The Ars Antiqua

Ars Antiqua: The History of Music in Europe, 1160-1330 [working title] (July 2018)

 

Rationale

This book writes the history of music, poetry and related cultures from the middle of the twelfth century to the middle of the fourteenth.  It constructs this history from the perspective of those who composed, cultivated and valued its music and poetry, of the genres in which it was embodied, and of the institutions that sustained it.  The chronological scope of the book is determined by a coherent music-historical arc that saw the emergence of coherent and extensive musical repertories that have given the period the names ‘Notre-Dame’, Ars Antiqua, or the ‘long’ thirteenth century.  The period includes the history of Parisian organum, the chansons of the trouvères, the conductus, sequences, rhymed offices, as well as that of the beginnings of the motet; the end of the period saw the emergence of polyphonic song.  Music and poetry of the period have bequeathed evidence of activity from across what is known today as Western Europe, from modern Scotland to Slovenia and from Portugal to Poland.  This involves the history not only of the reception of French music in further-flung parts of the continent, but also the intercultural roles played, inter alia, by the lauda, Provencal song and regionally-conceived Latin monody.

Writing the history of music, and of the cultural web that supported it, in the period 1160-1330 has been characterized by previous scholarship that has focused on individual genres, rather than by attempts to inscribe the music of the period in a network of practices fuelled by the massive growth in population, and the concomitant rise of urbanization, the growth of universities and the history of the book (see the section on ‘Competition’ below. By contrast, ‘Ars Antiqua’: The History of Music in Europe, 1160-1330 takes as its subject not composers, repertories or genres but what the medieval mind would have understood as artes, and each of these is the subject of a chapter in this book; they can be as technical as ‘modal rhythm’, the liturgy, the refrain or as interdisciplinarily wide-ranging as the mixed form.   ‘Ars Antiqua’…, then stands apart from this context in aggressively innovative ways, by focusing chapters 3-5, 7-8 and 10-11 on cross-cutting themes – artes – that much better describe the complexity of the period’s music than conventionally genre-based accounts.  Each of these artes encompasses several genres: the ‘mixed form, for example, brings together organum, conductus and the romance while rithmus aligns the Latin motet, sequence, conductus and rhymed office.  ‘Ars Antiqua’… therefore  explores the intertextual complexity of the field, bringing together an understanding of not only those genres that form the basis of existing studies, but also, the complex interrelations that exist between them (the theory behind viewing this material in such a way is discussed in chapter 2).

‘Ars Antiqua’… seeks not only to establish and describe a musical and cultural context for the production, consumption and reception of the surviving music, but also to give a place to the individuals who were responsible for this extraordinary musical culture.  Although much of the music is anonymous (most of the motet repertory for example), the names of large numbers of poets involved in song – both Latin and French – have been preserved, as have the names of theorists and other commentators, to say nothing of rare- but near-legendary – composers, Leoninus and Perotinus.  Reinstating these agents and their actions in the musical foundations and institutions of the period, and describing the disorder – as opposed to the neat generic morphology presented by modern scholarship – that characterizes their relationship to music is one of its further aims, and forms the subject of chapter 9.

Although modern scholarship has rightly attempted to disentangle much of the disarray in which medieval sources leave the field, re-interrogating manuscripts of the period helps greatly in the analysis of the culture of the intertext that is so important to its understanding.   The number of surviving sources for the music discussed in this book runs to several hundred; the manuscripts bear witness not only to an increasing textualisation of musical cultures in the period (beginning c1220 and reaching an apogee c1300) but also to a far greater textual disorder that the book seeks to capture and explain (the focus of chapters 1 and 6, and evoked throughout the text).

The ambition of The History of Music in Europe… is only matched, then, by its novelty.  It sets its face against a genre-driven account of the period, but only in the context of first-hand experience of working with those same genres.  The author’s published work on the motet (Everist 1994), organum (Everist 2001-2003), conductus (Everist 2018a), and polyphonic song (several texts summarized in Everist 2018b) put him in an unrivalled position to write this book.  There is congruence between the novelty of the book proposed here and the recent renaissance of interest in the music of this period.  The last decade has seen a plethora of conferences, collections of essays, and other formal published outputs, to say nothing of performances and recordings that have brought performers and scholars into alignment, and an explosion of interest on social media.  Recent years have seen different types of approach to the subject that have changed perceptions of much of the music, which in turn have freed up the ways in which one might conceptualize the long line of history over nearly two hundred years.

 

Chapter Summaries [genres treated in chapters 3-8 and 10-11 are indicated in square brackets]

1. Orientation: Text and Time. Although the 200 years from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the fourteenth centuries describe a coherent music-historical arc that saw the growth and crystallization of a number of genres, surviving manuscript sources only began to emerge in the early thirteenth century.  Their evidence indicates a more disordered reality than previously acknowledged, as the chapter’s examination of the increasing textuality of the period also points.  This chapter considers the relationship between the chronology of the witnesses to the surviving music, of the compositions themselves and such other evidence that may be gleaned from music theoretical texts and other types of document.  This first introductory chapter underpins the second.
2. Medieval Intertexts. Almost all forms of medieval music exist in symbiosis with one another.  This second introductory chapter distinguishes between three types: (1) the sharing of text and/or music between different works and genres that has traditionally been the focus of scholarly attention; (2) the material presence of intertextual relations in the patterns found in the copying and preservation of different genres; and (3) more abstract generic patterning, for example the presence of sequence patterns in the conductus or the adoption of irrational line lengths in the motet even when they were no longer determined by pre-existing phrase lengths in the clausula.  Although, each of these forms of intertextuality will be evoked in subsequent chapters, here they are discussed in detail in the context of their intellectual lineage (which  goes back to Kristeva 1969) and recent engagements with biblical study (Scheetz 2013; Mills 2014).
3. The Liturgy. [Organum; Latin motet; conductus; rhymed office; sequence]   The texts and music of the liturgy – liturgical artes – were clearly established by the middle of the twelfth century, but the long thirteenth century saw the composition of new feasts and particularly rhymed offices, entailing the creation of new chants to adorn them; among these the sequence repertory was perhaps the most important in the period under discussion. The network of text, music and ritual further served as the background for the emergence of Parisian organum. The intertextual bonds between plainsong and organum is fundamental to the latter’s context and meaning and is also contextualized in such other genres as the conductus and elsewhere.
4. Metrical and Non-Metrical Rhythm [Organum; conductus; secular monophony; romance; polyphonic song]. The rhythm of almost every genre outside the liturgy has been the subject of debate in the last century. With most of the issues resolved, it is now possible to talk about the relationship between metrical rhythm (effectively driven by the rhythmic modes) and non-metrical rhythm that underpins all forms of song and key parts of organum and conductus.  While the metrical sections of organum (clausula and discantus) retained their intertextual links to plainsong, modal rhythm and discantus were also employed in the conductus, although here the resulting caudae were not based on any plainsong original.  What can this tell us about the musicians who were adept at the composition and performance of music in modal rhythm?
5. Rithmus and Patristic Literature [Conductus; Latin motet; sequence; rhymed office]. By the middle of the twelfth century, Latin poetry was dominated by a type of verse controlled by line-length, rhyme and end-accent.  These rithmi, clearly differentiated from the classical metrum, were the poetry set by composers of the sequence, Latin motet and conductus.  While rithmus controlled the structure of the poetry, and had its own theoretical traditions by the middle of the twelfth century which continued to develop, much of its content depended on Patristic commentary on the Bible and on the medieval reception of Antiquity.  Language and literature prove a key intertextual point of exchange between several musical genres.
6. Generic mixture c1200 [Conductus; organum; romance]. Clear theoretical differences between monophony and polyphony, and between organum, conductus and motet, characterized technical writing about music and the copying of manuscript sources from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards.  However, the earliest surviving sources of polyphonic music of this repertory present a complex generic mix that is strikingly at odds with the later, clearer, separation of types.  These early sources demonstrate how closely aligned were conductus, motet and even monophonic sequence around 1200; an analysis of the interrelations serves as the basis for a reconsideration of the origins of the Latin motet.
7. Vernacular Poetry and the refrain [French motet; secular monophony; romance; polyphonic song]. Although various subsets of vernacular poetry function as intertexts with musical works, they are all related via the refrain. The grand chant, although the best known, is of less importance in this regard than the pastourelle and works in related registers.  So-called dance songs are also of intertextual importance in terms of the emergence of the French motet, some of which also depend on complete vernacular songs for their basis.  Vernacular poetry in the pastourelle reappears in the texts of French motets, as well as in romance.  The culture and reception of the refrain underpin all vernacular work in French.  Provençal song, and works from the Mediterranean lands (laudae, Cantigas de Santa Maria) penetrate the culture in different ways, frequently by means of contrafactum (see chapter 11).
8. Latin Music Theory [organum; conductus; motet]. From around 1250, Latin music theory had to engage with the complications of metrical rhythm and its notation as well as the requirement of explaining polyphonic music and its composition.  Chronology is important here, both in terms of the sequence and intertextual relationships between the treatises themselves but also in terms of the citation of works known from other sources.  This use of exempla not only evokes intertexts with the works themselves cited but with other scholastic sources, as well as the literary structures of the theoretical texts themselves.
9. People, Places and Contexts. Although the names of trouvère poets survive in abundance, responsibility for the melodies themselves is not so clear. And the entire motet repertory is anonymous.  It is unclear just how much of the organum repertory may be securely attributed to Leoninus and Perotinus. Perotinus himself (both organum and conductus) and Adam de Halle (chansons and almost the only named composer for the motet) are the only composers for whom it is possible to speak of an œuvre.  While some different genres may be located in different types of space – vernacular song in the courtly chamber, Latin song – a logical extension of lectio publica – in the monastic refectory, plainsong and organum in the cathedral choir – there are others that seem to transcend spatial boundaries, and in general exhibit different patterns of pan-European dissemination.
10. Contrafacta [Motet; conductus; secular monophony; rhymed office; sequence]. The process of retexting  music with new poetry, often in a different language, took place within several genres, as in the case of the motet, both Latin and French.  In other cases, music is shared between Latin song (the conductus) and vernacular song, sometimes in more than one language.  Even the emergence of polyphonic song towards 1300 involved the process of contrafactum between the motet and the polyphonic rondeau.
11. Monophony and Polyphony [Organum; motet; polyphonic song. Modern scholarship has driven a wedge between monophony and polyphony, but this distinction is one that the middle ages recognized much less.  It would appear that only the conductus genuinely exists as both a monophonic and a polyphonic genre, but no polyphony in the long thirteenth century is immune from a process of reduction; motet voices are found copied as monodies; there are even examples of organum voices surviving in the same way. Although understanding this balance serves as the basis for explaining such phenomena as the emergence of the polyphonic chanson in the early 14^th century, recognizing the interrelatedness of what we today identify as ‘monophonic’ and ‘polyphonic’ is an important way to conclude the book.

Bibliography

Index

The book has 48 short music examples (an average of four per chapter); 12 illustrations and 36 tables, and extends to 150,000 words.

 

Competition and Market

There has never been any published treatment of this subject with this scope.  Those seeking to assemble an account of the period have had to bring together a constellation of different types of materials with radically different ambitions.  Attempts to pull the genres together have taken place in tertiary accounts of the subject (Hoppin 1978; Taruskin 2005), handbook-sized summaries (Everist 2011) or massive multi authored texts (Everist and Kelly 2018).  All these broader surveys (a) encompass the entire middle ages from late antiquity to around 1400 or later and (b) exemplify the genre-driven style of music history against which this book sets its face.  They give magisterial accounts of, for example, how organum works, or where the motet came from (maybe…), but stop short of the issues with which ‘Ars Antiqua’… begins.

The real points of comparison for ‘Ars Antiqua’… are in other fields: Strohm 1993 and Osterhammel 2009 both attempt the ambitious synthesis of periods shorter than those circumscribed by conventional approaches to historiography (the late middle ages, the early renaissance, the industrial revolution, etc.).  These works take as read the presence of conventional introductions to the subject as the basis for a more ambitious attempt at the retelling of history.  Needless to say, there is nothing like these two works that addresses the music of the long thirteenth century, and neither could be considered a competitor.  It could therefore be argued that the ideology, scope and structure of ‘Ars Antiqua’…. distances it from any form of competition.

For upper-level undergraduates, masters and doctoral candidates, Ars Antiqua: The History of Music in Europe… will be the first text to which they will turn, afar they have cut their teeth on accounts that could be found in Taruskin 2005 or Everist and Kelly 2018.  Its interdisciplinary focus – on Latin and vernacular literature, medieval institutions and the liturgy  will make it a valuable tool for those outside of music looking for a work that addresses the same  sorts of questions posed, for example, by scholars of medieval studies who specialize in fields other than music.

 

Companion Website

A companion website would make much of ‘Ars Antiqua’… not only much easier to write but also a springboard for different sorts of reader engagement.  In terms of image, text and audio, there are possibilities for a serious enhancement of the value of the printed text (video is more doubtful).

Image.  For much of the study of the middle ages, reproductions of manuscript sources can reproduce very well but – with a few exceptions – most medieval manuscripts that relate to music (especially the most revealing ones) tend to be in poor condition and difficult to read.  High-resolution, full-color images on a  companion website would be an aid to the read, not merely to illustrate but also to engage in explanation: to show where compositions begin and end, to point out particular compositional features on an original manuscript

Text. Readers would profit from a large number of illustrative texts of which only tiny quotations would be feasible in the book itself.  Side by side original and English translation would be an attractive dimension here.  This would have a significant impact on chapters 2, 5, 6, and 8 in particular.

Audio.  The attraction of a companion website is obvious to any author writing about music.  It is possible to envisage not only simple sound files, but also sound files combined with synchronized and moving scores and facsimiles of original manuscripts.   This is now feasible for an author to do themselves (Everist uses exactly this technology in his teaching), and is an attractive basis on which to annotate in real time. Whereas permissions for the reproduction of audio files can be problematic, in this case I was responsible for three CDs for the conductus and three for organum, so negotiations here should be more straightforward than normal.

 

References

Everist, Mark, French Motets in the Thirteenth-Century: Music, Poetry and Genre, Cambridge Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; R 2005)

Everist, Mark, ed., Les Organa à deux voix pour la messe du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1, 3 vols, Le Magnus liber organi de Notre Dame de Paris 2-4 (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau Lyre, 2001-2003)

Everist, Mark, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Everist, Mark, Discovering Medieval Song: Latin Poetry and Music in the Conductus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) [Everist 2018a]

Everist, Mark, ‘The Emergence of Polyphonic Song’, The Cambridge History of Medieval Music, ed. Everist and Kelly, 2:464-495 [Everist 2018b]

Everist, Mark, and Thomas Forrest Kelly, eds, The Cambridge History of Medieval Music, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Hoppin Richard, Medieval Music, Norton Introduction to Music History (New York: W.W. Norton; Toronto: R.J.Mcloed, 1978)

Kristeva, Julia, Séméiôtiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969); trans. as Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)

Mills, Mary, ‘Polyphonic Narration in Ecclesiastes and Jonah’, Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually, ed., Katharine J. Dell and Will Kynes (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014) 71-83

Osterhammel, Jürgen, Die Verwandlung der Welt: eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich; Beck, 2009), trans. Patrick Camillier as The Transformation of the World : A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2014)

Scheetz, Jordan M., The Concept of Canonical Intertextuality and the Book of Daniel (Cambridge: James Clark, 2013)

Strohm, Reinhard, The Rise of European Music, 1380-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Taruskin, Richard, The Oxford History of Western Music, 6 vols (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005