A singer at the fountain: Homage and irony in Ciconia's 'sus une fontayne'

Music and Letters

Volumn 82, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 361-390

  Stone, Anne ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 66349138346     PISSN: 00274224     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ml/82.3.361     Document Type: Review

References (73)

1. Heinrich Besseler, 'Hat Matheus de Perusio Epoche gemacht?', Die Musikforschung, viii (1955), 19-23.
2. A recent complete-works edition has been edited by Margaret Bent and Anne Hallmark as The Works of Johannes Ciconia ('Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century', xxiv), Monaco, 1984.
3. The dissertation by Annette Kreutziger-Herr, Johannes Ciconia [ca. 1370-1412] ('Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft', xxxix), Hamburg, 1991, treats Ciconia's career in the cultural context of early humanistic Padua, and Anne Hallmark's documentary study of Ciconia is forthcoming.
4. An edition and translation of Ciconia's theoretical treatises Nova Musica and De proportionibus has been published by Oliver Ellsworth ('Greek and Latin Music Theory', ix), Lincoln, Nebraska, & London, 1993. The proceedings of the first international conference on Johannes Ciconia, held in 1998, Johannes Ciconia: musicien de la transition, ed. Philippe Vendrix, Paris, is forthcoming.
5. The stylistic designation ars subtilior was proposed in Ursula Günther, 'Das Ende der Ars Nova', Die Musikforschung, xvi (1963), 105-20.
6. For more on the ars subtilior, see also Anne Stone, 'Che cos'è di più sottile riguardo l'ars subtilior?', Rivista italiana di musicologia, xxxi (1996), 1-31.
7. For a discussion of the canon, see Ciconia, The Works of Johannes Ciconia, ed. Bent & Hallmark, p. 218, where it is listed as an opus dubium;
8. and Virginia Newes, Fuga and Related Contrapuntal Procedures in European Polyphony, 1340-1420 (unpublished dissertation), Brandeis University, 1987, pp. 197-204.
9. See Anne Hallmark, 'Some Evidence for French Influence in Northern Italy, c. 1400', in Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, ed. Stanley Boorman, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 193-225, at p. 209.
10. On the formal and generic oddities of 'Aler m'en veus'/'O Beatum incendium', see Julie Cumming, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, Cambridge, 1999, p. 143.
11. Ursula Günther, 'Zitate in französischen Liedsätzen der Ars Nova und Ars Subtilior', Musica disciplina, xxvi (1972), 55-68, at p. 62.
12. In the three largest sources of French polyphony of Ciconia's time, unknown sign is used consistently to indicate this mensuration, and never to indicate anything else. Other notational means were in some cases used, but the association between unknown sign and tempus imperfectum diminulum is clear. The sóurces are Modena A; Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Musée Condé, MS 564 (hereafter Chantilly 564); and Paris, Bibliothèque de France, n. acq. fr. 6771 (Reina Codex). For a theoretical description of the sign, see Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi, Expositiones tractatus practice cantus mensurabilis Johannis de Muris, ed. F. Alberto Gallo ('Antiqui musicae italicae scriptores', iii), Bologna, 1966, p. 142.
13. Ciconia, in his De proportionibus, lists unknown sign as a sign of imperfect time and minor prolation, but does not refer to its proportional relationship with unknown sign (ed. Ellsworth, p. 443). For a comparative discussion of the notation of the Modena and Chantilly codices, see Anne Stone, Writing Rhythm in Late Medieval Italy: Notation and Style in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, a.M.5.24 (unpublished dissertation), Harvard University, 1994, Chap. 2.
14. Richard Hoppin, review of Suzanne Clercx, Johannes Ciconia, in Musical Quarterly, xlvii (1961), 416-20.
15. Suzanne Clercx and Willi Apel both believed that 'Sus une fontayne' was composed in Avignon around 1370 (Apel, French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century ('Corpus mensurabilis musicae', liii), Rome, 1970, i, p. xxiv).
16. The relationship between Ciconia and Filippotto da Caserta has also recently been discussed by Reinhard Strohm in 'Filippotto da Caserta ovvero i francesi in Lombardia', in In cantu et sermone: a Nino Pirrotta nel suo 80° compleanno, ed. Fabrizio Della Seta & Franco Piperno, Florence, 1989, pp. 63-74,
17. and Yolanda Plumley, 'Ciconia's Sui une fontayne and the Legacy of Philippus de Caserta', in Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition, ed. Philippe Vendrix, Paris, in press.
18. 'Zitate in französischen Liedsätzen der Ars Nova und Ars Subtilior', p. 67.
19. Since Machaut is called 'flour de toutes flours' in the ballade 'Armes, amours, dames, chevalerie'/'Flour de toutes flours', there is no question that a 'flour' can refer to a man. I do not mean to suggest that there is no erotic tone here; rather, it seems to me, the borrowing of the commonplace poetic accoutrements of courtly love to describe hearing music eroticizes the act of hearing in a manner similar to the eroticization of the act of writing in some courtly poetry; see Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: the Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry, Ithaca, NY, 1987, pp. 96-103.
20. 'Signing Off in the Middle Ages: Medieval Textuality and Strategies of Authorial Self-Naming', in Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. A. N. Doane & Carol Braun Pasternack, Madison & London, 1991, pp. 162-78.
21. For the use of quotation in the fourteenth-century song literature, see Günther, 'Zitate in französischen Liedsätzen der Ars Nova und Ars Subtilior'; Yolanda Plumley, 'Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars nova: the Case of Esperance and the En attendant songs', Early Music History, xviii (1999), 287-363;
22. and Elizabeth Eva Leach, 'Fortune's Demesne: the Interrelation of Text and Music in Machaut's Il mest avis (B22), De fortune (B23) and Two Related Anonymous Balades', Early Music History, xix (2000), 47-79.
23. Patricia Waugh, Metafiction: the Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, London & New York, 1984.
24. see R. Barton Palmer, 'The Metafictional Machaut', Studies in the Literary Imagination, xx (1987), 23-40.
25. Our uncertainty on this score is a result of a tension between autobiography and fiction that is found in abundance in French narrative poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and has been studied particularly in the works of Machaut. The most famously recalcitrant of Machaut's narrative works in this regard is the Voir dit, which purports to tell the 'true story' of the elderly Machaut's amorous relationship, conducted mostly in letters, with the very young 'Tout-belle'. The degree to which the Voir dit is autobiographical as opposed to fictional has been debated by scholars for years. For an overview of the debates, see William S. Calin, A Poet at the Fountain: Essays on the Narrative Verse of Guillaume de Machaut, Lexington, 1974, pp. 167-72.
26. e siècle, Geneva, 1985, pp. 159-79.
27. On the idea of 'pseudo-autobiography' as an inherent component of the lyric, see idem, 'Le clerc e l'écriture: le Voir Dit de Guillaume de Machaut et la définition du dit', in Literatur in der Gesellschaft der Spätmittelalters, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Heidelberg, 1980, pp. 151-68,
28. and Laurence de Looze, Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century, Gainesville, 1998, esp. pp. 1-39.
29. Günther first suggested this interpretation in 'Zitate in französischen Liedsätzen der Ars Nova und Ars Subtilior', pp. 65-7, and later amplified it in 'Fourteenth-Century Music with Texts Revealing Performance Practice', in Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Musis, ed. Boorman, pp. 253-70, at pp. 264-6.
30. The relationship between the three 'En attendant ...' ballades is discussed in Reinhard Strohm, 'Filippotto da Caserta ovvero i francesi in Lombardia'. Strohm suggested that Galiot's 'En attendant' ballade quotes Machaut's 'En amer la douce vie', but this has been corrected by Yolanda Plumley in 'Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars nova', p. 297.
31. Plumley, 'Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars nova', pp. 294-301; she has also pointed out that a snatch of the melody of 'Esperance, qui en mon cuer s'embat' appears in the cantus of 'Sus une fontayne' soon after the 'En attendant' quotation, in the section of the piece that Günther argues it is true close. It is hard to say whether this is indeed a quotation of the anonymous 'Esperance ...', which might serve as a winking reference to the intertextual game of the three 'En attendant' pieces, or whether Ciconia was merely quoting Filippotto's 'En attendant', where the 'Esperance' melody appears beginning in bar 12.
32. 'Filippotto da Caserta ovveri i francesi in Lombardia', pp. 69-70.
33. Günther, 'Zitate in französischen Liedsätzen der Ars Nova und Ars Subtilior', p. 64, citing Geneviève Thibault, 'Emblèmes et devises des Visconti dans les oeuvres musicales du Trecento', L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento, ii, Certaldo, 1970, pp. 131-60.
34. and on Giangaleazzo Visconti, see E. R. Chamberlin, The Count of Virtue, New York, 1965.
35. For a documentary history of the cultural life of Pavia under Giangaleazzo Visconti, see Carlo Magenta, I Visconti e gli Sforza nel Castello di Pavia, Milan, 1883.
36. Nigel Wilkins, 'Some Notes on Philopoctus de Caserta', Nottingham Medieval Studies, viii (1964), 82-99, at pp. 84-6.
37. For this dating, see Strohm, 'Filipotto da Caserta ovvero i francesci in Lombardia', p. 69.
38. Yolanda Plumley has recently connected the imagery of 'En attendant soufrir m'estuet' with a group of other texts in which fountains, both working and broken, appear as central images. She suggests that these works have a stronger connection to northern circles than to Italian ones, and she casts doubt upon the hypothesis of Reinhard Strohm that the 'En attendant' trio was composed in Milan. This fits well with my reading of 'En attendant soufrir m'estuet' as an attempt to gain patronage by Bernabò Visconti, as does her proposed dating of 1383 for the three 'En attendant' works ('Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars nova', pp. 339-46).
39. Ernst Robert Curius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York, 1952, pp. 195-202.
40. see The Romance of the Rose, trans. Harry W. Dobbins, New York, 1962, p. 29.
41. Guillaume de Machaut: The Fountain of Love (La Fonteinne Amoreuse) and Two Other Love Vision Poems, ed. & trans. R. Barton Palmer, New York & London, 1993.
42. On the common practice of authors of medieval French poetry to encode their names within their texts, see de Looze, 'Signing off in the Middle Ages'. On Machaut's use of signatory anagrams, see idem, '"Mon nom trouveras": a New Look at the Anagrams of Guillaume de Machaut - the Enigmas, Responses, and Solutions', Romanic Review, lxxix (1988), 537-57.
43. John Nádas & Giuliano Di Bacco, 'Verso uno "stile internazionale" della musica nelle cappelle papali e cardinalizie durante il Grande Scisma (1378-1417): il caso di Johannes Ciconia da Liège', Capellae Apostolicae Sistinaeque Collectanea Acta Monumenta, iii (Vatican City, 1993), 1-74.
44. Thibault ('Emblèmes et devises des Visconti dans les oeuvres musicales du Trecento') first pointed out the Visconti imagery in Ciconia's 'Le ray au soleil' and proposed that Ciconia may have been in the employ of the Visconti, a suggestion most recently amplified by Reinhard Strohm, 'Filippotto da Caserta ovvero i francesci in Lombardia'. John Nádas & Agostino Ziino, in The Lucca Codex, Lucca, 1990, suggested the years 1397-1401 as likely for Ciconia's presence in Milan.
45. Anne Hallmark, however, has pointed out that other pieces found in Paduan sources that refer to the Visconti were not necessarily composed in Milan. See 'Protector, imo verus pater. Francesco Zabarella's Patronage of Johannes Ciconia', in Musk in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Essays in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Anthony Cummings & Jessie Ann Owens, Warren, Michigan, 1996, pp. 153-68, at p. 161.
46. The Lucca Codex, pp. 42-3.
47. See Edith Kirsch, Five Illuminated Manuscripts of Giangaleazzo Visconti, University Park, Pennsylvania, & London, 1991, where a facsimile of the illumination depicting the coronation is given as fig. 3, and discussed on pages 69-74.
48. For the political uses of art in Milan under the Visconti, see Evelyn Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan, New Haven & London, 1995.
49. Although no precise date can be given to Oxford 229, research places its copying to before 1410. According to Giulio Cattin, the S. Giustina fragment Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 1225 was copied by the Paduan copyist Roland de Casale between 1407 and 1410. Anne Hallmark's comparative study of the Padua fragments established that the manuscript of which Oxford is a fragment (Pad A) was copied before MS 1225, and therefore well before Ciconia's death in 1412. Although no terminus ante quem non can be adduced, it is a reasonable guess (though not crucial to my argument) that Ciconia's music was copied in Padua only after his arrival there. For the dating of Pad A and Pad D, see Cattin, 'Ricerche sulla musica a S. Giustina di Padova all'inizio del Quattrocento: il copista Rolando da Casale - nuovi frammenti musicali nell'Archivio di Stato', Annales musicologiques, vii (1978), 17-41,
50. and Hallmark, 'Some Evidence for French Influence in Northern Italy, c. 1400', p. 207.
51. For discussions of the dating and provenance of Modena A, see Nino Pirrotta, 'Il codice Estense Lat. 568 e la musica francese in Italia al principio del '400', in Atti della Reale Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Palermo, ser. 4, vol. v, pt. 1 (1944-5), 101-54;
52. Ursula Günther, 'Das Manuskript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.M.5, 24 (olim lat. 568=Mod)', Musica disciplina, xxiv (1970), 17-67;
53. and Anne Stone, Writing Rhythm in Late Medieval Italy, Chap. 1.
54. For more on the Modena A scribe's activity as an editor of rhythmic notation, see Stone, Writing Rhythm in Late Medieval Italy, Chap. 3.
55. Clercx, Johannes Ciconia, ii. 78-84. She discusses the mensuration signs in i. 117-18.
56. Ciconia, The Work of Johannes Ciconia, p. 216.
57. Margaret Bent, "The Early Use of the Sign Tenor Sign with vertical line, Early Music, xxiv (1996), 199-224.
58. For a discussion of the interpenetration of French and Italian notational theory in the fourteenth century, see F. Alberto Gallo, La teoria della notazione in Italia dalla fine del XIII all'inizio del XV secolo, Bologna, 1966;
59. The diffusion of French culture generally in fourteenth-century Italy is a commonplace; as stated by Ezio Levi, 'sulla fine del secolo XIV il mondo elegante italiano era completamente infranciosato' (Francesco di Vannozzo e la lirica nelle corti lombarde durante la seconda metà del secolo XIV, Florence, 1908, p. 281).
60. Regarding French influence on Italian literature and language, see Adolfo Bartoli, I primi due secoli della letteratura italiana, Milan, 1880, pp. 92-110.
61. On French musical style in Padua, see Hallmark, 'Some Evidence for French Influence in Northern Italy c. 1400'. Further information about the prevalence of French music in Padua and other north Italian centres will need to be gleaned by more circuitous means; for example, Giovanni Dondi, the Paduan scholar who taught at Padua and Pavia, had among his books Aristotle, Galen, Petrarch sonnets, and one book of music, 'in lingua Gallica'; see Vittorio Lazzarini, 'I libri di Giovanni Dondi', in idem, Scritti di paleografia e diplomatica, Padua, 1969, p. 267.
62. Gallo, Die Notationslehre im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, pp. 298-303.
63. For more on the Libellus's distribution, see Ulrich Michels, Die Musiktraktate des Johannes de Muris ('Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft', viii), Wiesbaden, 1970, pp. 27-33;
64. and Daniel Katz, The Earliest Sources for the Libellus Cantus Mensurabilis Secundum Johannem de Muris (unpublished dissertation), Duke University, 1989.
65. Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi, Expositiones tractatus practice cantus mensurabilis magistri Johannis de Muris, ed. Gallo. The original treatise of 1404 has been lost, but a reworked version from 1412 survives.
66. Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi, Tractatus practice cantus mensurabilis ad modum Ytalicoromm, ed. & trans. Jay Huff, Rome, 1972, p. 11.
67. Ciconia, Nova musica and De proportionibus, ed. & trans. Oliver Ellsworth. The treatise's Paduan connection is suggested by the large number of quotations from Marchetto da Padova's Lucidarium, enumerated by Ellsworth, pp. 18-19. Since no fourteenth-century source of Marchetto's works is known to have been copied outside Italy (and in fact his works seem to have had a considerably smaller circulation than those of Johannes de Muris even in Italy) it is unlikely that Ciconia would have been exposed to the Lucidarium before he arrived in northern Italy.
68. De proportionibus, ed. Ellsworth, pp. 441-3.
69. See Anne Stone, 'The Composer's Voice in the Late Fourteenth-Century Song: Four Case Studies', in Johannes Ciconia: musicien de la transition, ed. Vendrix, forthcoming.
70. Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut, Madison, 1984. Brownlee argues that Machaut was the first poet to articulate the modern notion of 'professional' poet.
71. The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 403.
72. See the discussions of this piece in Günther, 'Das Ende der Ars Nova', and Stone, 'Che cosa c'è di più sottile riguardo l'Ars subtilior?'. A modern edition is found in Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, xviii, p. 28.
73. A unicum in Chantilly 564, it is edited in Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, xix, pp. 62-5.