Journal of Musicology 13 (1995): 18-54, esp. 50-54.
248. William F. Prizer, "Music and Ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the Fair and the Order of the Golden Fleece," Early Music History 5 (1985): 113-53, at 133, 142, and 150.
249. For similar reports elsewhere, see Cazeaux, French Music in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 58.
250. Bowers, "Obligation, Agency, and Laissez-faire," 13.
251. A.-C. De Schrevel, Histoire du séminaire de Bruges, 2 vols. (Bruges: Louis de Plancke, 1895), 1:158-59 (15 March 1485: "unam moralitatem quam ipse succentor composuit"). A new polyphonic mass composed (facta) by De Groote was copied at St. Donatian's in 1476;
252. Dewitte, "Boeken bibliotheekwezen," 93.
253. E xix.6-12; trans. based on the passage as given in Ronald Woodley, "Tinctoris's Italian Translations of the Golden Fleece Statutes: A Text and a (Possible) Context," Early Music History 8 (1988): 173-244, at 192.
254. Legrand, Archiloge sophie - Livre de bonnes meurs, 383.
255. On the connection between authorship and immortality, see also Foucault, "What Is an Author?" 198.
256. For Cornelio di Lorenzo, see Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 161-67, 318, and 320-26;
257. and D'Accone, "The Singers of San Giovanni," 334, 337, and 341-43.
258. For Jean Cordier, see the (probably exaggerated) report that he received one hundred ducats per month at Milan (Evelyn S. Welch, "Sight, Sound and Ceremony in the Chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza," Early Music History 12 [1993]: 151-90, at 152);
259. De Schrevel, Histoire du séminaire de Bruges 1:160, 167-75, 179, and 181;
260. Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples, 41, 52, and 91;
261. Franz Xaver Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum' und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16.
262. Jahrhunderts," Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 3 (1887): 189-296, at 230;
263. Bram Kempers, Painting, Power, and Patronage: The Rise of the Professional Artist in Renaissance Italy, trans. Beverley Jackson (London: Penguin, 1994), 6-7.
264. On the emergence and development of Renaissance music historiography, see Jessie Ann Owens, "Music Historiography and the Definition of the 'Renaissance,'" Notes 47 (1990): 305-30.
265. e siècle," Humanisme et Renaissance 4 (1938): 237-73, at 241-42 and 260-61. The relevant chapter decision illustrates an awareness, not so much of author's rights (the magister cantus was not asked for his opinion, nor would the chapter have had any need for it), as of compositional novelty (defined here as the employer's privilege to hear a work first) and implicitly of musical property. The articulation of such values and concerns around 1500 illustrates the widening gulf between composition and improvisation: "novelty" and "property" are meaningful in connection with the former practice, but hardly with the latter.
266. Staehelin, Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs 2:46-47.
267. See also Pietzsch, Zur Pflege der Musik, 144, for a slightly later example of "composer" being used as a professional designation outside court documents: the matriculation registers of the University of Tübingen record the enrollment, in 1519, of "Johannes Siess componista principis Vdalrici [of Württemberg]."
268. Quoted after Lewis Lockwood, "Josquin at Ferrara: New Documents and Letters," in Josquin des Prez, ed. Lowinsky with Blackburn, 103-37, at 132-33,
269. My interpretation of this document differs substantially from those put forward by Lockwood, and by Lowinsky in his "Musical Genius," 479-91.
270. For an excellent case study, see Craig Wright, "Antoine Brumel and Patronage at Paris," in Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Fenlon, 37-60.
271. See Lockwood, "Josquin at Ferrara," 114-15 and 137.
272. Baldessare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (London: Penguin, 1967), 145.
273. (Johannes Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea [Basel, 1562], 542).
274. The difference is neatly summed up by Dahlhaus's observation that "a judgment of art [indicium] concerns the formal and technical perfection or imperfection of a structure, while a judgment of taste proclaims an object beautiful or ugly" (Esthetics of Music, 35).
275. An extremely interesting early source for the connection between judgments of taste and authorship is Paolo Cortese's De cardinalatu libri tres (Castel Cortesiano, 1510); see Nino Pirrotta, "Music and Cultural Tendencies in Fifteenth-Century Italy," this JOURNAL 19 (1966): 127-61, at 142-44, 147-61, and esp. 154-55.
276. For the later conceptualization and critical valuation of Personalstil, see James Haar, "A Sixteenth-Century Attempt at Music Criticism," this JOURNAL 36 (1983): 191-209, at 194.
277. Roger Bray, "Music and the Quadrivium in Early Tudor England," Music & Letters 76 (1995): 1-18, at 9.
278. A good example from Busnoys's environment is the anonymous Missa L'ardant desir; see Rob C. Wegman, "Another Mass by Busnoys?" Music & Letters 71 (1990): 1-19;
279. and idem, "Mensural Intertextuality in the Sacred Music of Antoine Busnoys," in Antoine Busnoys, ed. Higgins (forthcoming).
280. Terminorum musicae diffinitorium. On the sense of secrecy and mystery surrounding musical expertise, especially in the sixteenth century, see Ferand, "Improvised Vocal Counterpoint," 144-45.
281. As Eamon Duffy observes, guilds "were often more or less informal parts of the structure of the parish, contributing in a variety of ways to its worship and social life, and often growing naturally out of ad hoc arrangements to meet specific parochial needs.... As gilds might come almost casually into existence, so they might melt away once again into the body of the parish at large" (Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 149).
282. Dewitte, "De geestelijkheid van de Brugse Lieve-Vrouwkerk," 123.
283. For an excellent introduction, see the chapter "Corporate Christians" in Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 131-54.
284. Smijers, De Illustre Lieve Vrouwebroederschap, 182 (1486/87: "ons sengeren ... om vrolyck met malcanderen te wesen").
285. On the late medieval perception of saints as friends, helpers, indeed "kynd neyghbours," see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 160-61.
286. For Josquin's motet, see Josquin des Prez, Werken, Motetten, Bundel 5, Aflevering 14, 140;
287. and Richard Sherr, "Illibata Dei Virgo Nutrix and Josquin's Roman Style," this JOURNAL 41 (1988): 434-64, esp. 451-52.
288. See Loyset Compère, Opera omnia, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 15 (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1958-72), 4:32.
289. e siècle (Chambéry, 1878; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), 23 (1414: magister citare), 30 (1446: magister citharizatorum), 34 (1440: magister strimie alias yspaludie).
290. Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Binges, 187;
291. Van Doorslaer, "La Chapelle musicale," 23;
292. Cf. Fallows, Dufay, 77-78: Dufay, Du Sart, Georget de Brelles, and Hemart were active at Cambrai in the 1460s and early 1470s, Regis maintained close connections with Dufay, and Tinctoris had been a singer in the cathedral for a brief period in 1460.
293. Craig Wright, Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364-1419: A Documentary History, Musicological Studies 28 (Henryville, Ottawa, and Binningen: Institute of Medieval Music, 1979), 32-34;
294. Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, 183-88;
295. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990), 327-28.
296. The composer Johannes Lupi, master of the choirboys at Cambrai (1527-35 and 1537-39), requested three days before his death on 20 December 1539 that he be buried in the cathedral next to his predecessors Denis de Hollain (1485-1503) and Louis Vanpulaer (1503-7), a request that was granted as a special favor on the same day. See Bonnie J. Blackburn, "Johannes Lupi and Lupus Hellinck: A Double Portrait," The Musical Quarterly 59 (1973), 547-83, at 560.
297. This example provides further corroboration of Paula Higgins's argument that "the trend around 1500 and beyond to acknowledge one's musical genealogy by claiming to have studied under a particular master mirrored the gradually evolving role of the master of the choirboys from that of skilled craftsman to creative mentor," a role expressed, significantly, in metaphors of kinship and lineage ("Musical 'Parents' and Their 'Progeny,' " 171).
298. Higgins's and my conclusions intersect in the possibility for confraternities to have rulers designated, not as "dean" with sworn "councillors," as was most common, but as "father" with "children." For example, the confraternity of Sts. Peter and Paul in the church of St. Nicholas in Ghent, for citizens who had made a pilgrimage to Rome, was governed, at its foundation in July 1522, by a "vader" with twelve "kinderen." See Frans de Potter, Gent, van den oudsten tijd tot heden, 8 vols. (Ghent: C. Annoot-Braeckman, 1883-1901), 3:234-36.
299. and idem, "De Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap te 's-Hertogenbosch [1500-1525]," Tijdschrift van de Vereeniging voor Nederlandsche Muziekgeschiedenis 14 (1932): 48-105, at 55, 74, and 82.
300. Text edited with commentary in The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871: A Neapolitan Repertory of Sacred and Secular Music of the Late Fifteenth Century, ed. Isabel Pope and Masakata Kanazawa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 635-36;
301. and Johannes Ockeghem Collected Works, ed. Dragan Plamenac and Richard Wexler, 3 vols. (Boston: American Musicological Society, 1959-92), 3:lxxxiv-lxxxvi.
302. For more on the piece see Higgins, "Antoine Busnois," 156-59;
303. and idem, "Musical 'Parents' and their 'Progeny,'" 179.