Contents

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

Contents
Introduction: The History of What?
Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up
- Literacy
- The Romans and the Franks
- The Carolingian Renaissance
- The Chant Comes North
- The Legend of St. Gregory
- The Origins of Gregorian Chant
- Monastic Psalmody
- The Development of the Liturgy
- The Mass and its Music
- Neumes
- Persistence of Oral Tradition
- Psalmody in Practice: The Office
- Psalmody in Practice: The Mass
- Evidence of “Oral Composition”
- Why we will Never know How it all Began
- Beginnings, as Far as we know Them
Chapter 2 New Styles and Forms
- Longissimae Melodiae
- Prosa
- Sequences
- How they were Performed
- Hymns
- Tropes
- The Mass Ordinary
- Kyries
- The Full Franko-Roman Mass
- “Old Roman” and Other Chant Dialects
- What is Art?
Chapter 3 Retheorizing Music
- Musica
- Tonaries
- A New Concept of Mode
- Mode Classification in Practice
- Mode as a Guide to Composition
- Versus
- Liturgical Drama
- Marian Antiphons
- Theory and the Art of Teaching
Chapter 4 Music of Feudalism and Fin’s Amors
- Aquitaine
- France
- Adam De La Halle and the Formes Fixes
- Geographical Diffusion
Chapter 5 Polyphony in Practice and Theory
- Another Renaissance
- “Symphonia” and its Modifications
- Guido, John, and Discant
- Polyphony in Aquitanian Monastic Centers
- The Codex Calixtinus
Chapter 6 Notre Dame de Paris
- The Cathedral-University Complex
- Piecing The Evidence Together
- Measured Music
- Whys and Wherefores
- Organum Cum Alio
- Theory or Practice?
- Conductus at Notre Dame
Chapter 7 Music for an Intellectual and Political Elite
- A New Class
- The Nascent Motet
- “Franconian” Notation
- Confluence of Traditions
- A New Trobar Clus?
- Tenor “Families”
- Color and Talea
- The Art of Mélange
- The “Petronian” Motet
Chapter 8 Business Math, Politics, and Paradise: The Ars Nova
- A “New Art of Music”?
- Music from Mathematics
- Putting it into Practice
- Representing it
- Backlash
- Establishing the Prototype: The Roman De Fauvel
- Taking a Closer Look
- More Elaborate Patterning
- Isorhythm
- Music about Music
- Machaut: The Occult and the Sensuous
- Musica Ficta
- Cadences
- Ciconia: The Motet as Political Show
- Du Fay: The Motet as Mystical Summa
- A Final Word From Dante
Chapter 9 Machaut and His Progeny
- Maintaining the Art of Courtly Song
- Redefining (and Re-Refining) a Genre
- The Top-Down Style
- Cantilena
- Functionally Differentiated Counterpoint
- The Luxuriant Style
- What Instrumentalists Did
- Machaut’s Mass and its Background
- Avignon
- Votive Formularies
- Ci Commence la Messe de Nostre Dame
- Kyrie
- Gloria
- Dismissal
- Subtilitas
- Canon
- ARS Subtilior
- Berry and Foix
- Outposts
- Faux-Naïveté
Chapter 10 “A Pleasant Place”: Music of the Trecento
- Vulgar Eloquence
- Madrigal Culture
- A New Discant Style
- The “Wild Bird” Songs
- Ballata Culture
- Landini
- Late-Century Fusion
- An Important Side Issue: Periodization
Chapter 11 Island and Mainland
- The First Masterpiece?
- Viking Harmony
- Insular Fauna?
- Pes Motets and Rondellus
- The Worcester Fragments
- Nationalism?
- “English Descant”
- The Beginnings of “Functional” Harmony?
- Old Hall and Roy Henry
- Fortunes of War
- Dunstable and the “Contenance Angloise”
- Voluptuousness and How to Acquire it
- Fauxbourdon and Faburden
- Du Fay and Binchois
Chapter 12 Emblems and Dynasties
- The Internationalism of the Upper Crust
- The “Tinctoris Generation”
- The Cyclic Mass
- Cantus Firmus as Trope of Glory
- “Caput” and the Beginnings of Four-Part Harmony
- How Controversies Arise (and What They Reveal)
- Patterns of Emulation
- The Composer as Virtuoso
- Farther Along the Emulation Chain
- The Man at Arms
- “Pervading Imitation”
- An Esthetic Paradox (or, the Paradox of “Esthetics”)
- Old and Young Alike Pay Tribute
Chapter 13 Middle and Low
- Hailing Mary
- Personal Prayer
- The English Keep Things High
- The Milanese Go Lower Still
- Fun in Church?
- Love Songs
- Instrumental Music Becomes Literate at Last
- Music Becomes a Business
- “Songs” Without Words
Chapter 14 Josquin and the Humanists
- What Legends Do
- A Poet Born not Made
- Josquin as the Spirit of a (Later) Age
- Recycling the Legend Back into Music
- What Josquin was Really Like
- A Model Masterpiece
- Parodies
- Facts and Myths
Chapter 15 A Perfected Art
- All is Known
- The Triad Comes of Age
- “Il Eccelentissimo Adriano” and His Contemporaries
- Gombert
- Clemens
- Willaert and the Art of Transition
- The Progress of a Method
- Academic Art
- Spatialized Form
- Alternatives to Perfection
- Peeking Behind the Curtain
- Dances Old and New
Chapter 16 The End of Perfection
- Utopia
- Palestrina and the Ecumenical Tradition
- Besting the Flemings; or, the Last of the Tenoristas
- Parody Pairs
- Palestrina and the Bishops
- Freedom and Constraint
- Cryogenics
- Byrd
- Church and State
- The First English Cosmopolite
- The Music of Defiance
- Musical Hermeneutics
- The Peak (and Limit) of Stylistic Refinement
Chapter 17 Commercial and Literary Music
- Music Printers and their Audience
- Vernacular Song Genres: Italy
- Germany: The Tenorlied
- The “Parisian” Chanson
- Music as Description
- Lasso: The Cosmopolite Supreme
- The Literary Revolution and the Return of the Madrigal
- “Madrigalism” in Practice
- Paradox and Contradiction
- Exterior “Nature” and Interior “Affect”
- Postscript: The English Madrigal
Chapter 18 Reformations and Counter Reformations
- The Challenge
- The Lutheran Chorale
- The Response
- Augenmusik
- “Concerted” Music
- The Art of Orchestration is Born
- “Songs” for Instruments
Chapter 19 Pressure of Radical Humanism
- The Technical, the Esthetic, and the Ideological
- Academies
- The Representational Style
- Intermedii
- The “Monodic Revolution”
- Madrigals and Arias Redux
- Favole in Musica
- Oratorio
Art Credits
Further Reading: A Checklist of Books in English

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CHAPTER 8 Business Math, Politics, and Paradise: The Ars Nova

Notational and Stylistic Change in Fourteenth-Century France; Isorhythmic Motets From Machaut to Du Fay

Chapter:: CHAPTER 8 Business Math, Politics, and Paradise: The Ars Nova
Source:: MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Author(s):: Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

And yet (to pick up immediately on the closing thought of the previous chapter, and perhaps pick a fight with it) one can certainly point to times when changes in composing practice did take place for a definite composerly purpose, whether to enable specific technical solutions to specific technical problems, to enlarge a certain realm of technical possibility, or to secure specific improvements in technical efficiency. Why not call that progress?

Citation (MLA):: Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 8 Business Math, Politics, and Paradise: The Ars Nova." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2024. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-chapter-008.xml>.
Citation (APA):: Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 8 Business Math, Politics, and Paradise: The Ars Nova. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 12 Oct. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-chapter-008.xml
Citation (Chicago):: Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 8 Business Math, Politics, and Paradise: The Ars Nova." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 12 Oct. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-chapter-008.xml

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