Chapter 3: The Ars Nova: Musical Developments in the ...

Chapter 3: The Ars Nova: Musical Developments in the Fourteenth Century

I. Early Fourteenth Century
A. Introduction
1. Changes in notation in the thirteenth century allowed for musical

experimentation in the early fourteenth century.
2. The evidence that tells us that fourteenth-century composers understood that

they were doing something different can be found in two treatises: The Ars novae musicae by
Jehan de Murs and the Ars nova by Philippe de Vitry.

B. Music from Mathematics
1. During the fourteenth century, mathematics expanded beyond the boundaries

previously seen in European thought. Music, the discipline so closely coupled with mathematics,
followed suit.

a. A fourfold system existed for musical time. Each of those listed is a
subdivision of the previous: Maximodus, Modus, Tempus, and Prolatio.

b. Each of these could be divided into two or three parts.
1) The first two are essentially theoretical concepts, and practical

use resided in the latter two.
2) These possibilities yield, in modern terms: 9/8, 3/4; 6/8, 2/4.

2. Not everyone liked the innovations of the Ars nova.
a. One example of disapproval is Jacobus de Liege’s Speculum musicae.
1) He dismissed the complexity and innovation as superfluous.

C. Music about Music
1. Another new idea in the Ars nova concerns a growing realization of self-

awareness as composers of art.
2. Music composition is seen as an art, not a craft.

D. Establishing the Prototype: The Roman de Fauvel
1. The earliest surviving pieces in the Ars nova style are found in the Roman de

Fauvel.
a. Compiled around 1317, poem by Gervais du Bus, this manuscript

includes 126 musical compositions (different genres).
b. The title character’s name has multiple meanings and is an acrostic of

terms modeled on the seven deadly sins.
c. Fauvel marries Vainglory, and they populate the earth with children

having their characteristics.
2. The motet Tribum/Quoniam/MERITO exemplifies the early Ars nova motet.
a. It is allegorical, relating to real political events.
b. It is polytextual.
1) The text is in Latin.
2) It admonishes unseemly behavior.
3) It is a public statement, not a private one.
c. The rhythmic and notational features are new (and quoted by de Vitry in

his treatise).

E. Isorhythm
1. As a way of confirming a hidden order and unity behind the complex world,

Ars nova composers sought to unify their music through the use of isorhythm.
a. Isorhythm denotes recurring patterns.
1) The repeated pattern in rhythm is the talea.
2) The repeated pattern in pitch is the color.

2. Tribum/Quoniam/MERITO is an isorhythmic motet.

II. Machaut
A. Machaut: Poet and Musician
1. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-77) is considered the greatest poet-composer

of the Ars nova.
a. He follows in the trouvère tradition.
b. He wrote in a variety of genres.

2. Analysis of isorhythmic motet: Felix virgo/Inviolata/AD TE SUSPIRAMUS
a. Machaut adds a fourth voice under the tenor: contratenor.
b. The color is the Salve Regina antiphon (another way to underscore the

homage to the Virgin Mary, about whom the text speaks).
c. Using these various means of adulation, some of which are hidden,

represents the intellectual aesthetic of the Ars nova.

B. Musica ficta
1. The chromaticism found in Machaut’s motet is called musica ficta.
a. Although it translates to “false music,” musica ficta is necessary, as de

Vitry notes.
b. Ficta allows for altered notes that do not belong to a standard

hexachord.
c. Ficta also accounts for certain tritones to be “corrected.”

2. Ficta was usually added orally, not notated.
3. Analysis of Felix virgo/Inviolata/AD TE SUSPIRAMUS demonstrates musica
ficta in the music of Machaut.

C. Machaut and the Art of Courtly Song
1.Machaut enjoyed a widespread reputation as a skilled poet.
a. He traveled widely.
b. His fame grew throughout his long life.
c. He was probably paid by patrons honored in his works.
d. He oversaw a copy of his complete works.
2. Machaut’s works include long narrative poems that sometimes included

inserted musical interpolations.
a. These works, such as Le Remede de Fortune, continue traditions seen in

the troubadour and trouvère repertories.

D. The Top-Down Style

1. Motets were composed from the bottom up (on a cantus firmus), but chansons
did the opposite.

2. Most of Machaut’s virelais were monophonic.
a. One of the best known of these is Douce dame jolie.
b. Syncopation is a key feature of this work.
c. The structure fits the virelai form examined earlier.

3. In a polyphonic virelai, En mon cuer, the top part has the text but the bottom
does not.

4. Both of these virelais approach cadences from below.
a. If both voices approach from a leading tone, the result is a “double-

leading tone cadence.”
b. The only surviving three-voice virelai adds a contratenor. It blends the

motet idea of added triplum with a cantilena idea of contratenor. The textual result is much richer
(fuller).

E. Machaut’s La Messe de Nostre Dame
1. Machaut’s best known work, La Messe de Nostre Dame, is uncharacteristic.
a. This is a complete setting of the Mass Ordinary—the earliest to survive.
b. It is an early example of the cyclic Mass in that motives or modes unify

the entire work.
c. The Mass of Tournai, ca. 1349, is a set of polyphonic Ordinaries, but by

different composers.
2. Special Mass collections, Votive Masses, were used in memorial chapels.

These also contributed to the interest in setting the Mass Ordinary polyphonically.
3. Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame is a tour de force of Ars nova aesthetics.
a. The Kyrie, based on the Cunctipotens genitor cantus firmus, has a

scheme of AAABBBCCD.
1) The final section is more elaborate, suitable for a conclusion.

b. The Christe (middle) section seems to move forward regularly with
excitement only to be abruptly stopped.

c. The long-text movements (Gloria and Credo) are more homorhythmic,
allowing for the exploration of new sonorities.

e. The final two movements serve as a pair as well: related to the opening
movement but in a different mode.

F. Canons
1. Another clever technique employed during the Ars nova is canon.
a. Ma fin est mon commencement is one such example.
1) The music mirrors the text as a pun—the canon works forward

and backward simultaneously.
b. The name for canons became chace—a literal chase of one part behind

another.
1) In Italy this is the caccia.

III. Other Aspects of Fourteenth-Century Music

A. Subtilias
1. As the fourteenth century went on, subtlety became a desirable feature in

composition.
2. The end of the century saw this aspect taken to an extreme that borders on

mannerism (called Ars Subtilior since the 1960s).
3. Philippus de Caserta wrote a treatise that explained the advanced notation

necessary to convey all the subtle aspects of this style.
a. Subtilias includes polymeters.
b. The notation includes odd-looking symbols and different colors of ink

for different meters.
c. En remirant, by Caserta, demonstrates the virtuoso aspects of

composition associated with Subtilias.
1) Complex rhythmic structures (including fantastical hemiolas)
2) Notational ingenuity (dots of division)

4. Subtilias extended throughout Europe, as far as Cyprus (thanks in part to the
Crusades).

5. The Chantilly Codex is a famous source of Subtilias repertory.
6. Solage’s famous Fumeux fume represents the height of Subtilias complexity.

B. “A Pleasant Place”: Trecento Vernacular Music
1. Italian composers saw nature as something to be enjoyed, not overwhelmed by.
2. The poetry of Dante Aligheri (ca. 1265–1321) represents this value.
a. Dante noted that poetry of an exalted nature would be denigrated if

music were added.
b. He advocated special genres, such as the pastoral poesia per musica.

3. The main song genre of the trecento was the madrigal, a vernacular poem of
two or more three-line stanzas.

4. The main manuscripts containing trecento repertory are large, elaborately
decorated volumes, similar to the chansonniers in France.

a. The Squarcialupi Codex is a particularly noteworthy example, copied
around 1415.

b. In this manuscript, the contexts are organized by composer, with a
portrait of each at the beginning of his section.

5. Bologna was an important musical center, as was Padua.
6. Trecento notation differs from that of the Ars nova because the former grew out
of Petronian notation, the latter out of Franconian.

C. The “Wild Bird” Madrigals
1. Jacopo da Bologna’s Osellecto salvagio (madrigal, Ex. 3-8a) is a music-about-

music piece that tells us something about what was desired in trecento music: The music must be
as sweet and moderate as the scene painted by the text.

a. The bird is associated with the pleasant place.
2. Jacopo set this text twice, and the second abandons the moderation inherent in
the first, and it is a caccia.

a. It may have been for instrumental performance.
b. In this setting, the wild bird becomes the prey being chased.

D. Landini and Ballata Culture
1. In his treatise on music, Jacopo mentions another genre: the ballata, which

resembles a virelai and came to displace the pride of place held by the madrigal.
a. The ballata began as a popular genre, not a learned one.
b. It dates back to Boccaccio’s Decameron.

2. The last generation of trecento composers set the ballade like a French virelai.
3. The master of the ballata was the blind organist Francesco Landini (ca. 1325–
97).

a. He wrote for the ruling classes.
b. Landini’s ballate are more about personal feeling than physical
pleasures (as earlier ones tended to be).
c. Non avrà ma’ pietà ranks among his most popular pieces and
demonstrates how the ballata was connected to the virelai.

1) It was included in a keyboard manuscript known as the Faenza
Codex, arranged (an intabulation).

2) Faenza is an important source that suggests how popular music
circulated.

d. It also includes the “Landini” cadence.

E. The Motet as Political Show
1. French and Italian styles converged into an International style in the late Ars

nova.
2. The pinnacle of the motet was in Italy, as composers were part of the

competition between city-states.
3. Composers who mastered techniques of musical architecture produced

elaborate works that served to legitimize their patrons.
4. Several of these composers were from France and Flanders.
5. The first was Johannes Ciconia.
a. He composed two impressive isorhythmic motets in honor of Zarbarella,

who had been in line to be Pope.

F. Du Fay’s Nuper rosarum flores
1. Du Fay’s Nuper rosarum flores is famous for a number of reasons, most of

which relate to the manipulation of numbers relevant to the reason for its composition.
a. It is the third of three motets written for Pope Eugene IV.
b. Du Fay wrote the motet for the dedication of the cathedral in Florence,

the architect of which was Brunelleschi (the famous dome), and the dedication was performed by
none other than Pope Eugene IV, who commissioned the motet.

c. The proportional relationship of the mensuration mirrors the physical
properties of the temple of Solomon, according to the Bible, which Brunelleschi used for the
cathedral in Florence.

d. The text (especially the poetic meter) is based on numerology that
corresponds to numbers that represent the Virgin birth.

G. Periodization

1. Dividing music into stylistic periods is a tradition, but one that has its flaws.
2. We must be wary of “essentialism”—the process of associating a stylistic trait

as being something “essentially” Renaissance or Medieval.
3. For where we are now (chronologically in this text), the beginning of the

Renaissance is tricky—historians of different subjects begin it at different times, so how can we
say X is Renaissance, if it is not representative of the period in history (in general)?

4. Three main concepts drive the definition of “Renaissance” across disciplines:
secularism, humanism, and rebirth of interest in art and philosophy of pre-Christian antiquity.