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

See also from Grove Music Online

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REPRESENTING IT

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

Like all previous notational reforms, the Ars Nova retained the familiar shapes of Gregorian “square” notation, modifying them where necessary (as in supplying the minim) but as slightly as possible. What mainly changed were the rules by which the signs were interpreted. The same notated maxima could contain 16 minims or 81 minims or any of several quantities in between. How was one to know which?

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-div1-008004.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-div1-008004.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-div1-008004.xml

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