.
. . . . .
studi musicali
. . .
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nuova serie
anno 14
2023
numero 01
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Fondazione
Studi musicali. Nuova serie
Rivista semestrale di studi musicologici
Direttore
Teresa M. Gialdroni
Redattore
Giacomo Sciommeri
Comitato consultivo/Advisory Board
Luca Aversano (Università di Roma Tre), Paola Besutti (Università di Teramo), Annalisa
Bini (Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia, Roma), Stefano Campagnolo (Ministero dei
Beni e Attività Culturali e del Turismo), Michele dall’Ongaro (Accademia Nazionale
di S. Cecilia, Roma), Frederick Hammond (Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson,
NY), Margaret Murata (University of California, Irvine), Guido Olivieri (University
of Texas, Austin), Klaus Pietschmann (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz), Guido
Salvetti (Conservatorio “G. Verdi”, Milano), Álvaro Torrente (Universidad Complutense,
Madrid), Lucio Tufano (Università di Palermo), Philippe Vendrix (Université François
Rabelais, Tours), Agostino Ziino (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”)
Studi musicali
nuova serie, anno 14, 2023, n. 1
Questo volume è stato pubblicato grazie al contributo concesso
dalla Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali del Ministero della cultura
Progetto grafico
Silvana Amato
Composizione grafica e impaginazione
Giacomo Sciommeri
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Sommario
7
Agostino Ziino
Polifonia nella Cattedrale di Amalfi agli inizi del Trecento:
un primo tassello, forse
15
Elena Abramov-van Rijk
Hidden names in Trecento musical compositions
51
Antonio Calvia, Federico Saviotti
The San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex: A New Source of Secular and Liturgical
Polyphony (the Pavia Fragment)
139
Lorenzo Mattei
«La mia cara Cecchina è…» un castrato. Gli evirati cantori e l’opera buffa
161
Renato Meucci
Piero Maroncelli, patriota e musicista
175
Biographical Notes
177
Abstracts
The San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex: A New Source of Secular and
Liturgical Polyphony (the Pavia Fragment)*
Antonio Calvia, Federico Saviotti
In 2019 two largely intact parchment bifolios containing late fourteenth-century polyphony, reused as book covers, were found independently in Milan-area libraries:
one at the Biblioteca Universitaria in Pavia (I-PAVu, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n.
8), by Giuseppe Mascherpa and Federico Saviotti and the other at the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan (binding of I-Mt, 1759) by Anne Stone.1 This is the first of two ar* This paper is the result of a tight collaboration between the two authors; §1, and §6-7 are contributed by Federico Saviotti; §3-5 and §8 by Antonio Calvia; the introduction, §2, and the conclusions
(§9) are by both authors. The research presented here is an integral part of the Advanced Grant project
European Ars Nova. Multilingual Poetry and Polyphonic Song in the Late Middle Ages. This project has
received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 786379).
The authors would
like to thank: Cecilia Angeletti, Claudia Bussolino and Elettra De Lorenzo for their help in retracing
the history of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia; Francesca Toscani for sharing information obtained
during the restoration process; Marco D’Agostino for his palaeographic expertise; Marco Malagodi
and his team for the laboratory analyses on the fragment and the interdisciplinary exchange; Giuseppe
Mascherpa for all his suggestions, especially regarding the linguistic analysis. We would also like to
thank a number of people for reading and commenting upon the first draft of this paper: Margaret
Bent, Stefano Campagnolo, Maria Caraci Vela, Michael Cuthbert, Michele Epifani, Andreas Janke,
Maria Sofia Lannutti, John Nádas, Courtney Quaintance, Yolanda Plumley, and Anne Stone. Very special thanks go to Michele Pasotti and the ensemble La Fonte Musica for performing the ‘world premiere’
in modern times of most of the pieces of the San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex (Cremona, Aula Magna of
the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali of the University of Pavia, May 26, 2022).
1 We learned of the bifolio brought to light by Anne Stone at a late stage in the writing of this
essay. The two fragments were presented together at the conference Tesori di riuso. Nuove scoperte e
ricerche intorno ai frammenti del Codice San Fedele-Belgioioso, Pavia-Cremona, 24-26 May 2022). The
research on the relationship between the two fragments and on the original anthology (‘Codice San
51
,
ticles demonstrating that the two bifolios belonged to the same original manuscript,
a compilation of Mass Ordinary movements and secular songs copied in northern
Italy (ca. 1400), which we have named the ‘San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex’. We are
currently unable to determine whether the codex ever existed as a book or remained
an unfinished project, as the incompleteness of the Pavia fragment might suggest.
What is certain is that the two bifolios are larger than any other extant contemporary
manuscripts of polyphony, and the quality of the parchment and the elegance of the
hand make it clear that they were professionally copied for an institution that had
considerable resources. These finds have the potential to expand significantly our
knowledge of cultivated polyphony in late medieval Lombardy.
This first essay presents the fragment held at the Biblioteca Universitaria in Pavia
(Pv), a bifolio ruled with fourteen red five-line staves per page, containing five polyphonic anonymous unica. The four secular works, two virelais and two rondeaux, are
all for two voices with untexted tenor. The pieces are written in fourteenth-century
black notation using dragmae, including an unknown form of ‘dragma brevis’ and a
case of half-coloration. The first rondeau, provided with an alius tenor, has a rubric
which allowed us to decipher an unusual treatment of coloration used to indicate an
alternative cadence. The fifth piece is a fragmentary Credo of which only two texted
voices remain. Analysis of the counterpoint and the remaining voices’ ranges show
that the extant voices are likely the remains of a four-part setting.
In §1, we present the discovery of the bifolio, its restoration, and the history of
the host volume; in §2, we offer a codicological and palaeographic description of
the fragment; §3 contains the inventory and a discussion of the characteristics of
the new source in the context of the anthologies of liturgical and secular polyphony of the first decades of the 15th century; in §4 we provide an overview of the
notational peculiarities of the bifolio and in §5 we discuss the stylistic aspects of the
repertory. The text of the four monostrophic French poems has been linguistically
and stylistically analysed (§6 and §7). We include in the body of the essay (§7 and
Fedele-Belgioioso’) is currently taking its first steps and will be carried out by a team consisting of
Antonio Calvia, Federico Saviotti and Anne Stone. In the present article we have not taken into consideration the very first data that are emerging from the comparison between the two fragments: they
will be the subject of a further publication. Anticipations of the findings were announced at various
international conferences and seminars: 49th Medieval and Renaissance International Music Conference
(Lisbon, 5-9 July 2021); Poesia e musica in Italia dal Duecento alla fine del Quattrocento (Certaldo, 3-4
December 2021); All Souls Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Oxford, 17 February 2022);
50th Medieval and Renaissance International Music Conference (Uppsala, 4-7 July 2022).
52
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§8) annotated critical editions of the four French songs and the Credo. The conclusion of this paper (§9) proposes a hypothesis about the milieus of the Pv fragment’s
composition and reception, based on our analysis of musical and textual features.2
1. Discovery, restoration, and history of the host volume
The bifolio I-PAVu, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8 (Pv) was discovered in
October 2019 by Giuseppe Mascherpa and Federico Saviotti.3 The fragment was
the cover for the canon law essay Tractatus de irregularitatibus by Bartolomeo
Ugolini, printed in Venice in 1601.4 On the title page, an ex libris, apparent-
2 The following abbreviations are used: BdT: Alfred Pillet, Bibliographie der Troubadours, hrsg.
von Henry Carstens, Halle (Saale), Niemeyer, 1933 (anastatic repr. a c. di Paolo Borsa e Roberto
Tagliani, Milano, Ledizioni, 2013); cant: Catalogue of Ars Nova Manuscripts, Authors and Texts (under
construction but available to the team as a working tool: www.europeanarsnova.eu); cmm: Corpus
Mensurabilis Musicae; csm: Corpus Scriptorum de Musica; diamm: Digital Image Archive of Medieval
Music, https://www.diamm.ac.uk (last accessed September 9, 2022); emmsap = Electronic Medieval
Music Score Archive Project, ed. by Michael Scott Cuthbert (last consulted by courtesy of the author
in May 2021); jcuc: Je chante ung chant. An Archive of Late-Medieval French Lyrics, ed. by Yolanda
Plumley, University of Exeter, http://jechante.exeter.ac.uk/archive/search.html (last accessed January 15, 2020); lml: Lexicon musicum Latinum medii aevi, digitalisierte Fassung im Wörterbuchnetz
des Trier Center for Digital Humanities, Version 01/21, https://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/LmL (last
accessed April 27, 2021); pmfc: Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century; rialfri: Repertorio informatizzato dell’antica letteratura franco-italiana, https://www.rialfri.eu/ (last accessed October 20,
2022); rs: G. Raynauds Bibliographie des altfranzosischen Liedes, hrsg. von Hans Spanke, Leiden, Brill,
1955; tl: Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, hrsg. von Adolf Tobler und Erhard Lommatzsch, 12 vols., Berlin,
Weidmannsche Buchhandlung (then: Wiesbaden, F. Steiner), 1925-2008; tml: Thesaurus Musicarum
Latinarum, https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/ (last accessed May 4, 2021). Further abbreviations: afr.:
ancien français; mfr.: moyen français; C: Cantus; C i: Cantus primus; C ii: Cantus secundus; Ct:
Contratenor; T: Tenor. For manuscript sigla, see Appendix A.
3 See the account of the discovery in Federico Saviotti, Antonio Calvia, Virelais, rondeaux e un
Credo: cinque composizioni polifoniche inedite in un frammento di codice della Biblioteca Universitaria
di Pavia, «Textus & Musica», iv, 2021 (https://textus-et-musica.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/textus-etmusica/index.php?id=2194, last accessed October 20, 2022).
4 Tractatus de irregularitatibus Bartholomaeo Vgolino iurisconsulto, ex Monte Scutulo diocesis Ariminensis, ac Barbiani archipresbytero autore. Ad forum conscientiae, pontificium, ac ciuile perutilis, Venetiis, apud haeredem Hieronymi Scoti, 1601 (shelf mark: 43 D 3). Open-access images of the volume before the restoration are available on: http://www.internetculturale.it/jmms/iccuviewer/iccu.
jsp?id=oai%3Awww.internetculturale.sbn.it%2FTeca%3A20%3ANT0000%3AN%3AUBOE010076
(last accessed October 20, 2022).
53
,
ly from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, attests that the book was ‘recorded in the catalogue of the professed house of the Society of Jesus in Milan’
(Domus Professae societatis Iesu Mediolani Inscriptus Cathalogo). The society was
suppressed in 1773 and its house, located at the church of San Fedele, was abandoned. Its book collection then joined those of other Jesuit institutions (namely,
the Collegio Braidense and the novitiate house at the church of San Girolamo)
at the Palazzo Brera.5 There the Braidense Library was established by the empress
Marie-Therese in 1774, opening to the public only in 1786. During the twelveyear wait, collections of various provenance were arranged and catalogued, and
duplicate books sent to other libraries.6 This was the fate of the Tractatus de
irregularitatibus, which bears a black ink stamp from the Braidense. Because the
Braidense already owned a copy of the work, it was transferred to Pavia before
1780, when it is mentioned in the first official catalogue. While the history of the
host volume is easily retraced,7 it is virtually impossible to determine when and
where the fragment became a part of it.
When the fragment was discovered in 2019, only the hair side of the bifolio (fols.
1r-2v)8 was partially visible, displaying on both folios fourteen red five-line staves:
folio 2v was blank-ruled, while folio 1r contained four Middle French lyric poems
(two monostrophic virelais and two rondeaux), with polyphonic settings. All four
works (text and music) are anonymous unica. The volume’s spine was covered by an
additional parchment strip, which concealed part of the contents. The restoration of
the parchment and of the volume was carried out in the winter of 2020 by Francesca
Toscani and financed by the European Ars Nova project (ERC Advanced Grant 2019),
headed by Maria Sofia Lannutti. After detaching the fragment from the binding, we
discovered a fragmentary polyphonic setting of a Credo on the first folio’s hidden
side (1v). The fourth folio (2r), like folio 2v, was blank-ruled. Marco Malagodi (Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia) and his team
at the Arvedi laboratory for non-invasive diagnostics in Cremona, in collaboration
with Marco Gargano (Department of Physics, University of Milan), completed a
5 See Giuseppe Baretta, Tra i fondi della Biblioteca Braidense, Milano, F. Sciardelli, 1993, pp. 16-18.
6 The early history of the Braidense is summarized in La Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense di Milano,
a c. di Letizia Pecorella Vergnano, Milano, [s.n.], 1976, pp. 5-6.
7 For more details, see Saviotti, Calvia, Virelais, rondeaux e un Credo, §1.
8 Flesh (fols. 2v-1r) and hair (fols. 1v-2r) sides are easily discernible, as the follicles are well visible
on the latter.
54
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multi-analytic investigation9 on the fragment in the summer of 2021.10 Its results
led to the recovery of vanished traces of writings and provided precious information
about the bifolio’s materiality (inks and vellum), thus contributing to the reconstruction of its textual and musical contents and of its history.
2. Codicological and palaeographic description
The case in which the fragment is preserved today contains, in addition to the bifolio (see Figures 1-4), fifteen other items derived from the restoration (see Figure 5):
three small strips of parchment (about 50 x 95 mm); a large parchment strip used to
cover the spine (about 365-370 x 169-175 mm); nine strips of paper which include
one shelf mark label (70-74 x 128 mm), four blank strips with ‘1p’, ‘2p’, ‘3p’, and
‘4p’ written in pencil (20-30 x 70 mm), four reused strips from a printed volume11
(27-36 x 65-70 mm); two pieces of binding thread.
The restored bifolio measures 512-518 mm in width and 375-379 mm (fol. 1) to 379383 mm (fol. 2) in height. On the lower edge, the parchment was trimmed along the
fifth line of the fourteenth and last stave. The trimming of the longitudinal external
margins removed a few letters and notes from the extreme final portion of folio 1r,
and all the guide letters and clefs from the beginning of fol. 1v. Luckily, some of this
material was recovered during the restoration, which revealed three rectangular parchment strips (‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’, approximately 49-50 x 91-96 mm) that had been cut from
the original bifolio’s margins and reused as band covers for the host volume’s spine.
9 Including: professional high-resolution photography (gigapixels images) in visible light; ultravioletinduced fluorescence (UV-light) photography; high-resolution digital X-ray radiography; highresolution stereoscopic study; X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy (elemental analysis); reflection
infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy (molecular vibrational analysis); hyperspectral and multispectral (NIR,
VIS, UV) analysis.
10 Laboratorio Arvedi is part of the CISRiC, Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi e Ricerche per
la Conservazione del Patrimonio Culturale, University of Pavia (http://cisric.unipv.it/index.php/
laboratori-afferenti, last accessed October 20, 2022).
11 Consiliorum sive responsorum D. Petri Philippi Cornei Patricii Perusini, Pontificii, ac Caesareique
Iuris Consultissimi, vol. 4. There are five editions known to date (Perugia 1501, Venezia 1534-1535, Lyon
1553, Venezia 1572, and Venezia 1582); see Pier Luigi Falaschi, Pier Filippo della Cornia, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 36, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1988, pp. 772-777. At
present, it has not been identified to which of these editions the fragments belong.
55
,
Fig. 1. Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8, fols. 2v-1r
(by courtesy of Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia – MiC)
56
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Fig. 2. Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8, fols. 1v-2r
(by courtesy of Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia – MiC)
57
,
Fig. 3. Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8, fols. 2v-1r
(UV-induced fluorescence; photography by M. Gargano)
58
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Fig. 4. Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8, fols. 1v-2r
(UV-induced fluorescence; photography by M. Gargano)
59
,
Fig. 5. Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Pergamene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8,
items derived from the restoration (by courtesy of Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia – MiC)
60
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The original position of one of them (strip ‘A’) is confirmed by the presence of
the guide letter ‘f ’ for ‘Factorem’, the first word of the top voice of the Credo. Strip
‘B’ was originally immediately below strip ‘A’, as confirmed by the C-clef of the
fourth staff, a portion of the clef of the fifth staff, and small pieces of the beginnings
of staves 4-7 (see Figure 6). Thanks to the reconstruction of the exact positions of
two of the strips at the margins of the bifolio, we now know that the right margin
measured approximately 50 mm. It is likely that the left margin was about the same
size. The upper margin measured about 28 mm and shows no trace of longitudinal trimming. We can thus assume that the lower margin, which is (as mentioned
above) completely lost, measured at least 28 mm, although it may have measured
more than 50 mm, since lower margins can be up to twice as large as upper ones.
Thus, with its margins, the new fragment must have measured, at a minimum,
about [403] x [612-618] mm. That is to say, the original gathering or manuscript to
which it belonged was comparable in size to expensive, deluxe illuminated manuscripts such as Sq (each folio about 400 x 285 mm) and Cyp (each parchment folio
380 x 260 mm). Strikingly, the Pavia fragment is larger than Sq, making it one of the
largest known polyphonic sources dating between the end of the fourteenth century
and the first three decades of the fifteenth century,12 even considering the extant
fragments of large codices already known to scholars such as Berg589,13 BU596,14 and
12 Of the polyphonic sources copied in the first half of the fifteenth century, only Ca6 and Ca11
– which, however, transmit only sacred repertory – exceed the original size of the San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex. See Margaret Bent, Polyphonic Sources, ca. 1400-1450, in The Cambridge History of
Fifteenth-Century Music, ed. by Anna Maria Busse Berger and Jesse Rodin, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2015, pp. 617-640: 631, table 33.1.
13 Berg589 – containing secular and sacred polyphony, not as large as the Pavia bifolio but of significant size – has thirteen five-line staves per page and, according to Stefano Campagnolo’s estimates,
could be ca. 328/332 mm high; private conversation and Un nuovo frammento di polifonia conservato
alla Biblioteca Angelo Mai di Bergamo (unpublished paper presented at the conference The Nature of
the End of the Ars Nova in Early Quattrocento Italy. Research Surrounding the San Lorenzo Palimpsest
and Related Repertories, Firenze and Certaldo, December 16, 2017); first notice of the fragment was
given by Dominique Gatté (March 8, 2017) in his blog Musicologie médiévale.
14 The fragment BU596 – considered of Italian origins and containing four French-texted pieces, three
of them unica – must have been part of an item similar in size but slightly smaller. The page layout of the
extant single folio (measuring 362 x 261 mm with nine six-liDne staves per side), however, is different
from Pv; see Lodovico Frati, Frammento di un antico canzoniere musicale francese, «Il libro e la stampa:
Bullettino ufficiale della Società Bibliografica Italiana», iv, 1910, pp. 15-17; Id., Codici musicali della R.
Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, «Rivista Musicale Italiana», xxiii, 1916, pp. 219-242.
61
,
Fig. 6. Reconstruction of the original position of the strips ‘A’ and ‘B’
Gr224-D.15 In light of this data, it is likely that the bifolio was part of a large-format
codex commissioned by an important institution or patron.16
The vellum is in an overall decent state of preservation, despite some humidity
spots on the external side and glue-damaged areas on the internal one, damage
that only rarely makes the text partially or completely illegible. Material losses are
limited to holes due to woodworms in the central part of the bifolio; some minor
rips along the line where the parchment was folded inwards to better adhere to the
15 The size of the original folios of Gr224-D was ca. 450 x 280; see M. Cuthbert in diamm (https://
www.diamm.ac.uk/sources/137/#/, last accessed October 20, 2022).
16 For a rough distinction between «institutional manuscripts» and «personal compilations», which
takes into account size-related considerations, see Bent, Polyphonic Sources, pp. 630sg.
62
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binding board of the volume; and the external sections removed when the parchment was repurposed. This last is the case of the four trapezoidal mutilations to
the four corners, intended to facilitate the folding-up, which caused loss of the text
and musical notation on folio 1 (particularly, the residuum of the virelai iv and the
incipit of the Credo’s top voice). The centuries-old adherence of two vellum strips
also produced mirror image offsets17 of staves, notes, and letters in two different
places of folio 1r: near the upper and near the lower external corners. In the former
case, the reverse image clearly shows the segment of a stave and some notes and
letters (Actor from FActorem) of the Credo, from the beginning of the first line and
second stave of fol. 1v.18
The writing area must have been at least 350 mm high and 230 mm wide.
Ruling lines are clearly visible throughout the page. The line spacing is 3.625 mm,
slightly decreasing towards the lower edge, probably because of some deformation of the parchment (the last lines are also not properly orthogonal). Given the
ninety-six extant lines, the overall number of lines, including the trimmed ones,
must not have exceeded one hundred. The lines meant for musical notation were
traced over in red (cinnabar, according to the chemical analysis) ink, alternating
one stave – two lines – one stave – two lines, and so on. In a single case, the stave
is not a pentagram, but a hexagram: this suggests that no rastrum was used. As the
hexagram is the eighth staff on fols. 1v and 2r, the two halves of each bifolio must
have been ruled together.
Only folio 1 was filled in with transcription of text and music. The four secular
pieces are on fol. 1r, while the two extant voices of the first part of a polyphonic
Credo are copied on the verso of the same folio. Since both sides of fol. 2 are blank
ruled, and the Credo is incomplete, it is very likely that our surviving fragment was
not the central bifolio of a gathering.
No foliation numbers are visible. However, given the excision of the upper
right corners of the two rectos, we cannot exclude that the bifolio was originally
foliated. On the other hand, since the upper margin appears intact except for its
trimmed right-hand corners, it is unlikely that the folios ever contained composer
attributions.
17 This is a common phenomenon in re-used medieval fragments. See, for example, Ca1328, a
portfolio of detached parchment of different origins (cfr. diamm: https://www.diamm.ac.uk/
sources/271/#/, last accessed October 20, 2022).
18 See Saviotti, Calvia, Virelais, Rondeaux e un Credo, Fig. 10A and 10B.
63
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The chemical-physical analyses prove that the same iron-gall ink was used for
all the writing, for the notation, and even the ruling. All texts and paratexts on
fol. 1r were transcribed by a single hand. As confirmed by palaeographer Marco
D’Agostino, the copyist used an Italian littera textualis and had a graphic education dating back to the second half of the fourteenth century.19 A single hand with
similar features transcribed the Credo on fol. 1v. While the verso has many more
abbreviations than the recto, this is normal for a Latin text, and it is likely that the
same scribe was responsible for both sides. The size of the letters depends on their
position. The letters are larger (long-line characters are about 4.5 mm high, while
short-line characters are about 2.5 mm high) when the text is placed on a single line
below the staves; they are smaller elsewhere.
The music of all the compositions was probably copied by a single hand. The
notator uses the parallelogram-shaped sign for the sharp with four dots also found
in northern Italian sources such as ModA, R, PadA and Q15, which contain various kinds of dotted sharps. R has two different shapes, characteristic of the hands
John Nádas calls ‘S’ and ‘V’.20 The first, with four dots in the corners, is also
found in PadA. The second, with four dots in the middle of the sides of the parallelogram – found, for example, in R’s hand ‘V’ – is the one found in Pv, where
it is sometimes used to embellish the finis punctorum double bar (a use found also
in ModA). In the Credo, two kinds of signs for the sharp are found: in addition
to the dotted sharp, there is also a smaller and far less visible shape without dots.
The latter is used for b in the Ct’s signature and a few times elsewhere; the former
predominates but is never used in a signature. There are also two forms of the
flat: a rounded b shape and a double lozenge-shape (see Table 1).21 In both cases,
there is no difference in meaning and occasionally the two shapes are used simultaneously in the two extant voices. The custodes, only visible on the side where the
Credo is copied, are drawn obliquely to the staves with upwards and downward
stems (see Table 1).
19 Marco D’Agostino, private communication.
20 John Nádas, The Reina Codex Revisited, in Essays in Paper Analysis, ed. by Stephen Spector,
Washington, The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987, pp. 69-114; repr. in Arte Psallentes. Studies in
Music of the Tre- and Quattrocento, Collected in Honor of his 70th Birthday, Lucca, LIM-Libreria
Musicale Italiana, 2017, pp. 17-54: 46.
21 See the critical apparatus below.
64
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Tab. 1. Pv, fol. 1v, custos, sharp and flat signs
a) custos
b) dotted sharp
c) sharp without dots
d) round flat
e) lozenge-shaped flat
Several corrections inserted by the notator in the form of thin oblique slashes –
mostly in order to cancel minim stems – have not been scraped off but left visible.22
But there is at least one trace of scraping in the text, connected to the misplacement of one syllable in relation to the music.23
It is impossible to determine whether the notator and scribe were one and the
same, but the use of the same batch of ink suggests that the text and music were
copied around the same time, and not too long after the ruling.
The bifolio shows no trace of decoration, suggesting that the preparation of the
manuscript was interrupted just after the transcription of text and music before
the artists’ intervention. The French texts on fol. 1r lack any medium- or large-size
capital letters.24 These were probably destined to be decorated, as suggested by the
guide letters on the internal margin.25
22 Credo, C, bb. 48, 70, 80.
23 See virelai i, syllable -re of the word figure (shifted from b. 17 to b. 18).
24 We assume the same for fol. 1v, where the beginning of each line was cut away by the trimming.
25 A guide letter is visible on fol. 1v; see (above) the description of the three parchment strips,
belonging to the external margin, recovered during the restoration. Where the guide letters are not
visible with the naked eye, high resolution and multispectral imaging have revealed them.
65
,
3. A new source of secular and liturgical polyphony
The newly discovered fragment held at the Biblioteca Universitaria in Pavia can be
added to the list of manuscripts containing both secular and liturgical polyphony
of the long fourteenth century. Table 2 contains list of its contents, indicating, for
each composition: folio, number of the piece, incipit, genre, layout of the voices,
clefs, and Textierung. The four French-texted compositions are for texted cantus
and textless tenor. Both the extant voices of the Credo are provided with text.
Tab. 2. Contents of the bifolio
FOL.
N.
INCIPIT
GENRE
LAYOUT OF THE VOICES
(CLEFS)
TEXTIERUNG
NOTES
1r
i
La nuit que est
tant obscure
Virelai
C 1-2 (c2)
T 3 (f2)
21
Anon.
ii
Se la playsant
chiera veoyr
povoye
Rondeau C 4-5 (c2)
T 6 (f2/c4)
alius T 7 (f3)
21 + alius T
Anon.
alius T: the
scribe corrects
the clef from f2
to f3
iii
Aves moy
Rondeau C 8-9 (c2)
passoyt un flour
T 10 (f2/c4)
21
iv
Tant yolis et gay Virelai
sans melenconie
C 11-13 (c1)
T 14 (f1/c3)
21
Anon.
v
Factorem / [O]
mnipotentem
C 1-7 ([c1] and c1)
Ct? 8-14 (f2/c4 and
[f2/c4])
22 [44?]
Anon.
Fragm.
1v
Credo
2r
–
blank ruled
2v
–
blank ruled
Secular and liturgical polyphonic works appear together in many manuscripts
and fragments from the second half of the fourteenth century and the first
three decades of the fifteenth century, originating mainly in northern Italy or
brought to Italy as early as the fourteenth century. French-texted formes fixes
66
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were copied along with polyphonic repertory of the Ordinarium Missae in
anthologies such as Iv26, Lo27, Pit28, Stras29, ModA30, T.iii.231, Cyp32, Q1533, Ox21334,
26 Iv (brought from France to Ivrea as early as the fourteenth century) contains a repertory that
most likely does not date later than ca. 1360; see Karl Kügle, The Manuscript Ivrea, Biblioteca
Capitolare 115: Studies in the Transmission and Composition of Ars Nova Polyphony, Ottawa, Canada,
Institute of Mediæval Music, 1997, especially pp. 75-79.
27 On ms. Lo, see Giuliano Di Bacco, Alcune nuove osservazioni sul codice di Londra (British Library, MS Additional 29987), «Studi musicali», xx, 1991, pp. 181-234.
28 Especially fols. 131-138. On the manuscript, see John Nádas, The Transmission of Trecento Secular
Polyphony: Manuscript Production and Scribal Practices in Italy at the End of the Middle Ages, Ph.D.
diss., New York University, 1985, pp. 216-290.
29 See Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker, Le Manuscrit musical M 222 C 22 de la Bibliothèque de Strasbourg (XV siècle), Bruxelles, [1970] (“Thesaurus musicus” 2).
30 See, for example, the sequence of compositions, partly attributed or attributable to Matteo da
Perugia, included on ModA, fols. 5v-11r: Credo; Ct for a rondeau by Guillaume de Machaut; ballade;
Credo; virelai; Gloria; rondeau; virelai. See the inventory in Anne Stone, The Manuscript Modena,
Biblioteca Estense, α.M.5.24: Commentary, Lucca, LIM-Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2005, pp. 112-113.
31 The liturgical compositions form more or less compact blocks in what remains of the original anthology that constitutes T.iii.2; the same copyist (‘A’) inserts, on fols. 7v-12r, two pieces in French (Ou
est amor? and Je suj si las venus), the multilingual ballata Deus deorum Pluto or te rengratio by Antonio
Zacara da Teramo, followed by a series of five polyphonic Credos. On T.iii.2, see Il Codice T.III.2 / The
Codex T.III.2. Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, a c. di Agostino Ziino, Lucca, LIM-Libreria
Musicale Italiana, 1994; Lucia Marchi, Intorno all’origine del codice T.III.2 della Biblioteca Nazionale
Universitaria di Torino, «Recercare», xv, 2003, pp. 7-37, especially pp. 9-13.
32 The repertory of anonymous unica of the main corpus of Cyp is strictly divided into gatherings:
Gathering ii contains liturgical polyphony; Gathering iv and v contain French fixed forms ordered
by genre. According to Kügle, the ms. was copied by Italian scribes, perhaps around the middle of the
fourth decade of the fifteenth century under the guidance of Jean Hanelle, for the Avogadro family of
Brescia, whose coat of arms it would bear; see most recently Karl Kügle, Glorious Sounds for a Holy
Warrior: New Light on Codex Turin J.II.9, «Journal of the American Musicological Society», lxv, 2012,
pp. 637-690 and bibliographical references found therein.
33 On Q15, copied in Padua (1420-1425) and Vicenza (ca. 1430-1435), see Margaret Bent, Bologna
Q15. The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript. Introductory Study and Facsimile Edition, 2
vols., Lucca, LIM-Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2008. Compared to Mass movements and motets, the
songs of Q15 are relatively small in number. The extant nineteen French-texted pieces were inserted
as page-fillers in the final part of stage i (before 1425), in blank spaces of folios that contained Mass
movements or motets. Among the pieces identified from the detached and pasted capitals, the only
Italian-texted song, Ciconia’s Con lagreme (capital n. 20, pasted to fol. R114r/A117r), was originally
entered at the top of a page and then eliminated from the manuscript. See Bent, Bologna Q15, vol.
1, pp. 159-160 and 256.
34 On Ox213, copied in the Veneto between the third and fourth decade of the fifteenth century,
see Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Canon. Misc. 213, ed. by David Fallows, Chicago and London, The
University of Chicago Press, 1995.
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BU221635 and Trém36 – to mention a few. In addition, the existence of numerous
fragments with comparable characteristics – such as PadA, Ravi3, Gr224-D, and
Cor2 – shows that this type of musical anthology, in which the two repertories are
copied in close proximity, was extremely widespread.37 In some sources including
the two repertories, the French-texted pieces are probably page-fillers, while in
35 On BU2216, see Heinrich Besseler, The Manuscript Bologna Biblioteca Universitaria 2216, «Musica Disciplina», vi, 1952, pp. 39-65; Il Codice Musicale 2216 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna,
a c. di F. Alberto Gallo, Bologna, Forni, 1968-1970, 2 vols. (“Monumenta Lyrica Medii Aevi Italica”
3, Mensurabilia), and more recently Ralph P. Corrigan, The Creation of a Fifteenth-Century Music
Book: The Scribe as Producer, Owner and User, in Sources of Identity: Makers, Owners, and Users of
Music Sources Before 1600, ed. by Lisa Colton and Tim Sheppard, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017, pp. 97-132.
36 From the index of Trém, dated 1376, we know that the collection, now lost with the exception of
one bifolio, must have featured French pieces and polyphonic pieces for the Mass in close proximity.
See, for example, the Credos indexed as Patrem omnipotentem at numbers xxxvii and xlv; under
the same index numbers (relating to the folios or page openings), we also find French-texted songs.
See Margaret Bent, Indexes in Late Medieval Polyphonic Music Manuscripts: A Brief Tour, in The
Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. by James H. Marrow,
Richard A. Linenthal, and William Noel, Houten, Hes & DeGraaf, 2010, pp. 196-207: 199. See also
Ead., A Note on the Dating of the Trémoille Manuscript, in Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer,
ed. by Bryan R. Gillingham, Paul A. Merkley, Ottawa, Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1990, pp. 217242; repr. with updates in Ead., The Motet in the Late Middle Ages, New York, forthcoming, chap. 31
(we thank the author for allowing us to read a prepublication version of this essay). The transcription
of the 114 pieces in the index of the ms., prepared by Jason Stoessel, can be read in diamm (https://
www.diamm.ac.uk/sources/98/#/, last accessed April 27, 2021).
37 According to the survey published by Cuthbert, nineteen Italian fragments and manuscripts
(excluding the main anthology collections) with these characteristics were known up to 2016; see
Michael Scott Cuthbert, Trecento Fragments and Polyphony beyond the Codex, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006, table 1.6, p. 28. Some of these contain polyphonic settings of Mass chants
and French-texted compositions: Ravi3 and PadA (especially Ox229 and Pad684). In addition to six
sacred pieces, including the cantus of a polyphonic Gloria, Ravi3 contains the fragmentary virelai
C’est le doulz iour en qui doit estriner; see Enzo Mecacci, Agostino Ziino, Un altro frammento
musicale del primo Quattrocento nell’Archivio di Stato di Siena, «Rivista Italiana di Musicologia»,
xxxvii, 2, 2003, pp. 199-225; on the identification of the Gloria, see Michael Scott Cuthbert,
Elizabeth Nyikos, Style, Locality, and the Trecento Gloria: New Sources and a Reexamination, «Acta
Musicologica», lxxxii, 2, 2010, pp. 185-212, passim and pp. 194-195. Finally, mention should also
be made of the manuscript V-CVbav, Urb. Lat. 1419, in which appears, alongside various settings
of liturgical polyphony, the virelai Je port aimablemant composed by Donato da Firenze (of which,
however, the musical witnesses preserve only the text’s incipit); the text of the virelai can be read
in Gianfranco Contini, Poesie francesi dalla Pavia viscontea, in Studi in onore di Carlo Pellegrini,
Torino, S.E.I., 1963, pp. 61-80; new edition in Id., Frammenti di filologia romanza. Scritti di ecdotica
e linguistica (1932-1989), a c. di Giancarlo Breschi, Firenze, SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, vol. ii,
pp. 1061-1085: 1074-1075.
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others, they are part of the first or only layer of copy: Pv seems to fall into this second
category, but caution is necessary since we are dealing with a fragmentary source.
In the following pages, we analyse the five newly discovered unica,38 which
should be read with the help of the edition provided in §§7 and 8. Since the musical notation of the four secular compositions is essentially identical, the account
of their notational characteristics is grouped together.
4. Notation
The notation of the four French-texted pieces shows remarkable uniformity (see
Table 3): all are written in tempus imperfectum with prolatio maior and make use
of the dragma. The first piece is the only one to feature the use of semi-coloration,
found only once at the beginning of the cantus in the form of a brevis semivacua.
The Credo is written in tempus imperfectum with prolatio minor.
The figure of the dragma (or fusiel), introduced during the first half of the
fourteenth century, is firstly mentioned by Jacobus in his Speculum musicae.39
38 We have searched for possible further attestations for the four French-texted unica using the tools
currently available; in addition to editions and catalogues, the following databases are worth mentioning: cant, diamm, jcuc. Finally, the numerous unidentified French-texted songs (including rondeaux
and virelais) in SL – reported by Janke and Nádas – were also checked without any results; see The San
Lorenzo Palimpsest. Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo Ms. 2211, ed. by Andreas Janke and John
Nádas, vol. i: Introductory Study, vol. ii: Multispectral Images, Lucca, LIM-Libreria Musicale Italiana,
2016; namely, for the unidentified compositions, see vol. i, Appendix C, and the inventory, pp. 49-89.
39 See Speculum musicae, book vii, chap. xxiv, 4-9; Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musicae, ed. by Roger
Bragard, American Institute of Musicology, 1973 (“CSM” 3,7); tml: https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/JACSP7 (last accessed May 4, 2021). The dragma is discussed by Apel in the chapters on ‘mixed’
and ‘mannered’ notation of his handbook; see Willi Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600,
Cambridge (Ma), The Medieval Academy of America, 1953, pp. 392-393 and the table at p. 405. A list of
French and Italian theoretical writings (from the late fourteenth to the early fifteenth century) which
mention the figure of the dragma can be found in Jason Stoessel, Symbolic Innovation: The Notation
of Jacob de Senleches, «Acta Musicologica», lxxi, 2, 1999, pp. 136-164, table at p. 149. The figure is not
alien to the fourteenth-century Florentine repertory; Gehring has suggested that the use of hollow
notes, in the tradition of Francesco Landini’s works, is indicative of a later trend than the use of the
dragma; see Julia Gehring, Die Überlieferung der Kompositionen Francesco Landinis in Musikhandschriften des späten 14. und frühen 15. Jahrhunderts, Hildesheim, Olms, 2012 (“Musica Mensurabilis” 5),
pp. 35-45. On its use in SL, and in particular in the works of Piero Mazzuoli and Giovanni Mazzuoli,
see Andreas Janke, Die Kompositionen von Giovanni Mazzuoli, Piero Mazzuoli und Ugolino da Orvieto
im San-Lorenzo-Palimpsest (ASL 2211), Hildesheim, Olms, 2016 (“Musica Mensurabilis” 7), pp. 33-44.
69
,
Tab. 3. The notation of the French-texted pieces of Pv
Meaning (with respect
to the breve of the
tempus imperfectum
with prolatio maior)
Notes
semicolor
5/6 of breve
Virelai i, C 1. The
value of 5/6 of breve
can also be obtained
by imperfectio ad
partem; but in this
case it is necessary to
use the color because
the figure adjacent to
the initial breve is a
semibreve.
dragma
2/6 of breve
‘dragma
brevis’
4/6 of breve
FIGURAE
flag to the right
semiminima
70
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syncopation
within the
breve
The third minim is
affected by alteratio; the
first one makes imperfecta
the final semibreve.
Virelai i: C 27 (and
27*: clos).
The copyist here
prefers not to use
the sequence M M D D
employed elsewhere.
Although he does not explain its value, Jacobus includes the dragma in his discussion of the considerable differences of opinion (magna dissentio) among the ‘moderns’ regarding the different ways of graphically representing the semibreve. The
mensural meaning of the dragma was not stable during the fourteenth century.40 In
the Pavia fragment it is unequivocally used as a semibreve made of two minims.41
Virelai i and rondeau iii not only use the simple dragma, bearing the value of
two minims (D), but also a particular form of brevis with upward and downward
stems (B). As far as we know, the brevis-shaped dragma – used in the precise sense
40 See lml, s.v. ‘Dragma’.
41 As regards the meaning of the dragma in the Pv fragment, the value of two minims is first attested in Coussemaker’s Anonymous iii (post 1320): «Item nota quod quaedam sunt semibreves quae
caudantur a parte superiori et inferiori, ut patet hic. D D D D D D. Et tales notulae sic caudatae dragmae
vocantur, gallice fuises, et non possunt aliquo modo valere nisi duas minimas». Other occurrences
datable to the first half of the fourteenth century are listed in lml (ad vocem). The exact meaning is
found in the second half of the century in the Tractatus figurarum: «Item minima caudata superius
et inferius valet tantum quantum semibrevis imperfecta, id est duas minimas, et hoc satis commune
ut hic D D D ». For the Anonymous iii (F-Pnm, lat. 15128), see Philippi de Vitriaco Ars nova, ed. by
Gilbert Reaney, André Gilles, and Jean Maillard, American Institute of Musicology, 1964 (“cms” 8),
pp. 84-93: 88; for the Tractatus figurarum, see Tractatus figurarum, ed. and trans. by Philip E. Schreur,
Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1989, p. 84. The treatise is transmitted in a total of fourteenth
witnesses, the oldest of which (Us-Cn, Case MS 54.1), copied in Pavia, is dated 2 October 1391; for the
sake of brevity, see the bibliography mentioned in Anne Stone, Lombard Patronage at the End of the
Ars Nova: A Preliminary Panorama, in The End of the Ars Nova in Italy: The San Lorenzo Palimpsest and
Related Repertories, ed. by Antonio Calvia, Stefano Campagnolo, Andreas Janke, Maria Sofia Lannutti, John Nádas, Firenze, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2020 (“La Tradizione Musicale” 21; “Studi e
testi” 12), pp. 217-252: 250. Other possible meanings of the dragma are also discussed in Karl Kügle,
The Notation of Codex Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare 115, in Le notazioni della polifonia vocale dei secoli IXXVII, a c. di Maria Caraci Vela, Daniele Sabaino, Stefano Aresi, Pisa, ETS, 2007, pp. 233-240: 238-239.
71
,
explained below – was never mentioned by theorists nor found in any musical
source. It is thus a unique occurrence in the history of medieval notation – in linguistics, it would be called a hapax.42
We have given this new figure the name of ‘dragma brevis’, which alludes to the
fact that it must be understood as double in value in relation to the simple dragma.
Although not supported by a theoretical background, the meaning of the dragma
brevis can be easily inferred from its context. The simple dragma is used in groups
of three figures (sometimes non-contiguous) to be read in proportio sesquialtera at
the level of the semibreve (D D D in place of S S), as perhaps happened in the rondeau
D’Amours, d’ame et d’amant, described by the anonymous De musica mensurabili
of the ms. V-CVbav, Barb. lat. 307 (from ca. 1360 or ca. 1380 according to lml).43
42 The notational system proposed by Giorgio Anselmi in his De musica – never adopted in the
repertory – includes a graphic form identical to the new figure of the Pavia fragment (we thank Anne
Stone for bringing this occurrence to our attention) but used with a different meaning. Anselmi’s
treatise was written in 1434 and uniquely transmitted in the ms. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, H
233 inf., fols. 5r-48r, a codex that belonged to Franchino Gaffurio and was glossed by him. The figure,
called ‘semibrevis media’, appears on fol. 46v; see Georgii Anselmi Parmensis, De musica, a c. di
Giuseppe Massera, Firenze, Olschki, 1961. Even if we are not dealing with the same system, the possible connection with Anselmi – who is thought to have studied in Pavia at the turn of the fifteenth
century – is another clue to be taken into great consideration in our future research; see the entry
by Liliana Pannella, Giorgio Anselmi senior, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 3, Roma,
Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1961, pp. 377-378.
43 In the anonymous treatise De musica mensurabili (Coussemaker’s pseudo-Theodoricus de Campo, incipit «Omnis ars sive doctrina») a lost rondellus is mentioned, in which dragmae appear («dragmae vocantur, gallice fusiel»): «Alii quidam praedictas signaverunt deorsum et desursum dantes talibus
notulis valorem semibrevis imperfectae, prout in rondello: D’Amours, d’ame et d’amant. Hae parum
fuerunt in usu; et adhuc a quibusdam ponuntur, quae ab ipsis dragmae vocantur, gallice fusiel: D ».
Reference edition: De musica mensurabili, ed. by Cecily Sweeney; De semibrevibus caudatis, ed. by
André Gilles and Cecily Sweeney, American Institute of Musicology, 1971 (“CSM” 13); Coussemaker’s
reading was Douce dame d’amour, but in the most recent transcription from the single witness Barb.
Lat. 307 (see fol. 24r), prepared for the tml by Oliver B. Ellsworth, the diplomatic transcription of
the incipit has been correctly given as Damours damnne et damant. The three editions mentioned
can be read in the tml at the following URLs: https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/CAMDEM
(Coussemaker); https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/ANODEM (Sweeney); https://chmtl.indiana.
edu/tml/14th/ANOMUSI (Ellsworth). Vivarelli has argued that the De musica mensurabili can be
associated with a late fourteenth-century Neapolitan tradition of music theory; see Carla Vivarelli,
«Ars cantus mensurabilis mensurata per modos iuris» un trattato napoletano di ars subtilior?, in L’Ars
Nova Italiana del Trecento VII, «Dolci e nuove note». Atti del quinto convegno internazionale in ricordo di Federico Ghisi (1901-1975) (Certaldo, 17-18 dicembre 2005), a c. di Francesco Zimei, Lucca,
LIM-Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2005, pp. 103-142: 134-142. The ms. Barb. Lat. 307 has been recently
redated to ca. 1360; see Francesca Manzari, Jason Stoessel, The intersection of Anglo-French cul-
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At T 26 of virelai i (D B), the dragma bears the value of one third of a breve,
and the following dragma brevis completes the breve unit, taking on the value of
the remaining two thirds of a breve. The graphic shape of the new figure directly
recalls that of the dragma, and its mensural meaning is further clarified by the fact
that the succession dragma–dragma brevis is found sounding simultaneously with
three dragmae of the cantus. The same rhythm would have been representable
through coloration, with void or red notes (s b);44 and occasionally a mix of the
two principles (coloration, and addition of stems) can be found (D b), for example
in works by Paolo da Firenze and Francesco Landini.45 However, as will be seen
here in the analysis of the rondeau Se la playsant chiera veoyr povoye, the scribe reserves coloration for another function altogether. The invention of the new figure
provides homogeneity to the notation, applying the same expedient – the addition
of upward and downward stems – to both the breve and the semibreve, to obtain
the same result (diminution by one third). This invention is conceptually consonant with Prosdocimo’s claim that «possumus etiam per appositionem caudarum
extraneas figuras fabricare» (‘we can also create new/unusual figurae through the
addition of stems’).46
ture and Angevin illumination in a fourteenth-century Ars nova miscellany: a new dating for Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. lat. 307 and Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Archiv des Benediktinerstiftes, Ms.
135/6, «Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae», xxv, 2019, pp. 283-331: esp. 295-296 and 298.
Consequently, this dating would also retrodate the De musica mensurabili, which was considered
datable to ca. 1380 (see lml).
44 The evidence of the Ars cantus mensurabilis mensurata per modos iuris clearly shows how, in tempus
imperfectum with prolatio maior, the use of color (with hollow or red notes) is considered analogous to
that of dragmae («Quod inveniuntur quandoque semibreves vacue vel rubee, quarum tres ponuntur
pro tempore imperfecto maioris prolationis, ut hic: s s s vel sic D D D [...]»); see Ars cantus mensurabilis
mensurata per modos iuris, ed. and trans. by Matthew Balensuela, Lincoln, University of Nebraska
Press, 1994, p. 224. The anonymous author does not use the term dragma, but speaks of full figurae
(black semibreves) with stems on both sides: «plene habeant caudas ex utraque parte»; Ivi, p. 226.
45 See Paolo’s ballata Benché partito da te ’l corpo sia (Pit, fol. 84r), Ct 5: D b. In another place in the
same ballata, the dragma prevents the application of the rule known as similis ante similem perfecta
est: D S MPM ( ). See also: D SPM ( ). Other examples can be found in Landini’s Nessun ponga
speranza (Fp, fol. 40r; Sq, fol. 162v; Pit, fols. 116v-117r; Lo, fol. 75v; SL, fol. cxxviv/Ar) and Per la mia
dolze piaga (Sq, fol. 143r).
46 See Prosdocimo de Beldemandis, Expositiones tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis magistri
Johannis de Muris, lxi, 52: «Possumus etiam per appositionem caudarum extraneas figuras fabricare,
hoc est extraneorum valorum, et hoc bene et cum rationibus satis evidentibus, sed tales caudationes
non erunt ita signa comunia sicut signa superius posita, propter quod dico, quod si tales figuras
fabricare volumus, plura habemus presupponere». Shortly afterwards, having considered a number
73
,
However, the use of the dragma brevis to notate a passage that lacks both mensural complexity and subtilitas is also an indicator of a certain notational experimentalism. It is impossible to say whether this was the work of the copyist or the
author, but it is of considerable interest as an indicator of the context in which Pv
and the repertory it contains may have originated. Since we find the figure also in
the fragment Tr, we seem to be dealing with a notational habit of some diffusion
rather than an ad hoc solution to a particular problem. While the contrivance may
appear inconsistent with the use of the initial half-coloration, it is consistent and
immediately understandable with the use of the simple dragma, from which it is
derived by addition: D + D = B.
Further explanation is needed regarding the use of semicolor (half-coloration or
bi-coloration), a device hardly mentioned in theory,47 and quite rare in the actual
repertory.48 The beginning of virelai i is characterised by the syncopation produced
by a brevis semivacua, whose value is five-sixths of a tempus. That is to say, its overall
value consists of the sum of one black half breve (one semibreve worth three minims) and one hollow half breve (one hollow semibreve worth two minims).
of essential prerequisites, Prosdocimo adds: «Istis igitur suppositionibus sic premissis, potest quilibet
studiosus infinitas, ut sic loquar, per se varias fabricare figuras, si supradicta bene examinare et calculare
voluerit». See Prosdocimo de Beldemandis, Expositiones tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis magistri
Johannis de Muris, a c. di F. Alberto Gallo, Bologna, Università degli studi, 1966; online on TML:
https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/15th/PROEXP (last accessed May 4, 2021).
47 The figura semivacua is mentioned in the Tractatus de cantu mensurali seu figurativo musice artis as
one of the particular species of figurae used by the moderns («semiminima, fusiel, semifusiel, brevis
plicata, cardinalis seu voluntaria, oblonga, vacua, semivacua»), in addition to the five already in use.
In spite of the intention to explain all the figurae, in the continuation of the treatise there is no further
mention of the semi-hollow notes; see Tractatulus de cantu mensurali seu figurativo musice artis (MS.
Melk, Stiftsbibliothek 950), ed. by F. Alberto Gallo, American Institute of Musicology, 1971 (“CSM”
16); the text of Gallo’s edition is available on the tml: https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/ANOTRA
(last accessed April 28, 2021). The only extant manuscript, datable to the fifteenth century, is believed
to have originated in Melk; according to Gallo, the treatise dates from around 1350-1370. The Tractatus figurarum mentions the application of the principle (but vertically) to a very particular form of
minim: «superius semiplena et inferius semivacua»); see Tractatus figurarum, p. 88; and Karen M.
Cook, Theoretical Treatments of the Semiminim in a Changing Notational World c. 1315-c. 1440, Ph.D.
diss., Duke University, 2012, p. 240.
48 A systematic study of semicolor in black notation is lacking. A few mentions can be found in Apel,
The Notation of Polyphonic Music, pp. 432-435 (its use in white notation, is discussed at pp. 142-144). See
also Margaret Bent, Principles of Mensuration and Coloration: Virtuosity and Anomalies in the Old Hall
Manuscript, in La notazione della polifonia vocale dei secoli IX–XVII. Antologia, Parte seconda: secoli XIV–XVII,
a c. di Antonio Delfino e Francesco Saggio, Pisa, ETS, pp. 73-96.
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One of the best known examples of the use of semicolor in the repertory of the
last quarter of the fourteenth century is found in the three-voice ballade by Senleches, Je me merveil / J’ay pluseurs fois, copied in Ch, fol. 44v.49 In the section in
tempus imperfectum with prolatio maior (cantus i and tenor),50 the semicolor is used
extensively: it is applied to the imperfect long, the breve and the semibreve, where
it always fulfils the same function: namely 5/6 of the long, 5/6 of the breve, 5/6 of
the semibreve (see Table 4).
Tab. 4. The use of semicolor in Senleches, Je me merveil / J’ay pluseurs fois (cantus and tenor)
c
Longa semivacua H
B+b
MMMMMM+MMMM
c
Brevis semivacua E
S+s
MMM+MM
c
Semibrevis semivacua
M+m
FFF+FF
In Pv’s fol. 1r, the use of the semicolor also has a visual function. The brevis semivacua is not only the opening note of the cantus of the first song but also the very first
figure on the folio, and it does not occur elsewhere. In this ‘simple’ composition,
the opening syncopation, realised through semicolor, stands out like an (unfulfilled)
promise of subtilitas.
49 See French Secular Music. Manuscript Chantilly, Musée Condé 564, Second Part: Nos. 51-100,
ed. by Gordon Greene, texts ed. by Terence Scully, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1982 (“pmfc” 19);
and French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century, ed. Willi Apel, ed. of the literary texts
by Samuel N. Rosenberg, vol. i, Ascribed Compositions, American Institute of Musicology, 1970
(“cmm” 53), pp. 172-173.
50 Cantus ii is differently notated; see Willi Apel, French Secular Music of the Late Fourteenth
Century, Cambridge, ma, 1950, p. 9; Anne Stone, The Composer’s Voice in the Late-Medieval Song:
Four Case Studies, in Johannes Ciconia. Musicien de la transition, ed. by Philippe Vendrix, Turnhout,
Brepols, 2003, pp. 169-194: 179-187; Yolanda Plumley, Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars Nova:
The Case of Esperance and En attendant Songs, «Early Music History», xviii, 1999, pp. 287-363:
321-326; Jehoash Hirshberg, Criticism of Music and Music as Criticism in the Chantilly Codex, in
A Late Medieval Songbook and its Context: New Perspectives on the Chantilly Codex (Bibliothèque du
Château de Chantilly, Ms. 564), ed. by Yolanda Plumley and Anne Stone, Turnhout, Brepols, 2009,
pp. 133-159: 153ss.
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5. Repertory
The virelai La nuit que est tant obscure appears on the first three staves of fol. 1r.
Apart from a small material lacuna in the cantus, the piece can be transcribed in its
entirety. As already pointed out above, the beginning of the piece is characterised
by syncopation triggered by the semicolor.
Regarding the lacuna affecting the cantus at bb. 13-14, it can be argued that the
opening of v. 4 (C 14) was likely preceded by a rest. Indeed, all the lines end with
rests of the cantus: C 8 (end of v. 1), C 11 (end of v. 2), C 24 (end of v. 5). In the
cantus, the first figure of b. 13, at the syllable que, is a minim a, not clearly visible
to the naked eye (see Table 5).
Since all verse endings are marked by octaves, we can assume that first note of
b. 14 of the cantus was g or, less probably, G in unison (see Example 1). Since the
lacuna prevents a clear view of the beginning of a possible syncopation, bb. 14-17
are problematic. Two types of reconstruction are possible (see Examples 2 and 3),
although the second is more satisfactory. The line probably began similarly to vv. 2
and 3, with an upbeat minim preceded by two minim rests (like the repetition of
the first syllable of v. 1 at b. 5). In the second hypothetical transcription, at bb. 15-16,
we find the usual dissonance of seventh followed by sixth (a 7–6–5–F 7–6)51 caused by
syncopation. The pre-cadential ascending third leap, a rare and distinctive feature,
is found in exactly the same contrapuntal configuration (i.e. fourth-sixth closing on
the octave) in the other virelai of the fragment, Tant yolis et gay sans melenconie, at
bb. 25-26 and bb. 32-33.52 We have not found other occurrences of similar cadences
within the corpus of the virelai,53 but it appears at least twice in the rondeau repertory: the anonymous En esperant que de vous amés soye copied in BU596, where this
kind of progression – even if not exactly identical in terms of rhythm – appears in
the final cadence (see Example 4);54 the same happens in the anonymous Hors sui ye
bien de trestoute ma ioye copied in ModA and SL (see below, Example 11).
51 Throughout the essay, dyadic intervallic progressions are represented using the alphabetical system (A–G, a–g, aa–dd...) for the tenor, with superscript numbers for pitch intervals above the tenor.
52 Tant yolis et gay sans mele[n]conie, bb. 25-26: E 4–6–D 8; bb. 32-33: D 4–6–C 8.
53 The only comparable example – due to the jump of the third preceding the ending semitone movement in the cantus – is found in the anonymous virelai Mon tres douls coer, bb. 19-20, in a different
contrapuntal context; ed. in French Secular Music. Rondeaux and Miscellaneous Pieces, ed. by Gordon
Greene, texts ed. by Terence Scully, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1989 (“pmfc” 22), p. 157. However, this
latter evidence is problematic because only two of the three possible voices remain; see Ivi, p. 185.
54 We are grateful to Michele Epifani for bringing this occurrence to our attention.
76
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Tab. 5. Detail of the upper right-hand corner of fol. 1;
a) and c) natural light photography; b) and d) ultraviolet induced fluorescence (UVIF)
(photographies by CISRIC, Laboratorio Arvedi, Cremona)
a)
b)
c)
d)
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Ex. 1. Virelai i, La nuit que est tant obscure, bb. 8-15
Ex. 2. Virelai i. La nuit que est tant obscure, bb. 14-18, hypothesis 1
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Ex. 3. Virelai i. La nuit que est tant obscure, bb. 14-18, hypothesis 2
Ex. 4. Rondeau En esperant que de vous amés soye, bb. 15-22 (transcription by Antonio Calvia)
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Virelai i has some stylistic features in common with other two-voice examples written in tempus imperfectum with prolatio maior.55 See for example the anonymous
virelais E Dieus, commant j’ay grant desir transmitted in R (fol. 83v),56 where we find
some stylistic traits of La nuit que est tant obscure: a tenor that proceeds predominantly in semibreves associated with a slightly florid cantus, frequent pre-cadential
passages written in mutatio qualitatis, lines clearly separated by rests, melisma on
the first syllable of the first line closed by a cadence on d, which anticipates the final
cadence of the piece.
The second composition on fol. 1r, the two-voice rondeau Se la playsant chiera veoyr povoye, is provided with an alius tenor. The piece, stylistically similar to
virelai i,57 presents a formal peculiarity in the version with the proper tenor. Two
paratexts, one for the tenor part and the other for the alius tenor, explain how the
two voices should be sung in relation to the cantus: 1) Tenor Se la playsant. Vacue
dicantur pro aperto, loco precedentium tam supra quam inferius; 2) Alius tenor de Se
la playsant et non dicantur vacue.
The first can be translated as: ‘Tenor of Se la playsant: for the ouvert,58 the hollow
55 See especially the anonymous virelais published in French Secular Music. Virelais, ed. by Gordon
Greene, texts ed. by Terence Scully, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1987 (“pmfc” 21), nos. 17 and 28 (from
R); nos. 19 and 58 (from Pit); nos. 20 and 62 (from Iv); nos. 31 and 45 (from BU596); no. 49 (from
Ca1328); no. 59 (from ModA). See Mors sui, se je ne vous voy by Guillaume de Machaut and Donato
da Firenze’s Je port amiablement; ed. in The Works of Guillaume de Machaut, First Part, ed. by Leo
Schrade, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1956 (“pmfc” 2), no. 26, p. 185, and Italian Secular Music. Vincenzo da Rimini, Rosso de Chollegrana, Donato da Firenze, Gherardello de Firenze, Lorenzo da Firenze, ed. by W.
Thomas Marrocco, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1971 (“pmfc” 7), nos. 9a, 9b, and 9c.
56 Ed. French Secular Music. Virelais (“pmfc” 21), no. 28. In tempus imperfectum with prolatio maior,
the tempora written using mutatio qualitatis (T 7, T 18, T 21, T 37 and 37*; C 13, C 23, C 36) are
achieved through coloration (s s s in place of S S).
57 Compare for example the first line’s final cadences of the following pieces: Se la playsant chiera
veoyr povoye, bb. 8-10; La nuit que est tant obscure, bb. 6-7. Another similarity (though very common)
is found in the concluding sonorities: final sonority D-d; ouvert E-e; clos D-d.
58 Pro aperto: ‘for the apertum’; the use of apertum as a substantive term is common (the same applies to clausum); e.g. Aegidius de Murino, Tractatus cantus mensurabilis: «Isto modo debet fieri Ballada simplex: in primo fac apertum et clausum, et ultimo fac clausum solummodo. Item Ballada duplex
habet apertum et clausum ante et retro. Item Vironellus simplex habet ante apertum et clausum retro.
Item Vironellus duplex habet dimidium apertum et clausum ante, et apertum et clausum retro. Item
Rondellus habet apertum ante, quando finitur in ut, et debet esse decima; et quando finitur in la, debet este quinta, et retro clausum»; see Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series a Gerbertina altera, 4
vols., ed. by Edmond de Coussemaker, Paris, Durand, 1864-1876 (repr. Hildesheim, 1963), vol. 3, pp.
124-128, online on tml, https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/AEGTRA (last accessed April 29, 2021).
80
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[figures] should be sung in place of the previous ones,59 above as well as below’.60
This means that in the sequence consisting of full and hollow figures, to perform
the apertum (in vernacular ouvert or verto) it is necessary to sing the hollow figures
in place of the full ones immediately preceding them. The specification «tam supra
quam inferius» makes it clear that this rule applies to both voices.
The second rule translates: ‘Alius tenor of Se la playsant, and the hollow [figures]
should not be sung’. Since there are no hollow figures in the alius tenor, the second paratext is referring to the cantus part only, stipulating that when singing the
rondeau with the alius tenor, one must skip the hollow figures of the cantus part.
As a result, the version with alius tenor will follow the usual rondeau form, while
the version with tenor will be an extraordinary form of rondeau with ouvert/clos
endings in the first musical section.
Example 5 shows how the two versions of the medial cadence work. The copyist
has inserted hollow notes that must be sung simultaneously by cantus and tenor.
In the first case, at the cantus, we have a succession of four minims and two dotted
semibreves (see Table 6-a), alternating full and hollow figures (M m M m SP sP). Since
the rule expressed through the paratext requires that the hollow notes be sung ‘in
place of the preceding ones’, it will be necessary to perform e d e (m m sP) in place of
d c d (M M SP) to obtain the ‘open cadence’. Similarly, to perform the apertum at the
tenor (see Table 6-b), the hollow ligature (G F E) is sung instead of the immediately preceding full ligature (F E D).
In so doing, one obtains a cadence for the apertum in both voices (see Example
5). The same cadence is not supposed to be sung when the alius tenor is used. The
alternative tenor is in fact written without hollow notes and its canon also specifies
«et non dicantur vacue», to reiterate that the hollow notes (of the cantus) are not to
be sung. The version with alius tenor thus takes the form of a traditional rondeau
without apertum and clausum. The version with the ‘normal’ tenor, on the other
hand, requires, as we have seen, the use of an alternative ouvert/clos ending for the
first section.
59 Loco precedentium: ‘in place of the previous (figurae)’.
60 Tam supra quam inferius: ‘as much above as below’. The specification indicates that the rule must
be applied to both voices (cantus and tenor). The hollow notes are located in the first and third staves
of the rondeau (fourth and sixth staves). Supra and inferius seem to refer to the arrangement of the
hollow notes in the folio (and thus to the position of the respective voices), rather than synthetically
to ‘upper voice’ (cantus) and ‘lower voice’ (tenor). In any case, the result would be the same.
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Tab. 6. Hollow figurae in the rondeau ii. Se la playsant chiera veoyr povoye
b, tenor
a, cantus
Ex. 5. Rondeau ii. Se la playsant chiera veoyr povoye, bb. 11-13*, with tenor and alius tenor
Since the rondeau form does not normally use alternative cadences, the question remains of how to establish the alternation between the e (ouvert) and d (clos) cadences. The normal function of the ouvert/clos alternation in the other formes fixes is to diversify the ending of a recently performed musical section when a new text is applied
to it. Based on this criterion, the most plausible option seems that of performing the
clos ending only when the A section is directly followed by the B section: that is, at
the end of the second line and at the end of the tenth line (see Table 7).
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Tab. 7. Rondeau ii. Se la playsant chiera veoyr povoye, version with tenor,
possible succession of ouvert/clos endings
Line
Text
Musical sections
(version with tenor)
1
Se la plaisant chiera veoyr povoye
A (bb. 1-13*)a
2
de cella chi serf m’amour
3
delivré seroy de dolour
4
et de Fortune che ansi me gravoye.
5
Certes ma complainte a li feroye
6
de liesse tornee en plour
7
[se la plaisant chiera veoyr povoye
8
de cella chi serf m’amour].
9
Quant me sovient de vous, ma
douce yoye,
10
y’en ay ansi tres grand douchour,
11
puis que y[e] avis voutre dolour:
12
se ce ne fust, bien croy que ye
moroye.
13-16
Se la plaisant chiera etc.
OUVERT/CLOS
Clos (d)
i
(AB)
Ouvert (e)
ii
(A’A)
B (bb. 14-26)
A’ (bb. 1-13)
A (bb. 1-13*)
Ouvert (e)
A’ (bb. 1-13*)
Clos (d)
B’ (bb. 14-26)
AB (bb. 1-13*, 14-26)
iii
(A’B’)
iv
(AB)
a. Clos endings are numbered with *.
The rondeau Aves moy passoyt un flour is stylistically compatible with the first two
pieces of the fragment. The tenor moves mainly by semibreves and makes use of
the proportio sesquialtera delivered by three dragmae (D D D), here always used in a
pre-cadential function (see bb. 3 and 18). The dragmae are also used, again with the
total value of two minims, in a precadential figuration to the cantus: b. 7 (M M D D).
The cantus is written mainly in minims and semibreves, with semiminims in ornamentation. A textless musical segment begins section B (bb. 15-16, including the two
upbeat semiminims at the cantus).
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,
At bb. 9-10, the tenor has a syncopation achieved using the dragma brevis
), in which the figura has the value of four minims.
( S ¸ M SPM
c S¸ M SPM
Finally, in the cadence at b. 24, the e of the cantus should be emended to g: a7–6–G[8].
This is most likely a copying error due to the (common) third transposition. In the
rest of the virelai the cadences in which the cantus is followed by a two-minim rest
always lead to the
octave.61 Moreover, the presence of an f # at b. 23 helps to clarify
the cadential context.
A certain propensity to repeat short melodic-rhythmic modules (see C 17
with upbeat; and its repetition a fourth below, at C 20 with upbeat) – sometimes
in sequence (C 9 with upbeat, and C 9-10) – should also be noted (see Examples
6 and 7). In the second case (Example 7), the sequential repetition is grafted onto
the tenor’s syncopation, making it an even more interesting rhythmic combination. In fact, the basic rhythmic-melodic segment covers the duration of four
minims (M F F M M). Therefore, it is not repeated in the same position in relation
to the mensural unit, but with a shift of one minim forward. The repetition thus
simulates, at the cantus, a shift to prolatio minor of tempus imperfectum, with
minim equivalence.
The last virelai, Tant yolis et gay sans melenconie, is heavily damaged by a lacuna
in the poetic text. The ambitus of the two voices and the final sonorities (G-g, with
A-a for the ouvert) are a fourth higher than in virelai i. The b-flat in the signature
of the tenor and the Phrygian cadences at bb. 5-6 and 38-39 reflect the characteristics of the ambitus. Although considerably longer (39 tempora), stylistically this
last piece of fol. 1r is very close to the other three pieces. Except for a few notes in
the tenor, the final measures of section A (bb. 19-21) are comparable to bb. 17-19 of
rondeau iii and bb. 9-11 of virelai i, but they are written – not surprisingly (considering the ambitus) – a fourth higher (see Examples 8, 9 and 10).62
61 See bb. 4, 8, 11, 14, 19 and 22.
62 Compare also virelai iv, bb. 27-28 with rondeau iii, bb. 18-19.
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Ex. 6. Rondeau iii. Aves moy passoyt un flour, bb. 16-20
Ex. 7. Rondeau iii. Aves moy passoyt un flour, bb. 8-12
Ex. 8. Virelai iv. Tant yolis et gay sans melenconie bb. 18-21
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Ex. 9. Rondeau iii. Aves moy passoyt un flour, bb. 16-19
Ex. 10. Virelai i. La nuit que est tant obscure, bb. 8-11
The central segment of the same melodic-rhythmic module, repeated in the three
pieces in the cantus, is consistently retained (descending second – descending third
– descending second – ascending third – ascending third – descending second),63
while the liminal portions are slightly modified. Since it seems unlikely that this
similarity in melodic-rhythmic material is purely coincidental, we are inclined to
consider it as a characteristic of a single composer’s style. The first six notes of this
melodic segment are associated with the same rhythmic contour in Hors sui ye bien
de trestoute ma ioye – a two-voice anonymous rondeau copied in ModA and SL –
63 The linear intervallic succession appears characteristic when considering that the exact same
rhythm has been used. A research using emmsap has been done – coding the sequence as ‘-2-3-233-2’
(further specifiable as ‘3-2-3-233-2’ including the initial ascending third of Examples 8 and 10) – with
no relevant occurrences matching the same rhythmic pattern. Numbers in succession indicate ascending melodic intervals; numbers preceded by ‘-’ descending intervals. On the possibilities opened
up by melodic-interval research in emmsap, see Michael S. Cuthbert, Melodic Searching and the
Anonymous Unica of San Lorenzo 2211, in The End of the Ars Nova in Italy, pp. 151-161, esp. 153-155.
86
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both in the version with the first-pitch repetition found in the rondeau Aves moy
passoyt un flour (bb. 16-17) and in the one with an initial third leap (see Example
11, bb. 5-6, “a” and bb. 24-25, “a’ ”).64 The cadence at bb. 25-26 (Example 11, “b”)
closely resembles the rather distinctive cadence at the end of the first section of
virelai i, bb. 18-19, mentioned above.
On fol. 1v, two voices of a polyphonic Credo are entered. The upper voice begins
with the text «[f ]Actorem» (first staff)65 and the lower voice with «[o]Mnipotentem»
(eighth staff). The music ends, in both voices, with a syntactically and musically separate section which closes with the words «cuius regni non erit finis», although in the
second voice six tempora of music (bb. 194-199) and the text underlaid to the entire
last staff have been lost (bb. 194-220). The copying of the two voices is not abruptly
interrupted, as would be the case if there were a material lacuna. Instead, their insertion was carefully planned and both were copied on the same folio up to the section
that finishes with the cadence on «non erit finis», according to a well-studied mise
en page found elsewhere in the polyphonic Credo repertory.66 It is highly likely that
the final part of the setting, almost a third of the entire liturgical text,67 was in the
following folios. Considering the remaining portion of music, in its entirety the piece
probably amounted to about 300 tempora, not including the final Amen.68
64 ModA, fols. 13v-14r (page-filler on folios containing works by Antonello da Caserta). The rondeau is entered without text in Gathering xvi of SL (fol. clvir/87r, staves 5-7, incipit Hors suy bien
de tres) – here again as a page-filler – where a large portion of the cantus appears to be erroneously
transposed upward by a third. At b. 21, where ModA has coloration, SL employs dragmae with the
value of two minims each. Until just recently the rondeau was considered to be a unicum; the identification of the song was reported by Epifani in 2016 (published in 2017). See Michele Epifani, Una
caccia inedita dal Codice di S. Lorenzo, «Il Saggiatore musicale», xxiv, 2, 2017, pp. 155-188; and The
San Lorenzo Palimpsest, vol. i, pp. 82-82 and vol. ii, n. 179. The edition based on ModA is published
in French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century, ed. by Willi Apel, ed. of the literary texts by
Samuel N. Rosenberg, vol. iii: Anonymous Virelais, Rondeaux, Chansons, Canons. Appendix: Compositions with Latin Texts, American Institute of Musicology, 1972 (“cmm” 53), p. 94.
65 The guide-letter ‘f ’ can be read in strip ‘A’ mentioned above.
66 A similar structural subdivision of the music after the cadence on «cuius regni non erit finis»
occurs, for example, in Zacara’s Credo ‘Cursor’ (b. 146); see Italian Sacred and Ceremonial Music, ed.
by Kurt von Fischer and F. Alberto Gallo, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1987 (“pmfc” 13), n. 4. The subdivision is mirrored in the mise en page of the four voices in Q15, where the pairs C i/ T and C ii / Ct,
entered in a page opening, are interrupted after the cadence on «finis» and resume at the next page
opening with the last section of the Credo (incipit «Et in Spiritum Sanctum»).
67 From «Et in Spiritum Sanctum» to «Et vitam venturi saeculi», plus the final Amen.
68 To mention an example of similar length, see the Credo by Bartholus copied in Pit; see Italian Sacred
Music, ed. by Kurt von Fischer and F. Alberto Gallo, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1976 (“pmfc” 12), n. 12.
87
,
Ex. 11. Rondeau Hors sui ye bien de trestoute ma ioye , ModA, fols. 122v-13r
(transcribed by Antonio Calvia)
88
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The two extant voices of the Credo share equally the fourteen staves of fol.
1v. This is not surprising, since their style appears to be compatible with the socalled ‘simultaneous style’, a broad classification including settings whose three or
four voices, often all texted, are not (or only very slightly) rhythmically different
from each other.69 That the Credo was not a two-voice composition is immediately evident from the presence of cadences with parallel fourths of the type c4–d4
(see Example 12, fourth), which should be reconstructed, specifically, at least as
three-voice g cadences, in which the ‘tenorizans’ movement a–G is missing (see
Example 12, fourth, a). Example 12 shows all the ending progressions grouped by
the interval reached; by ‘ending progression’ we mean all the successions at the end
of a textual section, followed by a finis punctorum or closed by a longa (or maxima).
From this first observation, we deduce that at least the tenor is missing. From
the ranges of the two extant voices – and even more from the relationship between
the two ambitus – we deduce that we are dealing with a cantus and a voice usually
referred to as contratenor.70 The two remaining voices sometimes move in long series of parallel octaves (see bb. 30-32 on «Jesum Christum»), a feature rarely found
in three-voice counterpoint, and above all, they produce parallel octaves (of the
type F 8–G 8) in numerous major cadential articulations. In the four-voice writing
of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, similar octave movements are
common between Ct and C ii or between Ct and C i, but they are rare, if not very
rare, in three-voice textures (see Example 12: Octave).
An example of a four-voice Credo with parallel octaves in succession is the wellknown Credo Bonbarde.71 C and Ct proceed with a long series of parallel octaves
on the words «crucifixus etiam pro nobis» (see Example 13, b. 62).
69 Objections to the rigidities of the categories adopted by Stäblein-Harder have been raised by
Gallo and Facchin, but we retain it here for the sake of convenience, taking into account the cautions
discussed by Strohm; see Fourteenth-Century Mass Music in France, ed. by Hanna Stäblein-Harder,
Edition, American Institute of Musicology, 1962 (“cmm” 29); Critical text, American Institute of Musicology, 1962 (“Musicological studies and documents” 7); French Sacred Music, ed. by Giulio Cattin
and Francesco Facchin, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1989 (“pmfc” 23a), p. xv; Reinhard Strohm, The
Rise of European Music 1380-1500, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 23-30.
70 This voice has a range of about an octave below the cantus; although it is not labelled ‘contratenor’
in the source, we choose this designation to distinguish it from a second cantus. By cantus ii, on the
other hand, we mean, in a four-voice composition with this type of writing, a voice that has approximately the same ambitus as cantus i.
71 French Sacred Music, ed. by Giulio Cattin and Francesco Facchin, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1991
(“pmfc” 23b), pp. 224-237. See Strohm, The Rise of European Music 1380-1500, pp. 26-35.
89
,
Ex. 12. Cadential movements of the Credo, ordered by ending interval in the two extant voices
The cadences shown in Example 12 are at the following bars:
• Octave: a) 8-10; b) 17-19, 55-57, 80-81, 92-94, 125-128, 174-175, 209-210; c) 50-52, 132-133, 172-173;
d) 27-28; e) 52-53 (preceding the progression ‘b’ at 55-57); f ) 97-99; g) 135-136.
• Fourth: a) 22-24, 158-159; b) 41-42, 102-103, 116-118, 185-186, 218-220; c) 84-86, 191-192; d) 138-139.
• Fifth: a) 106-107; b) 111-113; c) 165-167.
• Sixth: a) 32-33; b) 36-38; c) 45-47; d) 70-71; e) 143-145.
• Third: a) 13-14; b) 65-67, 180-183; c) 75-77, 148-150; d) 119-122.
90
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Ex. 13. Credo Bonbarde (Perrinet?), French Sacred Music, ed. by Giulio Cattin and Francesco
Facchin, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1991 (“pmfc” 23b), pp. 224-237, bb. 62-63
Strohm has highlighted how the contratenor – in this type of four-voice writing
composed in relation to the tenor – produces, with respect to the two upper voices,
not only octave parallelisms but also passages written in a kind of ‘heterophony’
caused by the ornamentation of melodic segments doubled at the octave. Passages
of this last type are very frequent in the Pv fragment’s Credo.72
Remarkably, the Pv Credo is similar in style to the Sanctus ‘Mediolano’, a wellknown fully texted four-voice setting of the chant, whose C ii / Ct couple behave
in a manner strikingly close to our Credo’s two extant voices. If the texture of the
Pv Credo was in some way similar to that of this northern Italian Sanctus,73 it may
have also had multiple passages in which the C i carried extended syncopations on
top of a solid base of the other three voices, which rigidly marked the beginning
of each tempus 74 (segments where the cantus ii is syncopated across tempora in the
72 See (but the list is not exhaustive): bb. 21, 49-61, 83-84, 165, 168-171, 173-178, 207, 208-210; the
same principle is applied to a lesser extent to bb. 15-19 as well.
73 The rubric «Mediolano» can only be found in PadA and the piece is transmitted in other
witnesses without it; see, most recently, Michael Scott Cuthbert, Elizabeth Nyikos, Style,
Locality, and the Trecento Gloria: New Sources and a Reexamination, «Acta Musicologica», lxxxii, 2,
2010, pp. 185-212: 208-210.
74 See Italian Sacred Music, ed. by Kurt von Fischer and F. Alberto Gallo, Monaco, L’Oiseau-Lyre,
1976 (“pmfc” 12), pp. 83-87, especially bb. 87-100 for an example of syncompation.
91
,
Pv Credo are in fact rare and of limited duration).75 Although it is tempting, at the
moment we cannot directly associate these stylistic connections with a Lombard
local style, since the source is fragmentary and such an association would require
more detailed evidence. Nevertheless, what can be cautiously stated is that our
Credo’s style is quite similar to – and indeed is entirely compatible with – that of a
Sanctus bearing the telling denomination ‘Mediolano’.
Given these initial observations, we believe that the Pv fragment contains two
extant voices of an original four-voice Credo. It is not possible to specify whether
the first one is a C i or a C ii, although the C ii / Ct pair is perhaps slightly more
attested from the point of view of the mise en page. If it is indeed a C ii / Ct pair
(for the sake of clarity, these are the labels used in the present edition), the lost recto
of the following folio must have contained the pair C i / T up to the cadence on
«cuius regni non erit finis» (see Table 8).
Although the Credo is fragmentary, in terms of its form, some structural partitions can be identified. The musical setting follows the syntactic units of the text,
finishing each with a cadence marked by longa or brevis and visually articulating
the break with a double bar. The underlaid text marks these syntactic units with a
punctus followed by a capital letter (see Table 9).
There are thus 11 sections, most of them around 20 breves in length. Exceptions
are sections 1 (fragmentary: «Patrem» is missing, probably sung by at least one of
the lost voices), 4, 7 and 9. Section 7, on the text «Et incarnatus est de Spiritu
Sancto ex Maria Virgine: et homo factus est», is clearly differentiated from all the
others, both by its length and by the use of longa rests (here transcribed as suspiria)
and maximae in order to amplify the final portion of the text, in which each word
is declaimed in long notes («et – homo – factus – est»).76
Tab. 8. Possible mise en page of the Credo’s first part (up to «non erit finis», with four voices
fol. 1v
next folio recto (lost)
C ii ? (i-vii)
[C i ?]
Ct (viii-xiv)
[T]
75 See bb. 31-32, 53-54, 68-70, 90-92, 100-101, 110-111, 157-158, 184-185 and 201-202.
76 See again the Credo Bonbarde, where this portion of the text is highlighted using hoquetus
(bb. 55-61).
92
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Tab. 9. Sections of the Credo
Section bb.
duration in
tempora
Text (from C with UVIF photography, except Final
for section 1, from Ct)
sonorities
0
–
–
[Patrem]
1
1-5
5 (lacuna)
[o]Mnipotentem. [only Ct]
a
2
6-24
19
[f ]Actorem celi et terre uisibilium om(n)ium
et inuisibilium.
d 4 [G]
3
25-42
18 (final brevis) Et in unum dominum yh(esu)m xρ(istu)m
filium dei unigenitum.
a 4 [D]
4
43-72
30
Et ex patre natu(m) ante o(mn)ia se(cu)
la. deum de deo lum(en) de lumi(n)e deum
uerum de deo uero.
c 4 [F]
5
73-94
22
Genitu(m) no(n) factu(m) c(on)substantialem a 8 [a?]
patri p(er) que(m) o(mn)ia facta su(n)t.
6
95-113
19
Q(u)i propter nos homi(n)es et p(ro)pt(er)
nostram salutem descendit de celis.
a5
7
114-139
26 (not
including
longa rests
and maximae)
Et incarnatus e[st] de sp(irit)u s(an)c(t)o. ex
maria uirgine et homo factus est.
e 4 [a]
8
140-160
21
Crucifixus etia(m) p(ro) nobis s(u)b pontio
pillato (sic) passus (et) sepultus est.
d 4 [G]
9
161-175
15 (final brevis) Et resurrexit tertia die s(e)c(un)d(u)m sc(ri)
pturas.
a 8 [D]
–
10
176-198
23
Et ascendit in celum sedet ad dexteram patris. g (C only)
11
199-220
22
Et iter(um) ue(n)turus est cu(m) gloiria (sic)
iudicare uiuos (et) mo(r)tuos cui(us) regni
non erit finis.
[…]
a 4 [D]
[…]
Almost all cadences at the end of a section can be reconstructed without particular
problems as cadences ending on a 5-8-12 sonority.77 It can be inferred that the main
cadences are built firstly on D, secondly on G, and finally (only once) on a and
77 This is especially true for those cadences of which only the interval of fourth between C and Ct
remains.
93
,
F (see the fifth column of Table 9).78 For some of these cadences, the manuscript
offers indications concerning the accidental inflections (see in particular bb. 138139). Although the fragmentary nature of the source calls for caution, based on the
occurrence of the ficta at b. 138, the ‘double-leading-note’ cadence may well have
appeared in other places.
Through analysis of the extant voices, it is possible to provide plausible (if hypothetical) reconstructions of the main cadences. Example 14 shows a reconstruction
of the final cadence (bb. 218-220), in which the two missing voices are indicated
with smaller notes. First, the cadence is missing the descending tone movement
of the tenor: E–D. The fourth missing voice can be reconstructed on the basis of
the many cadences in which the two remaining voices close with the movement of
parallel octaves G 8–a 8, here given without any embellishment in the reconstructed
voice (a hypothetical C i doubling the Ct octave), but ornamented in various ways
throughout the piece.79
Ex. 14. Credo. Possible reconstruction of the final cadence of section 11, bb. 216-220
78 Some doubt remains about the cadence at bb. 89-91 (end of section 5), probably a ‘Phrygian’
cadence to a; cfr. a very similar four-voice example in Zacara’s Credo Cursor, bb. 32-34; see Italian
Sacred Music, (“pmfc” 13), no. 4.
79 See the places listed in Example 12, octave, b.
94
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6. The French poems: linguistic analysis and literary notes
The secular poems in Pv are two virelais (texts i and iv) and two rondeaux (ii and
iii). The scripta of all four poems is a highly Italianized French. This is no surprise,
as such linguistic blending is quite common in medieval vernacular manuscripts,
particularly for the French formes fixes in the Italian Ars Nova sources (such as
Man, ModA and R). A «stratigraphic» analysis80 is necessary, then, to distinguish
between the French and Italian elements in the manuscript «diasystem» (the result
of complex and unpredictable interaction between the linguistic systems of the author and those of the different copyists who successively transcribed the text)81 and
to identify the regional features of each as precisely as possible. Of course, some of
these may be a result of linguistic interference, due to contact. In order to detect
such phenomena, a useful comparison is provided by other contemporary Italian
musical sources containing French poems and by fourteenth-century manuscripts
of so-called ‘Franco-Italian’ production – this includes not only linguistically-hybridized Italian copies of French works, but also works that were composed in a
professedly hybrid language.82As for the author (or authors, since the poems may
be the work of different poets), it is impossible to determine in advance whether he
was a Frenchman or a more or less French-cultivated Italian. Still, for at least one
of the texts, the analysis of the rhymes offers some significant clues.
Only very few characteristics of the scripta can be interpreted as markers of
a regional variety of French, and these point towards the northern (Picard) area.
They include the forms of the noun do(u)chour (ii, 9 and iii, 4) with voiceless
80 The geological concept of ‘stratigraphy’ is commonly used in recent research in the field of linguistic philology (see for instance the workshop devoted in 2017 to La stratigrafia linguistica dei manoscritti medievali, whose proceedings were published in «Medioevo Romanzo», xlii, 2018). It refers
to the different linguistic layers which overlapped throughout the manuscript tradition of vernacular
texts and must be distinguished while analyzing the latest copyist’s scripta.
81 Cfr. Cesare Segre, Critica testuale, teoria degli insiemi e diasistema, in Id., Semiotica filologica,
Torino, Einaudi, 1979, pp. 53-70.
82 For a recent discussion (and the main bibliographic references) about ‘Franco-Italian’ as a language and as definition of a literary tradition, see the articles by Marcello Barbato, Carlo Beretta
and Giovanni Palumbo published in «Medioevo Romanzo», xxxix, 2015, and Fabio Zinelli, Inside/
Outside Grammar: The French of Italy between Structuralism and Trends of Exoticism, in Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France: Studies in the Moving Word, ed. by Nicola Morato and Dirk
Schoenaers, Turnhout, Brepols, 2019, pp. 31-72. The RIALFRI database directed by Francesca Gambino,
provides a useful tool for the research of linguistic forms within the Franco-Italian corpus.
95
,
postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ expressed by ⟨ch⟩, as opposed to the Francien and standard French douceur83 (the reading douceur is actually found in ii, 9, but the rhyme
-our speaks for the northern form).84 The complete lack of final ⟨z⟩, particularly
where it would express the nexus T + S, or an s following a nasal, lateral, or vibrant
consonant – in all of these cases the scribe uses ⟨s⟩ – might also be considered a
northern feature.85
Ultimately, it seems likely that the Pv poems – particularly ii, iii, and perhaps
iv – were influenced by or derived from Picard sources, in keeping with what has
been observed for the main Italian manuscripts of the Ars Nova.86 If the author
was from France, such ‘sources’ can be considered proper exemplars,87 whereas if
he was from Italy, they must instead be generically understood as linguistic and
literary models.
The list of Italianisms in the poems is quite long, and these often correspond
to those found in the French scripta of other contemporary Italian manuscripts. As
for the spelling:
- frequent occurrences (i, ii, iii, not iv) of che/chi instead of que (which is also
present) or qui.88
83 See Charles Théodore Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, Paris, Klincksieck, 1970, §38,
pp. 91-94. For the vocalism of do(u)chour, see Ivi, §26, pp. 80-82.
84 For the editorial correction, see below, note to ii, 9.
85 For a comparative description of this phenomenon in Francien and Picard scriptae, see Ivi, §40,
pp. 94-95.
86 See Maria Sofia Lannutti, I testi in francese nelle antologie dell’Ars Nova, in Innovazione linguistica e storia della tradizione. Casi di studio romanzi medievali, a c. di Stefano Resconi, Davide
Battagliola, Silvia De Santis, Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2020, pp. 197-223: 202-ff. However, we do not
consider as a significant northern feature open e + implied l > iau, like in biauté (i, 10), given the
frequency of this form (which is topical in the lyrical vocabulary) even in authors and scribes from
other French regions (as remarked by Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, §12, p. 61).
87 Though, some scholars caution against too-facile conclusions regarding the geographic origins
of seemingly-specific regional traits: «Non sempre i tratti francesi, anche i più tipici, si diffondono
lungo i rami della tradizione; […] talvolta essi vengono introdotti dagli scribi italiani, ai quali
suonano familiari perché li hanno trovati in altre copie eseguite, adottandoli come propri» (Carlo
Beretta, Giovanni Palumbo, Il franco-italiano in area padana: questioni, problemi e appunti di metodo, «Medioevo Romanzo», xxxix, 2015, pp. 52-81, at 67; see also Fabio Zinelli, De la France-Italie
à l’Italo-France (ou de l’histoire littéraire comme délocalisation), in Transferts culturels franco-italiens au
Moyen Âge – Trasferimenti culturali italo-francesi, ed. by Roberto Antonelli et al., Turnhout, Brepols,
2020, pp. 169-199: 180). Of course, this argument should not be considered conclusive per se.
88 Same phenomenon in Man.
96
-
Phonetics is affected in the following phenomena:
- final -a instead of -e (< lat. -A), in such forms as chiera, cella (ii), poysansa,
bruneta, gratioseta (iv);
- dissimilation of l towards n in meleconie89 (vs. melencolie/merencolie <
MELANCHOLIA; iv, 1).
Finally, morphosyntax is involved in:
- the use of relative pronoun que/che with any logical value (whereas qui would
be the norm for the nominative: e.g. i, 1; ii, 6; iii, 3 and 6);
- the masculine treatment of some feminine nouns with ending in -our (from lat.
-ORE), for instance un flour (iii, 1), bo colour (iii, 5), son […] amour (iii, 12), in
opposition to m’amour (i, 2) and odour moult souv[e]rayne (iii, 2).
All of the above phenomena can be considered generic Italianisms, commonly found
in Italian varieties and scriptae from different regions. Another feature that often occurs alongside the above is a graphic habit characteristic of Italian scribes of various
origins when transcribing French texts, namely:
- the use of ⟨y⟩ instead of ⟨i⟩/⟨j⟩ to express the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/,90
as in yoye (vs. joie; ii, 7; iv, 12), ye (vs. je; ii, 8 e 10; iii, 9), yoiens (sic, per yoieus,
vs. joieus; iv, 2), yolis/yolie (vs. jolis/jolie; iv, 1 e 4); all these forms are exclusive
in Pv (but cfr. jour iv, 9).91
As it does not occur in proper French scriptae, this phenomenon should be identified as linguistic interference due to contact – based on the arbitrary extension to
⟨y⟩ of the triple use of ⟨i⟩ for the vowel /i/, the approximant /j/ and the fricative /ʒ/
by a non-French scribe92 – and listed along with other features which are limited to
89 Meleconie is the erroneous ms. reading for melenconie (see below, note to iv, 1).
90 The same grapheme is normally used in all Middle French scriptae as an alternative for ⟨i⟩ to
express both the vowel /i/ and the lateral approximant (see below).
91 This use is well attested in Man, ModA and R and in the fresco captions (form yoye) at the Frugarolo castle (Piedmont), which date to 1391-1402.
92 For a description of this kind of interference in Franco-Italian scriptae, see for instance Zinelli,
Inside/Outside Grammar, pp. 46-48.
97
,
northern Italian Franco-Italian sources, such as:
- the use of the digraph ⟨ou⟩ (possibly without any phonetic relevance) where
unexpected, like in the possessive adjective voutre (i, 10 e ii, 11),93 the noun our
(< AURU; iii, 7),94 the adverb troup (unattested elsewhere, vs. trop) or the noun
vous (vs. vois < VOCE; iii, 9);95
- the verbal form oyt (vs. out/ot < HABUIT; iii, 5).96
The monophthong e (< Ĕ, vs. fr. ie) in the adjective gref (i, 7) might also be assigned
to a northern Italian scribe, since the form reflects the development of lat. Ĕ in most
of the autochthone varieties and it occurs frequently in Franco-Italian production.97
In addition, some unusual apocopes may suggest the intervention of a Lombard copyist, although they may also be the result of the copyist’s inaccurate transcription of the word endings:
- the dropping of nasal consonant -n – a phenomenon which is found, even if in
different proportions, both in eastern98 and in western Lombard varieties99 – as
93 Voutre, a rare form, is found six times in a very limited portion of the Entrée d’Espagne, between
vv. 13286 and 13574; see L’Entrée d’Espagne. Chanson de geste franco-italienne publiée d’après le manuscrit
unique de Venise, éd. par Antoine Thomas, 2 vols., Paris, Didot, 1913.
94 The form our can represent both lat. AURU and HORA in Franco-Italian texts; see La Prise de
Pampelune. Ein altfranzösisches Gedicht, hrsg. von Adolfo Mussafia, Wien, Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1864,
p. ix: «Ou statt o (eu) : ... our (AURUM, HORA)»; for ‘gold’, see, for example, Niccolò da Verona,
Opere. Pharsale, Continuazione dell’Entrée d’Espagne, Passion, a c. di Franca Di Ninni, Venezia, Marsilio, 1992, p. 343, v. 4785.
95 At least four occurrences in the works by Niccolò da Verona (Ivi, Glossario, p. 501).
96 Frequently spelled oit, as in the Entree d’Espagne (ed. Thomas, p. cxvi; see also Roman d’Alexandre B, vv. 1363, 3636, 3654, and Bataille d’Aliscans, ms. Marc. Fr. 8, for instance vv. 768, 1650, 1886).
97 With a particular concentration in Niccolò da Càsola’s Guerra d’Attila.
98 Where it is systematic, as in the dialect of Bergamo (see Glauco Sanga, Fonetica storica del dialetto di Bergamo, in Lingua e dialetti di Bergamo e delle valli, a c. di Glauco Sanga, 3 vols., Bergamo,
Lubrina, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 37-63: 56), since the first attestations: cfr. Altbergamaskische Sprachdenkmaler: (9.-15. Jahrhundert), hrsg. von J. Etienne Lorck, Halle a. S., Max Niemeyer, 1893, pp. 32-33.
99 In Milanese the phenomenon presents itself rather as a nasalization of the preceding vowel; see
Carlo Salvioni, Fonetica del dialetto moderno della città di Milano, Torino, Arnaldo Forni, 1884, §245,
p. 203, and, for the Middle Ages, Id., Osservazioni sull’antico vocalismo milanese desunte dal metro e
dalla rima del cod. berlinese di Bonvesin da Riva, in Studi letterari e linguistici dedicati a Pio Rajna nel
quarantesimo anno del suo insegnamento, Milano, Hoepli, 1911, pp. 367-388: 387-388. Forms without
nasal are sometimes found in the manuscript tradition of Bonvesin de la Riva (I volgari di Bonvesin da
98
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in bo (vs. bon; iii, 5, unless it is a phonetic spelling for beau, ‘beautiful’, but cfr.
the noun biauté, i, 10) and autrema (vs. autremant; i, 9), where the apocope of
the entire nexus nasal + dental would be an extreme development unheard of
in the autochthone varieties;100
- the fall of lateral consonant -l – attested in the western part of Lombardy (west
of the river Adda)101 – as in genti (i, 4, vs. gentil).102
A possible Lombard scribe may also be responsible for the numeral do (< DUAE,
iii, 5)103 – but this form often appears as a product of linguistic interference in Franco-Italian texts – and for the conservation of the voiced dental in mond (vs. mont <
MUNDU, iv, 8), an apocopic form sometimes found in Middle French scriptae.104
As stated above, based on ink analysis and palaeographic expertise it is likely
that one scribe was responsible for the copying of both the recto and verso of fol. 1. The
Latin text of the Credo is obviously no place to seek linguistic elements to help pin
down the copyist’s origin. However, two aberrant readings may be noteworthy. In
the first form, pillato (two occurrences) for the proper name Pilato, which is found
elsewhere in regional Latin scriptae (e.g. from France), ⟨ll⟩ may be interpreted as a
la Riva. Testi del ms. Berlinese, ed. by Adnan M. Gökcen, New York, Peter Lang, 1996, p. liii) and in the
fourteenth or early fifteenth-century Passione Trivulziana (see Passione trivulziana: armonia evangelica
volgarizzata in milanese antico, a c. di Michele Colombo, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter, 2016, p. 147).
100 The hypothesized development would be autremant > autreman > autrema; adverbal forms
without -t are not rare in medieval Lombard scriptae (see, for example, Antichi testi pavesi, a c. di
Maria Antonietta Grignani e Angelo Stella, Pavia, Tipografia del libro, 1977, p. 130, and Il manoscritto
Saibante-Hamilton 390, a c. di Maria Luisa Meneghetti et al., Roma, Salerno, 2019, p. cl). The form
fortu (ii, 4) instead of fortune (both linguistically and prosodically correct) with apocope of the entire
syllable, is unattested and even more aberrant: rather than the result of a phonetic trend, the absence
of -ne seems to be due to the copyist’s inattention.
101 See, for instance, Salvioni, Fonetica del dialetto moderno, §188, pp. 173-174, according to whom
this phenomenon is attested in medieval authors even more largely than in the modern language (see
also Gökcen, I volgari di Bonvesin, p. 1, and Colombo, Passione trivulziana, p. 146). On the contrary,
in medieval eastern Lombard, the final -l is generally conserved; see for instance Lorck, Altbergamaskische Sprachdenkmaler, p. 29.
102 While genti meets the genuine French phonetic realization, Middle French scriptae normally use
the etymologic form gentil. We have found genti (or the equivalent genty) only rarely and always in
rhyme position: see, for example, Baudouin de Sebourc, éd. par Larry S. Crist [et Robert F. Cook], Paris,
Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2002, v. 547 (genti) and passim; Le Chevalier au cygne. A Critical
Edition, ed. by Gisela Christa Pukatzki, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1990, v. 99 (genty).
103 See, for example, Colombo, Passione trivulziana, p. 238.
104 This form, quite rare in mfr., is very common in afr.; see tl, vi, 200.
99
,
common western Romance (and therefore also northern Italian) hypercorrection.
The second form, gloiria for gloria, contains the diphthong oi, which characterises
the French form gloire. Unless it is an oversight, this erroneous reading may well reveal that the copyist was using a French source, which he faithfully respected – and
which may also be the source for pillato – perhaps in accordance with the language
of the secular texts he was transcribing at the same time.
This is the extent of what we know about the copyist’s scripta and its sources,
but some of these clues may also shed light on the author’s language: in particular,
the Italian form mercé (instead of fr. merci < MERCEDE) rhyming with nobleté105
in virelai iv and the masculine treatment of some of the nouns ending in -our,
which occurs in rondeau iii. As for the latter, the scribe’s uncertainties are evidenced in v. 12, where amour – probably not referring to the feeling typically sung
in lyric poems: this is the only poem amongst the four that is not a traditional love
song; instead, through the commonplace description of a locus amoenus, it may
convey an encomiastic message, as we will discuss below – is preceded by the masculine possessive son, the epicene adjective form grand and the feminine douce.
If one tried to restore the correct French feminine genre for, say, flour in verse 1,
the modification of the article (disyllabic une instead of monosyllabic un) would
produce a hypermetric verse (in iii, 5, bone instead of bo would intensify the hypermetria). This would suggest that the masculine forms are original. In addition,
the noun our (< AURU, ‘gold’) rhymes with flour : dochour : colour : amour.106 This
would not be acceptable in French versification. Thus, it is almost certain that not
only the Pavia fragment’s copyist, but also the authors of rondeau iii and virelai
iv were Italian. For the two other poems, in the absence of such evident clues, the
question still stands. However, the hypothesis that the other texts were also by a
non-French author does not seem unrealistic: the prosody is not always congruent
(with often irregular caesuras), the rhymes and syntax are ordinary, the figures
of speech quite basic. Moreover, all the poems tend to avoid any abstraction or
subtlety, and all – except iii – have predictable themes such as the lover’s lament (i
and ii) or declaration of love (iv). All these features set the Pv poems apart from
105 The equivalent form noblece is much more common both in afr. and mfr.: nobleté is possibly an
Italianism (cfr. it. nobiltà) too.
106 The same anomalous rhyme is in Prise de Pampelune, laisse cxliii (Niccolò da Verona, ed. by Di
Ninni, pp. 342-343). As for the rhyme flour : dochour : colour with amour, which is widespread in afr.
and mfr. poetry despite being in manifest contradiction with the phonetic development of spoken
language, see Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, §26, pp. 81-82.
100
-
the refinement typical of Machaut and his disciples. Hence, we are inclined to
think that our author(s) intended to translate lyrical contents in French forms
and language (the choice of vocabulary is plainly traditional: nouns like amour,
ardure, biauté, chiere, dochour/douceur, dolour, figure, flour, pité, plour, tormant,
adjectives such as dure, joli/e, plaisant, souverain and compounds with tres-, verbs
like languir, servir, syntagms such as sans fauseté, dame jolie), relying more on the
evocativeness of the poetic materials they reused than on the formal perfection
of the outcome.107 All that is not uncommon in this kind of production: similar
Franco-Italian lyrics are found in several manuscripts,108 sometimes amongst original French poems, and sparked interest and perplexity in the first scholars who
dealt with them.109 Furthermore, our hypothesis is corroborated by the sporadic
but consistent occurrence in the Pv poems of elements usually absent from – or
very rare in – French lyric poetry. Instead, these elements seem to belong to the
Italian poetic idiolect (e.g. the syntagm plaisant chiera, ii, 1, and the epithet douce
yoya for the beloved, ii, 9). As for their relationship with Italian poetry, the Pv
poems are quite distant from the refinement of the grand lyric tradition that was
inaugurated by Giacomo da Lentini and continued by Dante, Petrarch, and his
epigones. Instead, their simplicity of style and straightforwardness of expression
relate them to the repertory of madrigals and ballatas that was widespread in both
northern Italy and Tuscany in the fourteenth century.110 However, despite their
formal flaws, the Pv rondeaux and virelais are more interesting from a literary
point of view than most similar compositions, given that they use innovative
motives, metaphors, and imagery rarely if ever found in the French or Italian lyric
corpora (the beloved described as darker than the night in i, 1-3; a passing-by or
fading111 flower, then two roses in iii, 1 and 5).
107 This would also account for some unexpected lyrical iuncturae: bo colour, supplier doucemant,
etc. (for a commentary, see the notes to the poetic texts below).
108 See, for instance, Trentatré liriche franco-italiane trascritte nel codice Strozzi-Magliabecchiano
Cl. VII (1040) della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, a c. di Francesca Gambino, new edition
for rialfri, 2015 (https://www.rialfri.eu/texts/canzoniFrancesi|001, last accessed October 20, 2022).
109 See, for example, Paul Meyer, Extraits du ms. Addit. 15224 du Musée britannique, «Bulletin de
la Société des anciens textes français», viii, 1882, p. 69-72; Francesco Novati, Poesie musicali francesi
de’ sec. XIV e XV, tratte da mss. italiani, «Romania», xxvii, 1898, pp. 138-144.
110 See below, the commentary notes to the vv. for the details on these and other elements.
111 The translation depends on the interpretation of the verb passer: ‘to pass by’ or ‘to wither’ (see
below, note to iii, 1).
101
,
7. The French poems: critical edition and commentary
In our critical edition of the four French poems we have adopted the following
criteria.112 Where the author’s intention is not clearly recognizable, at times due to
the linguistic reasons explained above, we have stayed as close as possible to the
manuscript readings, whose incongruences are discussed in the commentary notes.
Missing letters due to material damage have been reconstructed in square brackets; obviously erroneous forms have been corrected where possible and appear in
italics.113 Irreparably corrupted parts are between daggers and hypothetical emendations are proposed in the commentary notes. As for the quite frequent faulty
syllable count, we intervene only where the correction is evident and univocal. In
all other cases, we report the anomaly in curly brackets.
Capitalization and punctuation have been modernised; we observe the norms
established for the edition of medieval French texts for diacritics and the distinction between u and v.114 In the rondeaux, the verses of the refrain when this is
intercalated (two for both ii and iii) are inserted into square brackets following
the music. In all four poems, the final repetition of the refrain is indicated by the
incipit, as found in the manuscript (or, for iv, reconstructed in brackets). The
rejected readings, in diplomatic transcription, are placed in the critical apparatus
beneath the text and each editorial choice is discussed in the commentary notes to
the verses, which also contain remarks on significant linguistic, stylistic and literary
features, along with short discussions of loci paralleli.
i. Virelai
Metric scheme: A7’ B7 B7 A7’ | c7 d7 c7 d7 a7’ b7 b7 a7’
Rhymes: a -ure, b -é, c -ant, d -is
La nuit que est tant obscure
donne a moy de clarité
112 A diplomatic edition of these texts was provided in Saviotti, Calvia, Virelais, rondeaux e un
Credo, Appendix A.
113 Following the habits of classical philologists: see, for instance, Conseils pour l’édition des textes
médiévaux. Fascicule III. Textes littéraires, éd. par Pascale Bourgain et Françoise Vielliard, Paris, École
Nationale des Chartes, 2018, p. 71.
114 See Ivi, pp. 60-67.
102
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plus che vous, que sans p[ité]
m’a tués genti figure.
5
10
Heu, suppli vous doucemant,
dame, che, pour Dieu mercis,
delivrés du gref tormant
mon cuer che en vous ay tout mis.
Autremant, s’il est troup dure
enver moy voutre biauté,
a cuy serf [sa]ns fauseté,
languiray de grand ardu[r]e.
La nuit etc.
____________________________
3: vous] uo(us)s. 7: delivrés] delimes. 9: Autremant] autrema.
Translation. ‘The night, which is so dark, gives me more light than you, since [your] gentle look
killed me mercilessly. | Alas, lady, I sweetly beg you, by God’s grace, to free my heart, that I wholly
entrusted to you, from this excruciating torment. Otherwise, if your beauty, which I loyally serve, is
too cruel to me, I will pine with great passion’.
Notes. 1-2. The opening comparison between the night and the beloved seems to be an original choice
by the author. We could not find anything similar in medieval Gallo-Romance or Italian poetry, where,
on the contrary, the beloved is often identified with light and brightness in general (the Italian equivalent of clarité is often used, as it is here, in comparative or superlative expressions; see, for example, the
sonnet by Guittone d’Arezzo, Gentile ed amorosa criatura, v. 5: lume che sovra ogn’altro ha claritate; ed.
Le rime di Guittone d’Arezzo, a c. di Francesco Egidi, Bari, Laterza, 1940, p. 202, n. 127). Moreover, the
image of the night occurs very infrequently in fourteenth-century French115 and Italian116 lyric, where
nuit/notte is almost always part of the syntagm nuit et jour/notte e giorno, meaning ‘always, in every
115 Besides the available editions of the texts, we have usefully exploited the following databases:
Concordance de l’Occitan medieval. COM2: les troubadours, les textes narratifs en vers, ed. by Peter T.
Ricketts, Turnhout, Brepols, 2005; Trouveors. Database della lirica dei trovieri, a c. di Paolo Canettieri
e Rocco Distilo, Roma, Università di Roma La Sapienza, 2010 (http://trouveors.lieuweb.eu/, last
accessed February 15, 2022); jcuc. Troubadour and trouvère poems are referred to by – respectively
– their BdT or rs number.
116 For the Italian lyric, the fundamental research tool is provided by the Corpus LirIO. Corpus della
poesia lirica italiana delle origini, dagli inizi al 1400, a c. di Lino Leonardi et al., Fondazione Ezio Franceschini-Università degli Studi di Siena (http://lirioweb.ovi.cnr.it, last accessed October 20, 2022).
103
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moment’. For the contrast between the adjective obscure and the noun clar(i)té, see the anonymous
ballade (Ch, fol. 13r) Toute clarté m’est obscure (the example in the incipit is the first of a series of opposita); the two variants, with or without syncope, are widespread: see Dictionnaire du Moyen Français,
version 2020, ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine (henceforth dmf; http://zeus.atilf.fr/dmf/, last
accessed October 20, 2022), Clarité. Here the relative pronoun que replaces the expected nominative
form qui; the latter would regularize the prosodically necessary dialepha, which, on the contrary, is uncommon after que, particularly with a vowel of the same timbre. The postposition of the pronominal
indirect object – donne a moy instead of the unmarked me donne – is rare in French (and apparently
absent in the lyric corpus), where it seems to belong to a sub-standard register. See, for example, the
popular song by Philippot le Savoyard Chanson des frères camarades (ante 1665; ed. Recueil des chansons
du Savoyard: réimpression textuelle faite sur l’édition de 1665 et augmentée d’un avant-propos, par Achille
Percheron, Paris, Gay, 1862, p. 58), vv. 1-4: «Dans cette authentique débauche / a toy frere de ce vin
bon, / moy boit de ma main gauche / si toy donne à moy du iambon». If the author of the virelai i were
an Italian, this anomaly could of course be justified by his linguistic background.
3. The scribe uses both the Italian form che and the French form que, the latter having here a
causal value (‘since, because’). For the personal pronoun vous, the scribe abbreviates us with the usual
upper mark after vo, but he erroneously adds s at the end of the word. Our decision to complete the
mutilated manuscript reading pit as pité, rather than pitié (cfr. dmf, Pitié), is based on several factors:
the traditional distinction of the endings -é and -ié in rhyme; the almost systematic preference for the
monophthong form by the most representative authors of the fourteenth century (namely Guillaume
de Machaut and Eustache Deschamps); and its proximity to the Italian form pietà.
4. The widespread lyric motif of death by love (see also ii, 12, where death is evoked only as an
extreme eventuality) is sometimes represented as a murder perpetrated by the beloved (as it is here):
see, for example, Machaut, Louange des dames (ed. Guillaume de Machaut, Poésies lyriques, par
Vladimir Chichmaref, 2 vols., Paris, [s.n.], 1909, i, pp. 15-237), ballade lxxiii, vv. 1-2: «Douce dame,
vous ociés a tort / vostre humble serf et vo loial ami». The past participle tués appears to be a relic of
a sigmatic cas sujet form (same for pleins iii, 2) – here misused as cas régime; it should agree with the
object pronoun m’ – in a time when bi-casual declension had already been abandoned: see Robert
Martin, Marc Wilmet, 2. Syntaxe du moyen français, in Manuel du français du Moyen Âge, sous la
dir. d’Yves Lefèvre, Bordeaux, SOBODI, 1980 (henceforth mw), §291, pp. 174-175 («la survivance
de formes déclinées n’en trahit pas moins l’évanescence de la déclinaison. […] le système casuel n’a
plus aucune pertinence linguistique»), and, for a historical analysis of reasons and modalities, the
Grande grammaire historique du français, éd. par Christiane Marchello-Nizia et al., 2 vols., Berlin, De
Gruyter, 2020 (henceforth gghf ), i, §30.1.2.4, pp. 649-653. Figure is a very common term for the
beloved’s appearance: see, for example, Machaut, Louange des dames, ballade xciv, vv. 12-13: «Tous
ces biens ha en sa figure / celle qui si me vint ferir». The ms. reading genti is not attested in French
scriptae and clearly descends from one of the two possible correct forms, gentil (epicene) or gente.
If the latter seems preferable due to the presence of the syntagm gente figure in the French corpus
(at least two occurrences, while gentil figure does not appear at all), the poem’s Italian transmission
(and perhaps composition) suggests a possible passage through the former (genti might be a western
Lombard deformation of gentil: see above), since gentil(e) figura appears frequently in early Italian
poetry. Significant occurrences are found in two ballatas: Antonello da Caserta’s Deh, vogliateme oldire,
v. 6 (ed. Nino Pirrotta, Ettore Li Gotti, Il Codice di Lucca: II. Testi letterari, «Musica Disciplina»,
iv, 1950, pp. 111-152, at 130), where figura rhymes with both dura and ardura (as it does here); and
104
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Francesco Landini’s In somma altezza t’ha posta natura (Poesie musicali del Trecento, a c. di Giuseppe
Corsi, Bologna, Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1970, p. 183, n. 67), where figura rhymes with the
syntagm troppo dura (as it does here).
5. The initial exclamation Heu may account for the pronominal object postposition in suppli vous
(as in the cases described as «verb second» + «effacement du sujet»: cfr. mw, §472-474, p. 279-282,
where «adverbes ‘thématiques’» are involved rather than interjections). A similar postposition in a
very different construction (je suppli a vous par grant benivolance; the verb works with both direct and
indirect object: see dmf, Supplier), is found in the virelai set to music by Matteo da Perugia (ModA,
10v), Dame que j’aym sour toutes de ma enfance, v. 13. We have found no other French or Italian attestations of the syntagm supplier doucement (generally in the corpus: s. humblement); the adverb seems to
mean ‘sincerely, fervently’, as suggested for the occurrences with the verb priier by tl, iii, 2053-2054.
7. In mfr. supplier que can take an indicative, even though the conjunctive construction is far
more common. In this sense, it is at least theoretically possible that the corrupted ms. reading de limes
might stand for de liuies (a common palaeographic confusion), coming from deliv[r]iés (conjunctive)
by loss of the titulus for r. Nonetheless, given that delivré is deformed in delune (or delime) in ii, 3, the
emendation delivrés seems to be more likely. The syntagm gr(i)ef (see above for the northern-Italian
localization of the monophthong form) torment is recurrent in courtly literature referring to lovesickness (see, for example, Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, vv. 4488-4489: l’ame me fust del cors partie
/ a grief tormant et a martire; ed. [by Peter F. Dembowski] Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres complètes,
sous la dir. de Daniel Poirion, Paris, Gallimard, 1994, p. 110), privileged by Machaut (thrice in the
Louange des dames alone: ballade xxxvii, v. 4; chanson royal cxvii, v. 14; ballade cxxxvi, v. 20), and
also attested in Italian lyric poetry (e.g. Guittone d’Arezzo, Lasso!, en che mal punto ed en che fella, v. 6:
«lo doloroso meo grave tormento»; ed. Guittone d’Arezzo, Canzoniere. I sonetti d’amore del codice
laurenziano, a c. di Lino Leonardi, Torino, Einaudi, 1994, n. 56).
8. The declaration that the ‘entire heart’ has been put into the beloved is a commonplace of love
poetry: see, for example, the refrain vdb (= Rondeaux et refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe, éd. par
Nico van den Boogaard, Paris, Klincksieck, 1969) 683, En simple plaisant brunete ai tout mon cuer mis,
and the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (vv. 2772-2773: «le bouton où j’avoie / tot mon
cuer mis e ma beance»; ed. Le roman de la rose par Guillame de Lorris et Jean de Meun, éd. par Ernest
Langlois, 5 vols., Paris, Didot [then: Champion], 1914-1924, ii, p. 141). Cfr. also Francesco Landini,
ballata Donna, se ’l cor t’ho dato (ed. Poesie musicali del Trecento, p. 164, n. 43, vv. 1-2: «Donna, se ’l cor
t’ho dato / ed ha’ lo in tua balia»).
9. For the ms. reading autrema, which we have supplemented with -nt based on doucemant (i, 5),
see above, note 100. The apparently inappropriate impersonal subject il may perhaps be explained by
the replacement of ce with il in some impersonal tournures, as noted by mw, §325, p. 198, but it is worth
emphasizing that this sentence could be considered as impersonal only if the verse that follows it is
ignored, since the anacoluthon presumably depends on the need to avoid putting the verb est in the
first position, as shown in ibid., §470, p. 277. As for the unattested form troup (unless it is a scribal lapsus), the digraph ⟨ou⟩ instead of ⟨o⟩ is a common interference phenomenon of Franco-Italian scriptae.
10. The absence of -s in enver (< IN + VERSU) is common in Italian copies of French texts: see,
for example, the virelai (R, fol. 81v) Adeu mon cuer, v. 10, and the rondeau attributed to Matteo da
Perugia (ModA, Zr) Dame d’honour, v. 5. The rare Franco-Italian form of the possessive voutre (also
in ii, 11), which rialfri detects only in the Entrée d’Espagne, has at least three occurrences in ModA
(fols. 25v, 27v, 33v).
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11. The construction of servir with indirect object (see dmf, Servir) is less attested than the construction with direct object and apparently absent in the French lyric corpus (always que serf), whereas (a) cui servo is well represented in Italian lyric poems (about twenty thirteenth and fourteenth-century occurrences). For servir sans fauseté, see, for example, Machaut, Louange des dames, ballade viii,
vv. 17-18: «je l’aim tant qu’onques mes cuers ne fine / de li servir sans nulle fausseté».
12. For languir de (the preposition de expressing the cause: mw, §303, p. 185), see, for example, the
rondeau Ay las! quant ie pans le biauté de m’amour (Man, lvii), v. 5: «languiray de d[ueil] et de tristour». The syntagm grant ardure depends on the commonplace metaphor of the ‘fire of love’, which
recurs frequently in the lyrical repertory: «li maus qui m’art et destruit nuit et jour» or «l’ardure dou
grant desir / qui me fait a la mort traire» are two of the many loci which can be cited (respectively
Machaut, Louange des dames, ballades ii, v. 20 and xxxii, vv. 4-5). In the Italian corpus, the only
occurrence of the equivalent syntagm grand’ardura appears in the ballata set to music by Andrea da
Firenze, Non isperi merzede (ed. Poesie musicali del Trecento, p. 301, n. 18, v. 8), where it rhymes with
the adjective dura (as it does here). The feminine adjective grant is an epicene form still common in
mfr. for the Latin second class adjectives (and the synthetic comparatives and the present participles):
see mw, §256, p. 144, and gghf, §30.1.3.2, p. 654.
ii. Rondeau
Metric scheme: A10’ B8 B8 A10’ | a10’ b8 A10’ B8 a10’ b8 b8 a10’
Three verses display metric anomalies. We have corrected only v. 6, where the
expected octosyllable is replaced by a decasyllable with lyric cesura that is clearly
inadmissible (only nine musical figures are notated for the ten syllables), by eliminating the probable poetic filler que m’est.
Rhymes: a -oye, b -our
Se la plaisant chiera veoyr povoye
de cella chi serf m’amour
delivré seroy de dolour
et de Fortune che ansi me gravoye.
5
10
{-1}
Certes ma complainte a li feroye
{-1}
de liesse tornee en plour
[se la plaisant chiera veoyr povoye
de cella chi serf m’amour].
Quant me sovient de vous, ma douce yoye,
y’en ay ansi tres grand douchour,
106
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puis que y[e] avis voutre dolour:
se ce ne fust, bien croy que ye m[o]roye.
Se la plaisant chiera etc.
____________________________
1: povoye] poroye. 3: delivré] delime. 4: Fortune] fortu. 5: feroye] feroy. 6: liesse tornee] l. que mest
t. 10: douchour] douceur.
Translation. ‘If I could see the beautiful face of the one my love serves, I would be freed from the
pain and the Fate that distressed me so much. | I would certainly address to her my lament about
my happiness turned into tears [if I could see the beautiful face of the one my love serves]. When I
harken back to you, my sweet joy, I feel such a great sweetness, after I recognised (?) your pain: if it
were not so, I really think I would die of it’.
Notes. 1. Though made up of two frequently recurring terms of lyrical vocabulary (for chiere, ‘visage,
mine, air’, see ed. Guillaume de Machaut, Poésies lyriques, vol. ii, p. 660), the syntagm plaisant chiera is not found elsewhere in the French corpus (in Machaut, for example, the predominant formula
is douce chiere, as shown by the series of ballades, Louange des dames, cxxxv, cxxxviii-cxxxix), whereas it is sporadically attested in thirteenth-century Italian lyrics: see, above all, the incipit of Giacomino
Pugliese, La dolce cera piasente (ed. [by Giuseppina Brunetti] I poeti della Scuola siciliana, vol. ii: Poeti
della corte di Federico II, dir. da Costanzo Di Girolamo, Milano, Mondadori, 2008, pp. 617-618). In
the ms. reading poroye, the use of the conditional in the dependent clause of the hypothetical period
is grammatically erroneous and, as such, unattested in mfr. literature (very rare occurrences in afr.,
particularly in Anglo-Norman texts: see Claude Buridant, Grammaire du français médiéval: 11-14.
siècles, Strasbourg, EliPhi, 2019, §578, p. 936). It is possible that this reading stems from faulty knowledge of French grammar (by the author or by a copyist), but a lapsus, or, better still, a palaeographic
confusion from the correct imperfect form povoye seems a more likely explanation.
2. The relative pronoun chi must be intended as cui (commonly confused with qui in afr. and mfr.
scriptae: see mw, §413, pp. 247-248) or che (que). For the double rection of servir (direct and indirect
object), see above, note to i, 11.
3. The conditional seroy (cfr. ms. feroy v. 5, vs. imperf. povoye v. 1 and gravoye v. 4, cond. moroye v.
12) has one less syllable than the allotropic form seroye: both are acceptable, based on afr. and more
and more frequent mfr. attestations (different descriptions and explanations are in Pierre Fouché,
Le verbe français: étude morphologique, Paris, Klincksieck, 1967, §123bis, p. 240, and gghf, §31.6.2.3.b,
p. 786); the choice is based on prosodical factors. The forms without -e are recurrent in Franco-Italian
scriptae: see, for example, ed. Trentatré liriche franco-italiane, xx, vv. 13, 17, «Un ciapelet en feroy», and
vv. 19, 21: «A mon ami le daroy».
4. For the ms. reading fortu – the necessary integration -ne regularizes both the form and the meter
– see above, note 100. The same noun, which we interpret here as a personification (Fortune), is subject
of the verb grever in Machaut, Louange des dames, ballade cxiii, v. 2, Fortune me grieve nuit et jour.
5. We could locate other occurrences of complainte meaning ‘love lament’, usually expressed by
the masculine form complaint, in the French lyric corpus. Nonetheless, according to dmf, the two
107
,
forms were equivalent in both the common and the literary (‘poem expressing the love lament’) sense.
A li is the older, but still well attested in mfr. construction for a elle (see mw, §265, p. 151-152).
6. The juxtaposition of liesse and plour occurs, for example, in Machaut, Louange des dames,
ballade clv, vv. 15-17: «Car Amours se Diex me gart / qui me destraint pour vous et maine et art / me
tient souvent en leesce et en plour».
9. The beloved is never named douce yoye in French lyric poetry. The use of joie as an epithet was
uncommon in medieval French: the first attestations can be dated to the first decades of the fifteenth
century (according to the dmf, Joie, A.1 a, which only cites three occurrences). On the contrary, the
use of gioi(a) to address the beloved – the origin of this metaphorisation probably lies in a poetic
pseudonym used by some troubadours such as Bernart de Ventadorn (Fis-Jois in BdT 70.19, v. 52) and
Giraut de Borneil (Mos-Jois in BdT 242.4, v. 53, and 242.65, v. 15) – was (and still is) common in Italian,
at least since the works of Guittone d’Arezzo (see Tuttor ch’eo dirò «Gioi», gioiva cosa; ed. Leonardi,
Guittone d’Arezzo, n. 31, pp. 92-94): see Federico Saviotti, «Tuttor ch’eo dirò “gioi”». La «joie» appellatif de la dame dans la lyrique romane médiévale (avec quelques remarques sur les pseudonymes poétiques
des troubadours), «Revue des langues romanes», cxxvi, 2022, pp. 293-313. This element may speak to
the Italian origin of the author, which is, however, impossible to confirm.
10. The rhyme -our compels us interpret the ms. reading as douceur, representing the standard
French form, with the northern vocalism (/u/ vs. /œ/) for the stressed syllable. Thus, based on dochour
(iii, 4), we spell this northern form as douchour, although douçour would also be possible (but the Pv
scribe never uses the grapheme ç).
11. The exact meaning of this verse is difficult to establish, for none of its components can be
unambiguously interpreted. The conjunction puis que often has a temporal value (‘after, afterward’),
but it can also express cause (see dmf, Puis). The verb aviser has a wide range of senses in mfr. (e.g. ‘to
notice’, ‘to recognise’, ‘to realise’: see dmf, Aviser) and the form avis may be either a present or, more
likely, a simple past indicative. Furthermore, the literal translation above evades the problem posed
by the adjective voutre: subjective (‘your own pain’) or objective (‘the pain you cause’) possessive?
Both interpretations are possible, but puzzling. If the former, the beloved’s dolour would counterbalance the lover’s pain mentioned in the refrain (v. 3), though this would introduce an unexpected
attitude of revenge towards the beloved that does not seem very consistent with the rest of the poem.
If the latter, the dolour would be, as in v. 3, the same lover’s pain, whose relationship to the douchour
(v. 11) would not be clear.
12. For the topic of death by love, see above note to i, 4.
iii. Rondeau
Metric scheme: A7 B7’ B7’ A7 | a7 b7’ A7 B7’ a7 b7’ b7’ a7
At least three verses display metric anomalies. Only v. 6 can easily be corrected,
by modifying the perfect form luit into the imperfect luisoit, which seems more
appropriate from the point of view of the verbal aspect.
Rhymes: a -our, b -aine/ayne
108
-
Aves moy passoyt un flour
pleins de odour moult souverayne
che me traist au cler fontaine
a coillir pour grant dochour.
5
10
Do roses oyt de bo colour
que plus luisoit che l’araine.
[Aves moy passoyt un flour
pleins de odour moult souverayne]
Le rai s’es de fin our,
sus l’eve fet tint a graine,
donc ye chant a vous hautaine
pour son grand e douce amour.
{+1}
{-1}
Aves moy etc.
____________________________
2: moult souverayne] moulte sourayne. 6: luisoit] luit; l’araine] ladame. 10: a graine] acraine.
Translation. ‘A flower full of very noble scent passed/wilted before me: this attracted me to the
limpid fountain to pick it for great sweetness. | There were two roses whose beautiful colour glittered
more than bronze [A flower full of very noble scent passed/wilted before me]. The ray is pure gold, it
dyes the water surface scarlet, therefore I sing aloud for her/his great and sweet love’.
Notes. It is possible that in this poem the love declaration (which is openly stated only in the final v.
12, if one understands son, ‘her’, as referring to an unknown and not aforementioned lady, although
it seems more likely that it refers to the rai) is no more than a pretext for encomiastic homage: the
images of the fountain (v. 3), of the two roses (v. 5) and maybe of the golden ray (v. 9) might be interpreted as a consistent system of metaphorical or even heraldic – though not transparent – references.
1. We interpret the aberrant hapax aves as envers, ‘towards, in front of’ (< VERSUS), which is sometimes spelled anvers in Franco-Italian sources (see, for example, Le roman d’Hector et Hercule, éd. par
Joseph Palermo, Genève, Droz, 1972, vv. 1057, 1383, 1642). As for the two subsequent consonant cluster
reductions involved, nv > v and rs > s, it is difficult to find attestations of the former, whereas the latter
is sporadically found in Italian varieties (e.g. AD DORSUM > it. addosso, milan. adòss: see Salvioni,
Fonetica del dialetto moderno, §210; cfr. also the correspondent Occitan form enves). In any case, since
aves is used twice by the scribe (v. 1 and the incipit of the refrain at the end of the poem), we prefer not
to correct it. The noun flour, which (based on vv. 11-12) could metaphorically refer to the beloved (see,
for example, Machaut, Louange des dames, ballade cc, vv. 9-10: «Seur toute fleur l’avoit mes cuers eslite
/ com la plus douce et la plus debonaire») if this is indeed a love poem like the other three, is treated as
masculine (as in the Italo-Romance varieties: see above), since it is accompanied by the article un and
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the adjective pleins (v. 2), both guaranteed by the metre. Here the verb passer may mean either ‘to pass
by’ or ‘to wither’ (dmf, Passer, B.1.c: «“Être affecté par le temps qui s’écoule” – [D’une fleur] “Se faner,
se flétrir”»): if the latter, the subject’s reaction (to go and pick it, vv. 3-4) would be explicable only if the
flower were not already completely withered, so as to capture its final moment of liveliness.
2. The aberrant ms. reading moulte souurayne likely is a corruption of moult souverayne (‘very
noble’). Odour is, contrarily to flour (v. 1), regularly treated as feminine. Although the syntagm souverainne/souvereinne flour is frequent in Machaut (e.g., Louange des dames, ballades vii, v. 4, ccxviii,
v. 21, cclxx, v. 4) and in Deschamps (e.g., in the virelay dlxi, ed. Œuvres complètes de Eustache
Deschamps publiées d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, éd. par le Marquis de Queux
de Saint-Hilaire, vol. iv: Rondeaulx et virelays, Paris, Didot, 1884, p. 17), here the adjective can only
refer to odour, as it is a feminine form: the same rare iunctura is found in the ballade set to music by
Egidius Augustinus (Ch, fol. 22r), Roses et lis ay veu en une flour, v. 9: «Moult est noble et souverayne
oudour» (with which our rondeau seems to have no other correspondence, except for the mention of
plural roses, here in v. 5). A plein(e) de odour flower is quite common in the corpus: see, for example,
the ballades (Cyp, 135v) Je ne desirs fors, vv. 4-5: «rose plaisant et tres odorant flour, / plainne de bien
et de trestoute odour», and (Ivi, fol. 119v) Fleur gracieuse, vv. 15-17: «Je vous puis bien appeller gente
flour, / et puis qu’estes fort entre toutes loée; / dire vous puis plaine de toute oudour».
3. The relative pronoun che stands for qui (nominative). The noun fontaine is treated as a masculine (see the adjective cler and the preposition au), as it is in Johannes Ciconia’s famous virelai
Sus un fontaine (for this incipit the manuscript tradition also offers the reading une fontaine, which
creates a hypermetric verse). This irregularity, linguistically unjustified (in the Italian varieties the
corresponding noun fontana is always feminine) must have prosodical motivations. Another feature
linking Ciconia’s virelai to Aves moi passoyt un flour is the compresence of flour and fontaine, which is
very rare in the corpus. The poetic image of a fountain, quite recurrent in poems written in the Visconti’s milieu between the end of the fourteenth and the first decades of the fifteenth century, might
metaphorically allude to the (hopefully) inextinguishable munificence of the Signori: see Reinhard
Strohm, Filippotto da Caserta ovvero i Francesi in Lombardia, in In cantu et in sermone: for Nino
Pirrotta on his 80th birthday, ed. by Fabrizio Della Seta and Franco Piperno, Firenze, Olschki, 1989,
pp. 65-74. The cler(e) fontaine clearly depicts a locus amoenus characterised by the presence of flowers
(see also v. 5) and water (v. 10), a common setting for the love affairs reported in Trecento ballatas
and madrigals. It is noteworthy that in Italian poetry the same syntagm can refer (but only rarely) to
the poet’s beloved, as it does in an anonymous fragmentary sonnet transcribed in 1294: see Rime due
e trecentesche tratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Bologna, a c. di Sandro Orlando, Bologna, Commissione
per i testi di lingua, 2005, n. 57, v. 5: «Clara fontana che sorge alo nictore»). This is probably based
on the secular appropriation of a sacred formula (Psalm. xxxv 10; Ier ii. 13) attested since the origins
of Italian literature: see, for example, Chiaro Davanzati, Rime, a c. di Aldo Menichetti, Bologna,
Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1965, p. 93). The verb traire was commonly used by the trouvères
to express the beloved’s power to attract the lover (e.g., Jacques d’Amiens, rs 737, vv. 50-51: «di ma
dame, chançon, hardiemant / c’ a soi servir me traist an esgardant»; ed. Jacques d’Amiens, hrsg. von
Philipp Simon, Berlin, Vogts Verlag, 1895, vi, p. 61); in the formes fixes traire is usually replaced by the
synonym compound at(t)raire.
4. The verb coillir traditionally refers at least since the Roman de la Rose (where it expresses the
accomplishment of the allegoric action) to sexual intercourse, based on the topical floral metaphor:
see, for example, the incipit of the anonymous ballades En un vergier cols par mesure (ModA, fol. 18v)
and especially En un vergier ou avoit mainte flour (Cyp, fol. 115r, vv. 1-5): «En un vergier ou avoit mainte
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flour, / sur un rosier vi une fresce rose. / Tres doulce estoit sa fasson et s’oudour, / si qu’en mon ceur s’est
ardamment enclose / la volenté de celle flour ceuillir». The same topos is frequently exploited in the
Italian Trecento lyric repertory: see for instance the ballatas set to music by Jacopo da Bologna, In su’ be’
fiori, in su la verde fronda (ed. Poesie musicali del Trecento, p. 34, n. 7, vv. 7-8) and by Andrea da Firenze,
Fili paion di fin or lavorati (Ivi, p. 297, n. 13, vv. 5-8). Moreover, in the anonymous madrigal Cogliendo
per un prat’ ogni fior bianco set to music by Nicolò del Preposto (Nicolò del Preposto, Opera Completa. Edizione critica commentata dei testi intonati e delle musiche, a c. di Antonio Calvia, Firenze, Edizioni
del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2017, pp. 88-89), the action of picking flowers also
occurs in the presence of a fonte (v. 4) and the metaphorical use of the noun oro (v. 6, referring to the
maidens’ hair; cfr. here our, v. 9), to bolster the conventional description of a coup de foudre setting. The
preposition pour (unless it does not stand for par, ‘by means of ’) can express purpose (as in modern
French) or cause (see mw, §304, p. 186). Here both meanings are theoretically possible, but the former
seems preferable, ‘in order to (scil. feel) a great sweetness’, as a complement of cause should involve a
possessive (see the numerous occurrences of mourir + pour sa [grant] biauté/douçour).
5. The ms. reading bo – we have not corrected this form, since the Italian author himself might
have used it – can express either bon (for the fall of -n see above), ‘good’, or, with a less likely phonetic
spelling (no such occurrences in the rialfri corpus), beau, ‘beautiful’. In both cases, the adjective
shows that colour is treated as masculine, like flour and unlike odour (the feminine forms bone/bele
would increase the hypermetria, in a verse already one syllable too long). No other literary occurrences of bo(ne) coulour referring to flowers (or to the beloved’s appearance) have been found either in
French or in Italian. In the samples found in the Corpus OVI, ‘good colour’ usually describes a healthy
human face (the syntagm is recurrent in medical texts) or, more rarely, is the external expression of
a moral attitude (e.g., in the capitolo ternario of fourteenth-century poet Sinibaldo da Perugia, Lo
stato in che Fortuna aspra e ria, v. 15; ed. Daniele Piccini, Sinibaldo da Perugia. Un poeta del Trecento
e la sua opera, Perugia, Deputazione di storia patria per l’Umbria, vi, 2008, pp. 318-345). As for the
syntagm bele coulour, it is used (albeit rarely) in lyric poems, particularly by the trouvères. Given
the rare literary appearances of the syntagm ‘two roses’ (for the numeral do, which can be either a
Lombardism or an interference phenomenon, see above), which seem to be unattested in the French
lyric corpus, it is worth reporting the sole Petrarchan occurrence (Due rose fresche, et colte in paradiso,
incipit of the sonnet RVF 245, «uno dei testi più “misteriosi” della raccolta» according to Marco
Santagata: Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere, a c. di Marco Santagata, Milano, Mondadori, 2004,
p. 992), and the one in Nicolò de Rossi’s sonnet 406, vv. 9-10: «Tu mi mostri tra due vermiglie rose /
menute perle uguale e blanche molto» (ed. Il canzoniere di Nicolò de Rossi, a c. di Furio Brugnolo, 2
vols., Padova, Antenore, 1974-1977), where the roses are clearly a metaphor for the beloved’s lips (as in
Le rime di Cino da Pistoia, a c. di Guido Zaccagnini, Genève, Leo S. Olschki, 1925, canzone clxxix,
vv. 9-11: «Oimé lo dolce riso / per lo qual si vedea la bianca neve / fra le rose vermiglie d’ogne tempo»,
where the numeral is missing). In our rondeau it is difficult to decide whether the roses have a literal
(as in Petrarch) or metaphorical meaning. If the latter, the roses refer to the beloved’s eyes, based on
the next verse (elsewhere roses can describe female cheeks: see Simone Serdini da Siena detto il
Saviozzo, Rime, a c. di Emilio Pasquini, Bologna, Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1965, canzone
65, v. 23: «veggio le guance sue piene di rose»). Another possibility is that the image is heraldic, although emblems with two roses are quite rare. We located one for the Casati, a Milanese aristocratic
family linked to the Visconti especially in the time of Gian Galeazzo, but it is not clear if such an
emblem was already in use in the fourteenth century. The verbal form oyt for the third person perfect
indicative of avoir (here meaning ‘to be there’) is recurrent in northern Italian Franco-Italian scriptae.
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6. In the ms. this verse lacks a syllable. The correction of luit (minoritarian form, for present and
perfect indicative, compared to the more common luist: see dmf, Luire) in luisoit, based on metrical
and aspectual reasons, is also supported by the double occurrence of the same syntagm que plus luisoit
(v. 6-7) and of an active ray bearing a figurative (purely metaphoric? allegoric? heraldic?) meaning (v. 1,
here v. 9) in the anonymous virelai Un noble ray en mon songe veoie, a unicum of the ms. Lo15224 (fol.
33r), a codex containing «a lyric collection which seems to have originated at the Visconti court in Milan-Pavia», whose compilation can be dated, based on many references to Giangaleazzo, before his death
in 1402 (Yolanda Plumley, Crossing Borderlines: Points of Contact between the Late-Fourteenth Century
French Lyric and Chanson Repertories, «Acta Musicologica», lxxvi, 2004, pp. 3-23: 13; for a non-critical
edition of the poems see Norbert H. Wallis, Anonymous French Verse. An Anthology of Fifteenth Century Poems Collected from Manuscripts from the British Museum, London, University of London Press,
1929). The affinities between this poem – brought to our attention by Anne Stone – and Aves moy passoyt
un flour do not seem to be fortuitous. The grammatical subject of the singular verbal form can only be
(by hypallage?) the bo colour of the two roses. According to the rhyme (-aine) the ms. reading la dame
(which is clearly a lectio facilior for a copyist acquainted with lyric poetry) must be intended as *ladaine,
probably a deformation of l’araine, ‘the bronze’ (tl, i, 488-489; in this context, la daine, ‘the female deer’,
is obviously not acceptable), a shiny material par excellence, but less precious than gold (following v.).
9. In love poetry, the ray (rai) generally originates from the beloved’s shining eyes: see, for example,
the ballade Corps femenin (Ch, fol. 23v), v. 6: «l’amoureux ray de vostre oeil riant», or the ballata by
Giovanni Quirini, Io chiudo gli ochi quando a me si voglie (ed. Rimatori del Trecento, a c. di Giuseppe
Corsi, Torino, UTET, 1969, p. 56, n. xii), vv. 1-3: «Io chiudo gli ochi quando a me si voglie / la gioven
dona, perché sofferire / non posson del suo ragio il bel fedire». That said, as already mentioned, it is by
no means certain that this rondeau is to be read as a love song. For the interpretation of the enigmatic
rai, it is worth noticing that in the related virelai Un noble ray en mon songe veoie (see above, note to
iii, 6), the ray would be the emblem of the Milanese duke Giangaleazzo Visconti, whose dynasty
might be also evoked by the fontaine (here v. 3). We interpret the ms. reading ses as s’(< SIC) es (<
EST), the meaning being ‘is really, truly’ (‘…pure gold’, so much more precious than the araine, v.
6). This hypothesis is supported by an identical occurrence, albeit in a completely different work (a
thirteenth-century encyclopaedic prose compilation): in the ms. K version of Brunetto Latini’s Trésor
we find La tierce et la quarte partie dou liure, c’est dou trésor, si est de fin or (the fact that this passage
is apocryphal is obviously irrelevant; see Pietro G. Beltrami, Tre schede sul Trésor: 1. Il sistema delle
scienze e la struttura del Trésor 2. Trésor e Tresoretto 3. Aspetti della ricezione del Trésor, «Annali della
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia», s. iii, xxiii, 1993, pp. 115-190: 161). Despite est in i, 1 and 9, which proves that the copyist was familiar with the correct French form, here we
do not restore est, since the author is presumably Italian and es occurs very frequently in Franco-Italian
texts (same for è in iv, 10: see below). As for the syntagm de fin our, never found elsewhere in reference
to a ray, the Italian equivalent is recurrent in the ballatas and madrigals repertory, usually referring to
the beloved’s hair: e.g., Andrea da Firenze, Fili paion di fin or lavorati (ed. Poesie musicali del Trecento,
p. 297, n. 13, vv. 1-2), and Francesco Landini, La bionda treccia di fin or colore (ibid., p. 185, n. 71, v. 1).
10. The ms. reading eue (‘water’), conspicuously represented in Franco-Italian and almost unattested in contemporary French sources (which usually prefer conservative forms with diphthong ai- and
consonant g: see dmf, Aigue), the grapheme u can express either the labio-velar approximant /w/ or the
labio-dental fricative /v/. In choosing the latter (form eve in the critical text), we follow the majority of
the philologists (24 interpret it as eve vs. only 4 as eue according to the editions used by the rialfri).
The most likely interpretation for the second part of this v., in the ms. tint acraine, is tint a graine,
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‘dyed scarlet’ which would fit perfectly with the semantic field of visual perception on which the entire
strophe is based. Tint seems to be an Italianised form of the fr. teint (< TINCTU, either as the past participle of teindre, ‘to dye’, or as a noun, ‘colour, shade’). For graine, ‘scarlet’, see dmf, Graine, ii. As for
the logical value of the preposition a, it could be a deformation of an (instead of en: see above aves, iii,
1). Occurrences of the Italian equivalent syntagm tinto in grana are common in Lombard works, such
as the fourteenth-century anonymous «contrasto in forma di ballata» Confesando la mia defeta (ed.
Lorck, Altbergamaskische Sprachdenkmaler, pp. 90-91, v. 58) or Matazone da Caligano’s Detto dei villani (ed. Poeti del Duecento, a c. di Gianfranco Contini, 2 vols., Milano-Napoli, Ricciardi, 1960, i, pp.
791-801, v. 246), but also in poems composed by authors from Central Italy: see, for example, Jacopone
da Todi’s lauda Sorella, tu che plangni (ed. Rosanna Bettarini, Jacopone e il Laudario Urbinate, Firenze, Sansoni, 1969, iv, pp. 495-504, v. 118) and Fazio degli Uberti’s Dittamondo (Fazio degli Uberti,
Il Dittamondo e le Rime, a c. di Giuseppe Corsi, 2 vols., Bari, Laterza, 1952, i, L.3, cap. 18, v. 69).
11. In afr. and mfr. dont (‘from where’) «se confond […] plus ou moins avec donc (“alors, en
consequence”)» (dmf, Dont): here, the correct meaning is the latter. The syntagm a vois (< VOCE,
here vous, a Lombard or Franco-Italian interferential form) hautaine is recurrent in the French lyric
corpus, referring to the lover’s stentorian singing.
12. Singing for love is one of the most widespread lyric commonplaces, at least since Bernart de
Ventadorn’s manifesto, BdT 70.15, vv. 1-2: «Chantars no pot gaire valer / si d’ins dal cor no mou lo chans»
(Bernart von Ventadorn, Seine Lieder mit Einletung und Glossar, hrsg. von Carl Appel, Halle a. S.,
Niemeyer, 1915, p. 247). For amour accompanied by an ‘objective’ possessive referring to the beloved
(and not, as is usual, a ‘subjective’ one referring to the lover), see the ballade Je ne desir fors que vo douce
amour (Cyp, 135v), vv. 1-5: «Je ne desir fors que vo douce amour, / dame en qui maint toute vraie doussour, / vers qui doit on tous les tans retourner, / rose plaisant et tres odorant flour, / plainne de bien et de
trestoute odour» (this long quotation is justified by the contemporary presence of specific elements, like
the rose and the odour). Yet, like the other lyric topoi and vocabulary exploited by the author, this seems
to require here a second-order interpretation, since there is no explicit reference to a beloved. Subsequently, the possessive adjective son – incongruous as a masculine form, as douce amour is usually treated
as a feminine (grand is the epicene form already discussed: see above, note to i, 12) – should logically refer to the rai (v. 9), rather than to an any other unmentioned subject (see the introductory note above).
iv. Virelai
The text of the strophe is in very bad condition, due not only to material lacunae
(mostly in the tierce) and parchment deterioration, but presumably also to errors of
transcription and linguistic interferences that make some verses barely comprehensible and the syntax difficult to reconstruct. Therefore, for vv. 5-12 we have decided
not to attempt a critical edition of the text as a whole and no commentary is given.
Instead, for each verse we offer the most plausible (needing only very limited or
no editorial intervention at all and providing a satisfactory meaning) reading accompanied by an English translation of the intelligible parts of the text. As for the
punctuation, we have only marked with a period the end of the ouvert-clos section.
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Metric scheme: A10’ B10 B10 A10’ | c8’ d8 c8’ c8’ d8 c8 a10’ b10 b10 a10’
At least two verses are metrically irregular. The hypermetric v. 3 could be easily
normalized by eliminating either the initial et (so as to obtain a regular decasyllable with 4+6 structure), or – given v. 1, whose structure is the quite rare 5+5’ – the
adverb tres in the second hemistich. Since it is impossible to decide between these
two solutions and metrical anomalies are frequent in the Pv poems, we have not
intervened. On the contrary, in the second hemistich of the hypermetric v. 12, we
have eliminated a semantically incongruous tout (so to obtain 4+6), which is clearly a repetition of the previous v. 11.
Rhymes: a -ie, b -ans, c -eta, d -é
Tant yolis et gay sans melenconie
vivray liés et yoieus en tout mon tans
et sans nul dangier feray tres dous semblans
pour le playsir de vous, dame yolie.
5
10
15
{+1}
Car poynt ne † maet † mes dousceta
amoureus de sa nobleté
moy a doné s’amour bruneta
ens les autres plus yolieta
et deservi tres bien mercé
flour n’è u mond tant gratioseta.
A ma poysansa a tout jour de ma vie
pour [de]f[i]nir mon cuer en des[iran]s
ma[…] grand […] ple[…] […]yans
unques[…] si yoye comp[lie].
[Tant yolis et gay sans melenconie…]
____________________________
1: Tant] the capital T was not traced, but the guide-letter is visible with UV-induced-fluorescence scan;
melenconie] meleconie. 2: yoieus] yoiens; tans] tamps. 4: playsir] playr. 9: deservi tres] de tres serui.
12: mon] tout mon; en] e en.
Translation. ‘So happy and joyful, without sadness, I will live glad and cheerful all my time and
without any hesitation I will put on a very sweet face for your pleasure, nice lady. | Because not at all
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[…] sweeter, in love with her nobleness, a brunette more beautiful than the others gave me her love
and I deserved very well (her) mercy, no flower in the world is so lovely. As far as I can, every day of
my life, in order to wear out my heart with desire […] never […] accomplished joy’.
Notes. 1. The adjectives yoli et gay form, as in the virelai A qui fortune est toutdis ennemie (ModA, fol.
19v, vv. 5-6: «Si ne se doit nulz homs meravellier / se je sui bien de cuer gay et jolis»), a synonymic pair
(it. ‘dittologia sinonimica’), which is doubled in the following verse (see note). Yoli (‘happy, joyful’;
see dmf, Joli) only rarely describes the lover’s condition; see, for example, the refrain of the «ballette»
rs 1051: «Cilz qui me tient por jolit / ne seit pais les malz que je trai» (ed. The Old French Ballette.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308, ed. by Eglal Doss-Quinby, Samuel Rosenberg and Elizabeth
Aubrey, Genève, Droz, 2006, 122, p. 348). In meleconie – an Italianism: in French the word is spelled
with l or r (-colie/-corie) – a titulus for n is presumably missing: the very few Italian occurrences of
melaconia/malaconia (4 cases, all found in Tuscan sources) are not enough to justify the ms. reading.
For melenconie, ‘état de profonde tristesse, humeur sombre, abattement, dépression, inquiétude’, see
dmf, Mélancolie, B.2 (another primary meaning of the same word – which would be inappropriate
here – is ‘colère, dépit, ressentiment’, ibid., B.1). Equally, the Italian equivalent malinconia can signify
‘triste e doloroso pensiero’ (TLIO. Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini, a c. di Paolo Squillacioti et al. [http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO/, last accessed October 20, 2022], malinconìa [by Elena Artale,
31/12/2005], 2.4), but for the lyric idiolect a more specific meaning is suggested: ‘doloroso e stizzoso
tormento (spesso associato ad ira) determinato dall’impossibilità di appagare il proprio desiderio’
(Ivi, 3). The absence of this specific kind of melenconie is clearly the ideal status for a lover.
2. The same four adjectival synonyms, here split in the first two verses, appear, though in a single
verse and in a partially different order, in the incipit of Machaut’s Louange des dames, ballade xxxix, vv.
1-2: «Gais et jolis, liés, chantans et joieus / Sui, ce m’est vis, en gracieus retour». For the frequently recurring synonymic pair liés et joieus, see also a ballade (Leiden, fol. 3v) by Martinus Fabri, v. 1: «[N]’ai je
cause d’estre liés et joyeux»; see Two Chansonniers from the Low Countries: French and Dutch Polyphonic
Songs from the Leiden and Utrecht Fragments (Early 15th Century), ed. by Jan van Biezen and Johan Peter Gumbert, Amsterdam, Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1985, pp. 41-43. We have
found only very few occurrences of the syntagm (which seems to be completely unattested in Italian
literature) en tout mon temps in afr. (for instance in the Roman de Carité by the Renclus de Moilliens,
cxviii, v. 11; ed. Li Romans de Carité et Miserere du Renclus de Moilliens, poèmes de la fin du XIIe siècle, éd.
par Anton Gerard van Hamel, 2 vols., Paris, F. Viewig, 1885, i, p. 63) and in mfr. (for example, in the
Dits de Watriquet de Couvin, éd. par August Scheler, Bruxelles, Devaux, 1868, p. 247, v. 505, or in the
Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin par Cuvelier, éd. par Ernest Charrière, 2 vols., Paris, Didot, 1839, i, p.
451, v. 12924): the expression tout mon temps, without the preposition en, is used much more frequently.
3. Dangier is a polysemic term. For sans dangier, ‘without hesitation’, see dmf, Danger, B.1.d.
Another lyric occurrence of the syntagm sans nul dangier is found in the ballade Amor me fait desirer
loyalment (R, fol. 57v), vv. 5-6: «C’est que merchi puisse avoir pour amer / en nom d’ami sans nul
dangier porter». The expression faire (tres) dous semblans does not seem to be otherwise attested (in
courtly literature dous semblant usually refers to the beloved’s rather than to the lover’s appearance).
Based on «Faire beau / bon / grand semblant à qqn, ‘Faire bonne mine, bon accueil’ à qqn» (dmf,
Semblant, i.A.1b), we interpret it here as ‘to put on a (very) sweet face’.
4. The ms. reading playr is a scribal lapsus for playsir (a sort of haplography). For de vous instead
of the possessive, see mw, §272.1 («De + pron. prédicatif tient très fréquemment la place du possessif»).
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In dame yolie, a common epithet in the corpus, the adjective clearly has a different meaning (‘nice’:
dmf, Joli, ii.A) from yolis (v. 1).
8. Critical edition of the music
We have adopted the principles for critical editing of fourteenth-century music
shared by the European Ars Nova study group.117 Individual editorial choices due to
the specific properties of this manuscript witness are discussed above in §5. The reduction ratio between the original values and those of the transcription is 1:4. Tempus
imperfectum with prolatio maior is rendered with the modern 6/8 (B = °.); tempus imperfectum with prolatio minor with the modern 2/4 (B = ° ). The ligaturae are indicated
by continuous square ligatures; color by open square ligatures; semicolor by dashed
square ligatures. Editorial additions are in square brackets. Numbers of clos measures
are followed by an asterisk. In cases where legibility was difficult, and especially for
fol. 1v, our transcriptions have been supported by high quality UVIF images.
i. La nuit que est tant obscure (virelai 21)
Mensura: tempus imperfectum / prolatio maior
Ambitus: C a-bb; T D-d
117 See Musica e poesia nel Trecento italiano. Verso una nuova edizione critica dell’«Ars nova», a c. di
Antonio Calvia e Maria Sofia Lannutti, Firenze, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015; Nicolò del
Preposto, Opera completa. Edizione critica commentata dei testi intonati e delle musiche, a c. di Antonio Calvia, Firenze, Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017; La caccia nell’Ars Nova italiana. Edizione
critica commentata dei testi e delle intonazioni, a c. di Michele Epifani, Firenze, Sismel-Edizioni del
Galluzzo, 2019. Some objections to the editorial criteria adopted in Nicolò del Preposto, Opera
completa have been raised in a recently published review article (Francesco Zimei, «Verso una nuova
edizione critica dell’Ars Nova»: in margine all’“Opera completa” di Nicolò del Preposto, passando per una
raccolta di saggi, «Cultura Neolatina», lxxvii, 2018, pp. 277-302), where Zimei accused the editor of
omitting a lectio of the manuscript from the apparatus to better support his hypothesis (Ivi, p. 298).
In the response article (Antonio Calvia, Davide Checchi, L’edizione dei testi intonati dell’Ars Nova:
alcune questioni di metodo, «Cultura Neolatina», lxxx, 3-4, 2020, pp. 245-281), the authors demonstrate that the reviewer was not only unable to find that reading within the critical apparatus of the
literary texts but had not taken into account the related musical edition (see Ivi, pp. 269-270). Zimei
admits the error in a very concise footnote of his counterresponse (see Francesco Zimei, Se questo
è un metodo, «Cultura Neolatina», lxxxi, 1-2, 2021, pp. 157-164). Due to its outrageous title, inexplicably alluding to Primo Levi’s well-known book on the Holocaust, the reviewer’s counterresponse
remains unworthy of reply.
116
-
Final sonorities: D-d; ouvert: E-e; clos: D-d
Special figurae:
ED¸
♯
Formal features: ouvert/clos
# : C 17, C 28*
♯
# : C 19
ii. Se
la
playsant chiera veoyr povoye (rondeau 2 with alius
tenor)
♯
Mensura: tempus imperfectum / prolatio maior
Ambitus: C a-bb;
T D-d (b # signature); alius T D-d
♯
Final sonorities: D-d; D-d (with alius tenor, ouvert: E-e)
Special figurae: D
; vacue for ouvert ending
Formal features: the version with T has ouvert/clos ending in section A
♯
# : T signature; C 12*, C 25
#:C4
♯
1
iii. Aves
moy passoyt un flour (rondeau 21)
Mensura:
tempus imperfectum / prolatio maior
Ambitus:
C
G-bb;
T
D-d
(b
#
signature)
♯
Final sonorities: D-d; F-f
♯
Special Figurae:
D¸
# : T signature; C 3, C 23
# : C 10
♯
In two instances (C 19 and C 21), the succession ‘semibrevis perfecta – two minim rests – minim’ is
♯
written using the dot after the semibreve (SP “” M); in all other cases, the same rhythm is written with out the dot (C 4, C 8, C 11, C 24).
13
C
the minim e’s stem is clearly visible in the uvif photo
24
C
1, e
iv. Tant yolis et gay sans melenconie (virelai 21)
Mensura: tempus imperfectum / prolatio maior
C d–ee; T G–g (b flat signature)
Ambitus:
Final sonorities: G-g; ouvert: a-aa; clos: G-g
Special Figurae: D
Formal features: ouvert/clos
# : C 25, C 38*
# : C 15
117
,
v. Credo, incipit Omnipotentem (22 of 44?), fragmentary
Mensura: tempus imperfectum / prolatio minor
Ambitus: C ii b-dd; Ct C-e (b # signature)
Sharp signs:
#: C ii at bb. 33, 63, 116, 125, 138, 166; Ct at bb. 37, 116, 125, 138, 208.
# : C ii at bb. 55, 205; Ct in signature and at bb. 66, 166, 181.
Flat signs:
= : C ii 155.
@ : Ct 155.
The figurae used in the Credo are as follows: X L B S M. Longa rests at bb. 128, 133, 134, 136 and 138, meant
to separate single words of the period «ex Maria Virgine / et / homo / factus / est», have been transcribed
as suspiria. The same principle has been applied to Ct 4. The maximae have been transcribed as modern
breves without adjusting the 2/4 measure (see bb. 4-5 and 133-139). At Ct 161-162, a long is imperfected
by a minim, exceptionally applying the imperfectio ad partem to an imperfect pars (the breve).
Text underlay. The graphic forms of the manuscript have been maintained; abbreviations have been
spelled out. Punctuation and capitalization are based on the Graduale romanum.118 Incomplete words
due to material damage have been completed with the missing letters in square brackets. In sections
10-11 (from b. 199 on), the text of the tenor, lost due to material damage, has been supplied in square
brackets. Two errors have been emended in italics: gloria] gloiria (cantus, b. 208; text of the tenor
missing) and Pilato] pillato (both voices, b. 156).
7-8
22
20-21
23-24
47
70
80
93-94
112-117
189
194-199
219-220
C ii
C ii
C ii-Ct
Ct
Ct
C ii
C ii
Ct
C ii
C ii
Ct
C ii
notes and rests only partially visible in uvif images
1, om. punctum
uncertain syllable placement
L] B
1, the scribe corrects a semibreve rest into a minim rest
1, the scribe corrects the minim into a semibreve
2, the scribe corrects the minim into a semibreve
L] B
L L L] B B B
om. minim rest (partly visible in uvif images?)
material lacuna; the custos indicates c as first note
L] B
118 Graduale Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae de Tempore et de Sanctis, Roma, Editio typica, 1908.
118
-
119
,
120
-
121
,
122
-
123
,
124
-
125
,
126
-
127
,
128
-
129
,
130
-
131
,
132
-
133
,
9. Conclusions
Given the lack of named composers, as well as the absence of any concordances,
addressing the fundamental questions regarding the dating and provenance of the
Pavia fragment and the repertory it contains requires caution. It is highly plausible
that the codex (or the larger project) to which the fragment belonged was compiled
in northern Italy. Clues regarding such provenance are present in both the text and
the music. In the text, these clues include the Italian palaeographic features and
scripta of the textual copyist; in the music, they include the particular shape of the
sharp sign and the tendency – characteristic of late fourteenth-century Italian notation – to create new figures, especially through the addition of caudae.
The study of the bifolio reveals a new source of polyphony with distinctive
characteristics of musical uniqueness and homogeneity:
a) the five pieces included are unica, suggesting a restricted circulation;
b) the figure of the brevis dragma is a notational hapax;
c) the form of the rondeau with ouvert/clos endings is extraordinary;
d) the use of coloration to indicate cadential diversification is unique (to our
knowledge);
e) finally, some elements suggest a strong stylistic homogeneity common to at least
three of the four French-texted compositions.
Homogeneity and uniqueness both point to local tastes; this seems to be valid for
the French texts too, as at least two of them (rondeau iii and virelai iv) must be
attributed to (an) Italian author(s) given their rhymes. We have deliberately left
aside the Credo because its incompleteness makes it difficult to evaluate. That said,
as mentioned above, it is compatible with other northern Italian settings of the
Ordinary. The repertory transmitted probably dates to the end of the fourteenth
century (a dating that is compatible with the palaeographic features displayed
by the texts) or the first quarter of the fifteenth century, but the fragment’s very
uniqueness prevents us from offering a more specific date.
Indeed, the pieces transmitted by Pv are a repertory in search of a context. Two
factors offer important evidence for the reception of this repertory: the possibility
that the copyist of the texts was Lombard, and the fact that the bifolio, after being
pasted in the host volume, circulated in Milan (from San Fedele to the Braidense).
It seems likely that the milieus of the fragment’s reception and of its composi-
134
-
tion correspond to one another, as suggested by the distinctive features of both
texts and music discussed above. With this assumption, we must also consider the
possibility that the origin of the fragment’s contents could be linked to the most
important cultural centre in late medieval west Lombardy: the Visconti court. In
support of this hypothesis, we might consider some scattered elements,119 all in
the rondeau iii: the mention of a fontaine (v. 3), an image that was often used by
poets in service to the Visconti family as an encomiastic metaphor of their patrons’
largesse, and the joint occurrence of a rai (v. 9) and the syntagm que plus luisoit
(v. 6) in an anonymous virelai conveyed only by a codex known to be linked to
Giangaleazzo Visconti (Lo15224).120
119 More pieces of evidence may come in the near future from the currently ongoing study of Tr
(see above, note 1).
120 For more details about Lo15224, see above, note to iii, 6. In a forthcoming contribution about
the ‘San Fedele-Belgioioso codex’, Anne Stone will develop this hypothesis by considering all the
pieces of information provided by the fragment held at the Biblioteca Trivulziana (Tr).
135
,
Appendix A – Manuscript Sigla
Siglum
Rism
Full Shelfmark
Berg589
I-BGc, MA 589
Bergamo, Biblioteca Angelo Mai, MA 589
BU596
I-BU, 596, busta
HH2.1
Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 596, busta HH2.1
BU2216
I-BU, 2216
Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 2216
Ca6
F-CA, D 6
Cambrai, Le Labo (olim Médiathèque d’Agglomération;
olim Bibliothèque municipale), D 6
Ca11
F-CA, D 11
Cambrai, Le Labo (olim Médiathèque d’Agglomération;
olim Bibliothèque municipale), D 11
Ca1328
F-CA, B 1328
Cambrai, Le Labo (olim Médiathèque d’Agglomération;
olim Bibliothèque municipale), B 1328
Ch
F-CH, 564
Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly, 564
Cor2
I-CTasc, fragment
s.n.
Cortona, Archivio Storico del Comune, fragment s.n.
(‘Cortona 2’)
Cyp
I-Tn, J.ii.9
Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, J.ii.9
Fp
I-Fn, Panc. 26
Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Panc. 26
Gr224-D
I-GR, Kript. Lat.
224 and US-HArscl,
MS 2387
Grottaferrata, Biblioteca del Monumento Nazionale,
Kript. Lat. 224 (olim Collocazione provvisoria 197) and
Hanover, NH, Dartmouth College Library, Rauner Special Collections, MS 2387
Iv
I-IV, 115
Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare, 115
Leiden
NL-Lu, Fragment
B.P.L. 2720
Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Fragment
B.P.L. 2720
Lo
GB-Lbl, Add. 29987
London, British Library, Add. 29987
Lo15224
GB-Lbl, Add. 15224
London, British Library, Add. 15224
Man
I-La, 184 and
I-PEc, 3065
Lucca, Archivio di Stato, 184 and Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta, 3065
ModA
I-MOe,
alpha.M.5.24
Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, alpha.M.5.24
Ox213
GB-Ob, Canon.
misc. 213
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. misc. 213
Ox229 (part
of PadA)
GB-Ob, Canon.
patr. lat. 229
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. patr. lat. 229
136
-
PadA see
Ox229 and
Pad684
Pad684
I-Pu, 684
Padova, Biblioteca Universitaria, 684
Pit
F-Pnm, it. 568
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, it. 568
Pv
I-PAVu, Pergamene Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia – MiC, Pergasparse, scatola 4, n. 8 mene sparse, scatola 4, n. 8 (ex 43 D 3) (part of the ‘San
Fedele-Belgioioso Codex’)
Q15
I-Bc, Q.15
Bologna, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica
di Bologna, Q.15
R
F-Pnm, n.a.fr. 6771
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.fr. 6771
(‘Reina Codex’)
Ravi3
I-Sas, Mediceo Lore- Siena, Archivio di Stato, Mediceo Lorenese Gavorrano,
nese Gavorrano, 10
10 (olim Vicariati, Ravi, 3)
SL
I-Fsl, 2211
Firenze, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo, 2211 (‘San
Lorenzo Palimpsest’)
Sq
I-Fl, Med. Pal. 87
Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87
(‘Squarcialupi Codex’)
Stras
F-Sm, 222 C 22
Strasbourg, Bibliothèque Municipale, 222 C 22 (destroyed)
T.iii.2
I-Tn, T.iii.2
Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, T.iii.2 (‘Boverio Codex’)
Tr
I-Mt, 1759
Milano, Archivio Storico Civico e Biblioteca Trivulziana,
1759 (binding; part of the ‘San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex’)
Trém
F-Pnm, n.a.fr. 23190
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.fr. 23190
(‘Trémoïlle’)
(part of PadA)
137
Biographical Notes
Elena Abramov-van Rijk is an independent scholar, whose main interest is
in Italian music from the Trecento to
the Cinquecento in the context of history and literature. She published two
monographs: Parlar cantando: The Practice of Reciting Verses in Italy from 1300
to 1600 (Peter Lang, 2009) and Singing
Dante: The Literary Origins of Cinquecento Monody (Ashgate, 2014); several
essays in journals («Early music», «Early
music history», «Plainsong and medieval
music», «Acta musicologica», «Studi musicali», «Cultura neolatina» and other),
festschrifts and congress proceedings.
Antonio Calvia is Assistant Professor in Musicology at the University
of Pavia, campus of Cremona, where
he teaches Musical Palaeography and
History of Poetry Set to Music in the
Middle Ages. He is senior researcher
of the ERC-funded project European
Ars Nova: Multilingual Poetry and Poly-
phonic Song in the Late Middle Ages and
co-director of the bibliographical bulletin and database «Medioevo musicale /
Music in the Middle Ages». His fields of
interest include 14th-century polyphony, musical philology, history of musical notation, relationships between poetry and music, and digital humanities
applied to the study of medieval music.
Lorenzo Mattei (Florence 1974) graduated in piano (1998) and in modern literature (1999). Ph.D. History and analysis
of musical traditions (Rome University
La Sapienza) and Research fellow History of modern Music at the University
of Bari. Now he is Associate professor at
the University of Bari. He’s specialized in
Eighteenth-Century Opera. Since 2007
he’s the artistic director of the “Giovanni Paisiello Festival” in Taranto. Among
his publications: History of Opera (2023)
Critical edition of Jommelli’s Didone abbandonata (2017) and Paisiello’s Giuochi
175
d’Agrigento (2007). His essays have been
published on: «Il Saggiatore musicale»,
«Studi musicali», «Analecta musicologica», «xviii secolo» «Napoli Nobilissima».
Renato Meucci, musician and organologist, has studied guitar and horn
at the conservatoires of Rome and Milan, and classical philology at the University of Rome. He has been full professor (History of Music) in the Faculty
of the Conservatoire of Perugia (19951999) and since 2000 in the faculty of
the conservatoire of Novara. He was
visiting professor (History of musical
instruments) at the University of Perugia (1994-1999) and State University
of Milan (2000-20). His main interest were the history and technology of
musical instruments, while his contributions published in various languages (Italian, English, German, French,
Spanish) dealt with the history of music, iconography, ethnomusicology, orchestration, and performance practice
in 18th and 19th centuries. Since 2019
Meucci is also director of the Cultural
Heritage department of the Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Federico Saviotti, chercheur associé
at the College de France, is currently Research Associate and Lecturer in
Romance Philology at the University
of Pavia. The main subjects of his investigations are Romance lyric poetry
up to the 14th century, French didactic
literature and the Arras literary milieu
in the 13th century, tradition and fragmentology of medieval codices. His research, based on textual, material and
linguistic philology and privileging an
interdisciplinary approach, aims to critical editions, manuscript description
and reconstruction, analysis of literary
language, study of the relationship between text and music.
Agostino Ziino is Professor Emeritus
of Musicology at the University of Rome
Tor Vergata. In 2000 he was awarded
the “Premio Feltrinelli per la Musica”
(Feltrinelli Prize for Music) by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and in
2003 he (with Teresa M. Gialdroni) was
granted the “Richard S. Hill Award” by
the Music Library Association (USA).
He is a past President of the Italian Musicological Society, Istituto Italiano per
la Storia della Musica and of the “Centre for Studies of the Italian Ars Nova
of the 14th Century” in Certaldo. He is
a member of the editorial board of the
New Gesualdo Edition (Bärenreiter), the
National Edition of the Works of Pierluigi da Palestrina and Alessandro Stradella.
He is a corresponding member of the
American Musicological Society and a
member of the Accademia Nazionale di
Santa Cecilia, Rome. He has been the
Editor of the journal «Studi Musicali»
and has been a member of the Advisory
Board of «Acta Musicologica» and «The
Journal of Musicology».
176
Abstracts
Agostino Ziino
Polifonia nella Cattedrale di Amalfi agli
inizi del Trecento: un primo tassello, forse
Elena Abramov-van Rijk
Hidden names in Trecento musical
compositions
The Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Amalfitanae or Chronica omnium Archiepiscoporum inform us that Andrea de Alanio or d’Alagno Archbishop of Amalfi
from 1292 to 1330 «musica quae organa
dicuntur fieri fecit» in the cathedral of
Amalfi. This piece of information is very
important because it shows that at the
end of the 13th century polyphony was
already practiced in the liturgy of this
cathedral of Southern Italy, in the same
way as those of Central and Northern
Italy (Rome/Papal Chapel where the
repertory was imported perhaps from
Nôtre Dame in Paris; and Siena, Firenze, Lucca in which many pieces were
sung «cum organo»).
The focus of the essay is the habit of
inserting the names of dedicatees in
a poem, sometimes openly but more
often disguised. Such names are usually labelled with a word related to
Provençal and Occitan troubadour poetry, senhal, namely sign or symbol. Although this term is not used for Italian
poetry, in modern research it has been
applied by analogy to hidden names in
Trecento poetry as well. Although the
individual instances of hidden names
are frequently treated in musicological
studies, the phenomenon by itself has
so far not been a topic of specific discussion in more general terms. Here
two manners of using a hidden name
are examined, both already mentioned
in Antonio da Tempo’s treatise Summa
artis rhythmici vulgaris dictaminis (1332):
177
abstracts
a name given as one word if it has an
ambivalent meaning, and an unequivocal female name split into syllables over
consecutive words. Several examples
illustrate both manners of introducing
hidden female names into the verbal
texture of poem.
Antonio Calvia, Federico Saviotti
The San Fedele-Belgioioso Codex: A
New Source of Secular and Liturgical
Polyphony (the Pavia Fragment)
In 2019 two largely intact parchment
bifolios containing late fourteenth-century polyphony, reused as book covers,
were found independently in Milanarea libraries: one at the Biblioteca Universitaria in Pavia (I-PAVu, Pergamene
sparse, scatola 4, n. 8) and the other
at the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan
(binding of I-Mt, 1759). This is the
first of two articles demonstrating that
the two bifolios belonged to the same
original manuscript, a compilation of
Mass Ordinary movements and secular songs copied in northern Italy (ca.
1400). This first essay presents the fragment Pv, a bifolio containing five polyphonic anonymous unica. The pieces
are written in fourteenth-century black
notation using dragmae, including an
unknown form of ‘dragma brevis’ and a
case of half-coloration. The four secular
works, two virelais and two rondeaux,
are all for two voices with untexted
tenor. The fifth piece is a fragmentary
Credo of which only two texted voices
remain. The essay contains a codicological and palaeographic description of
the bifolio, a musicological study of the
works, a linguistic and stylistic analysis
of the French poems, and a critical edition of both texts and music. In the final paragraph, we offer a hypothesis on
the origin of the fragment based on the
data collected.
Lorenzo Mattei
«La mia cara Cecchina è…» un castrato.
Gli evirati cantori e l’opera buffa
Castratos have always been related to
Opera Seria. However, the emasculated
singers played also in Opera Buffa, not
only in Rome and in the whole Vatican
State, where there was a veto on women
singers, but also in other Italian and foreign theaters. The data collected from
the analysis of theatrical chronologies,
from the Corago database, and the Indice de’ teatrali spettacoli, made it possible
to schedule over five hundred castratos
active throughout the Eighteenth Century and to observe their relationship
with Opera Buffa. The royal theaters of
Lisbon, Queluz and Dresden systematically hosted castratos for female roles.
Castratos played always lovers, aristocratic and sophisticated characters, able
to introduce the heroic spirit of the
Opera Seria into the Dramma Giocoso
atmosphere, by means of the lexical and
stylistic-musical choices used. During
178
abstracts
the 70’s castratos in Opera Buffa became rarer until they disappeared completely in the following decade to the
delight of those who disliked them. The
process of the unstoppable extinction
that affected castratos therefore began
precisely from the opera buffa in which
it was more and more important to adhere to nature and truth.
Renato Meucci
Piero Maroncelli, patriota e musicista
Piero Maroncelli (1795-1846), hitherto known only for being Silvio Pellico’s cellmate of and the co-protagonist
of Le mie prigioni, was actually a trained
and complete musician and one of the
first Italian musicologists, with two essays on Corelli and Manfroce. A recent
study of mine is dedicated to the latter
activity, while the one presented here
sets out in detail the musical biography
of the patriot and musician, rehabilitating him from some unsuitable evaluations of a publication dedicated to him
on the same topic.
179
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