The early use of the sign Φ

Early Music

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 199-224

  Bent, Margaret ^a,b  

^a ALL SOULS COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

^b British Academy

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449092358     PISSN: 03061078     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/em/24.2.199     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Here I sometimes follow a common practice in referring to signatures with and without a stroke as 'cut' and 'uncut', although there is little historical justification for this latter terminology. Eunice Schroeder gives, among early words used by theorists for the stroke, virgula, tractus (tractulus), paragraphum, linea, strich, strichlein, in 'The stroke comes full circle: Φ and ¢ in writings on music, ca.1450-1540', Musica disciplina, xxxvi (1982), pp.119-66
2. Facsimiles can be seen in many places including, of Tout par compas, C. Parrish, The notation of medieval music (New York, 1957), pl. LXII
3. and of Belle bonne, W. Apel, The notation of polyphonic music, 900-1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1942), facs. 88
4. The Cordier pieces are edited in Early fifteenth century music, i, ed. G. Reaney, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, xi/1 (American Institute of Musicology, 1955)
5. It has been argued by Craig Wright that Cordier might be one Baude Fresnel who died in 1397: 'Tapissier and Cordier, new documents and conjectures', Musical quarterly, xlix (1973), pp.177-89. Even without the further suggestion that these pieces might be autograph, because of their highly individual notation, this dating raises problems. The constant exception that has to be made for the Cordier pieces, and the 30-year gap that would separate an early dating (before 1400) from his other songs in Oxford 213 (1430s), leads me increasingly to believe that they may be considerably later than 1400, perhaps in composition as well as in script. Without any firm biographical identification, a date late in the 1410s or even in the 1420s would accord better with their style and usage
6. Early fifteenth century music, iii, ed. G. Reaney, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, xi/3 (American Institute of Musicology, 1966), Grossin, Kyrie, pp.xiii, 42 (no.19)
7. Polyphonia sacra, a Continental miscellany of the fifteenth century, ed. C. van den Borren (Burnham, Bucks, 1932; 2/1962), no.8, p.53
8. See Schroeder, 'The stroke comes full circle', and A. M. Busse Berger, Mensuration and proportion signs (Oxford, 1993), who defends a 2:1 proportional reading for Φ
9. C. Hamm, A chronology of the works of Guillaume Dufay based on a study of mensural practice (Princeton, NJ, 1964) prescribes performance a third faster: see pp.38-42,62-3. He calls Φ 'not a sign of proportion but merely a tempo indication'. Contrary to this distinction, used by several writers, for present purposes I treat any change to the speed at which the notation is to be read (faster or slower) as a general category of tempo change, of which a precise tempo relationship expressed as a proportion is a special subset
10. For reduction by one-third, see also A. E. Planchart, 'The relative speed of tempora in the period of Dufay', RMA research chronicle, xvii (1981), pp.33-51
11. See Schroeder, 'The stroke comes full circle', pp.133-7
12. and R. C. Wegman, 'What is "acceleratio mensurae"?', Music and letters, lxxiii (1992), pp.515-24
13. First pointed out in R. Hoppin, 'Notational licences of Guillaume de Machaut', Musica disciplina, xiv (1960), pp.20-23
14. The works of Johannes Ciconia, ed. M. Bent and A. Hallmark, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, xxiv (Monaco, 1985), no.45. Oxford 229 is a leaf from the fragmentary manuscript known as Padua A
15. The consequences of the present argument for so-called tempus perfectum diminutum will be explored separately. There is less basis than ever for the widespread practice of supplying editorial Φ signatures in a period where they do not exist as normal currency, and where the earliest uses of the signature now appear to have carried various other meanings. For an example of an unsignalled shift in the course of a piece, see Old Hall, Gloria no.24, where all voices are in unsigned C until the upper voice shifts to signed O (bar 93) requiring the new semibreve to be equivalent to the previous and simultaneous minims of major prolation. The Old Hall Manuscript, ed. A. Hughes and M. Bent, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, xlvi, 3 vols. (American Institute of Musicology, 1969-73)
16. For the last, see M. Bent, 'The Yoxford Credo', Essays in musicology: a tribute to Alvin Johnson, ed. L. Lockwood and E. Roesner (American Musicological Society, 1990), pp.26-51
17. tia for consequentia (14th century) and Φ for continens (13th century)
18. Early fifteenth century music, ii, ed. G. Reaney, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, xi/2 (American Institute of Musicology, 1959)
19. G. Legrant, Gloria, pp.xxxi, 53
20. E.g. The sacred music of Gilles Binchois, ed. P. Kaye (Oxford, 1992), Credo no. 19
21. A. Blachly, Mensuration and tempo in 15th-century music: cut signatures in theory and practice (PhD diss., Columbia U., 1995), briefly considered, and as quickly rejected, the idea that Φ might be a vocal scoring indicator, on grounds that it is used sometimes for duets, sometimes for tutti passages. Indeed, it does not consistently represent one or the other
22. Cambrai 6 (alone) pairs the Gloria and Credo printed by Kaye as 1a, 1b. Three other sources outside Cambrai, Oxford 213, Bologna Q15 and Trent 92 pair the Gloria 1a with the Credo 'a versi' printed as no.19. Liane Curtis argues that the much less widely circulated Credo 1b (otherwise only in Trent 92) represents a revised pairing with a Credo newly provided to match more closely the Gloria 1a. L. Curtis, Music manuscripts and their production in fifteenth-century Cambrai (PhD diss., Chapel Hill, 1991), p.119
23. Nos.3a/3b in Kaye's edition