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The transmission of the polyphonic Amen in the early fifteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Abstract

Studies of manuscripts such as the Trent Codices (I-TRbc 87–92) and Bologna Q15 (I-Bc 15) have shown that fifteenth-century scribes were not necessarily passive transmitters of the material they copied. Whether motivated by practical constraints or aesthetic preferences, they added, excised and re-composed sections or voices as they saw fit. The frequency and ingenuity of such emendations encourage us to examine them further – not as unwelcome alterations to a putative ‘Urtext’ but as creative acts in their own right.

This article focuses on one site of scribal emendation: the concluding Amen sections of early fifteenth-century Gloria and Credo settings. Frequently, otherwise concordant sources for the same piece transmit Amen sections that appear to be unrelated to each other. I propose that certain types of Amen settings were more susceptible than others to alteration and that one type – the short, self-contained, homophonic Amen – arose through scribal emendation. In order to describe in precise terms the choices a scribe might make, I introduce a nomenclature system for the Amen settings encountered in this period. Taking a panoptic view of the major sources for sacred polyphony in the first half of the fifteenth century, this article contributes to our understanding of scribal activity and manuscript culture.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 On the grouping of individual pieces into pairs or cycles, see Hamm, Charles, ‘The Reson Mass’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 18 (1965), 521CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gossett, Philip, ‘Techniques of Unification in Early Cyclic Masses and Mass Pairs’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 19 (1966), 205–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Palmer, Robert, ‘Squaring the Triangle: Interrelations and their Meanings in Some Early Fifteenth-Century Mass Pairs’, The Journal of Musicology, 16 (1998), 494518CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Q15 scribe, see Bent, Margaret, ‘A Contemporary Perception of Early Fifteenth-Century Style: Bologna Q15 as a Document of Scribal Editorial Initiative’, Musica Disciplina, 41 (1987), 183201Google Scholar and, especially, Bent, , Bologna Q15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript, 2 vols. (Lucca, 2008)Google Scholar.

2 Ao, no. 86, fols. 114v–117r; Ca6, no. 18, fols. 33v–36r; Ca11, no. 20, fols. 38v–41v; Ox, no. 160, fols. 74v–75v; Q15, no. 93, fols. R115v–117r/A118v–120r. This Credo is also found in MuEm, no. 254, fols. 153v–155r, with the final section, including the Amen, omitted. In order to facilitate the reader's navigation through the complicated structure of Q15, I provide two sets of foliations: the older Roman foliation (hereafter R), which ends stage II of the compilation, and the modern Arabic foliation (hereafter A), which reflects the final state of the manuscript. See Bent, Margaret, Bologna Q15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript (Lucca, 2008), 1:viiixviiiGoogle Scholar.

3 van den Borren, Charles, ed., Polyphonia Sacra: A Continental Miscellany of the Fifteenth Century (University Park, PN, 1963), xxiGoogle Scholar; David Fallows, ‘Franchois de Gemblaco, Johannes’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/10105 (accessed 14 November 2011).

4 Borren, Polyphonia Sacra, xxv, writes, ‘The brief Amen of Oxf. is replaced, in B.L. [Q15] and Cambrai, by a very extensive one, of which we give a transcription under No. 14bis, after the Oxford version.’ David Fallows notes that ‘the jaunty “Amen” presented [in Borren] as an Appendix appears in all full sources apart from GB-OB 213.’ Fallows takes an implicit stand in favour of the Ox Amen readings, writing that in Q15 the Credo is ‘followed by an apparently unconnected “Amen” section.’ See Fallows, David, ed., Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 213 (Chicago, 1995), 43Google Scholar.

5 Given the location of the Credo in Layer II of Q15 and in the latest layer of Ox, we can surmise that the Q15 reading was copied a year or two before that in Ox, and considerably earlier than that in Cambrai. For the dating of Ox, see Fallows, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 19–20. For the structure and copying chronology of Q15, see Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:19–143.

6 Of the manuscripts discussed in this paper, BU, Ca11, Ox, Q15, the Trent Codices, W378 and W8054 are available in facsimile editions or online. BU: Il Codice 2216 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, ed. Gallo, F.A. (Bologna, 1968)Google Scholar. Ca11: Cambrai Cathedral choirbook/Livre de Choeur de la Cathedrale de Cambrai, ed. Curtis, Liane (Peer, 1992)Google Scholar. Ox: Oxford Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Misc. 213, ed. Fallows, David (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar. Q15: Bologna Q15, ed. Bent, Margaret, vol. 2. Trent Codices: Codex Tridentinus 87–93, 7 vols. (Rome, 1969–70)Google Scholar; photographs of the Trent Codices were recently made available online at the ‘Trentino Cultura’ website, accessible at www1.trentinocultura.net, under ‘Manoscritti musicali trentini del ‘400’. W378: Miroslaw Perz, ed., Sources of Polyphony up to c.1500, vol. 13 (1973), 103–60. W8054: ibid., 37–102.

7 See, for example, Bent, ‘A Contemporary Perception’, passim; eadem, Bologna Q15, 1:145–51; and Fallows, Canon. misc. 213. For a wide-ranging treatment of the creative scribe, dealing with a different repertory and a set of sources, but applicable in its larger points to the issues under discussion here, see Alden, Jane, Songs, Scribes, and Society: The History and Reception of the Loire Valley Chansonniers (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 Geoffrey Chew and Edward Foley, ‘Amen’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/00764 (accessed 14 November 2011).

9 Karlheinz Schlager, ‘Amen’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Sachteil, vol. 1, 546–8, at 548.

10 Two representative examples of these early polyphonic Amen settings are the Gloria attributed to Loÿs in Apt, fols. 17v–18r (also in Ivrea, fol. 48v), and transcribed in Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century (hereafter PMFC) 23:104–7, and the Credo attributed to Johannes Lambuleti (Ivrea, fols. 34v–35r; transcribed in PMFC 23:9–17). On John XXII's bulla, see Körndle, Franz, ‘Die Bulle Docta sanctorum patrum: Überlieferung, Textgestalt und Wirkung’, Die Musikforschung, 63 (2010), 147–65Google Scholar; Hucke, Helmut, ‘Das Dekret Docta sanctorum patrum Papst Johannes XXII’, Musica Disciplina, 38 (1984), 119–31Google Scholar; Klaper, Michael, ‘“Verbindliches kirchenmusikalisches Gesetz” oder belanglose Augenblickseingebung? Zur Constitutio Docta sanctorum patrum Papst Johannes XXII’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 60 (2003), 6995CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 An exceptional case showing the types of instability typically found in later sources is the anonymous Gloria qui sonitu melodie (Apt, fols. 5v–7r; Ivrea, fols. 36v–37r; I-Pu 684, fol. 2r; I-GR 197, fols. 1v–3v; US-R 44, fols. 1v–2r; D-Mbs 29775, fols. Ar–v; F-CA, fols. 3v–4r). Giulio Cattin and Francesco Facchin identify two groups of Amen sections for this piece, the first in F mode and the second in G mode (PMFC 23b:474–5). Ivrea gives both Amen options, implying that the different Amen sections provide modal alternatives.

12 Where a work is a parody of a secular composition, the Amen usually takes part in the parody. Antonio Zacara, for example, wrote numerous Mass settings (e.g. Credo Scabioso, Credo Deus deorum) in which the Amen continues the parody that occurs in the body. The figural Amen of a Grossin Gloria (Ao, fols. 59v–60r; W8054, fols. 177v–178r; MuEm, fols. 52v–53r; Q15, fols. R108v–109r/A109v–110r) is not a parody but simply a quotation of the first phrase of the piece. This method of ‘composing’ an Amen does not seem to have been common, however, and it is the only example I came across in the pieces I studied.

13 The appearance varies slightly from source to source. In Q15, this demarcation is usually a red vertical line, for example, while in BU sections are separated from one another by a pair of vertical lines.

14 See Tr92, no. 1474, fols. 118v–120r. In his edition, Besseler provides both versions, distinguishing between them by using the labels ‘Ia’ and ‘Ka’ for the majority reading and ‘Ib’ and ‘Kb’ for the Tr92 reading. Guillaume Dufay, Credo from Missa Sancti Jacobi, ed. Heinrich Besseler, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae (hereafter CMM) 1/2 (Rome, 1960), 30–6.

15 Ao2, fols. 119v–122r; Q15, no. 115, fols., R125v–127r/A148v–150r; Tr87, no. 136, fols. 151v–153v. Although Tr87 is concordant with Ao and Q15, the Amen it transmits is incomplete. Because the Amen is self-contained, the Tr87 scribe was able to place it on a new opening when he realised there would not be enough room for it on the ‘Crucifixus etiam’ opening. He indicated its presence on the next opening with the rubric ‘V[er]te [folium]’ at the end of the Cantus part on fol. 152v. However, for reasons lost to us, he copied out only the Cantus part (which corresponds to that in Ao and Q15), omitting the Tenor and Contratenor. See CMM 1/2:xxi.

16 In order to hear the recurrence of similar motivic material, compare the opening bars of the sections Besseler labels ‘Ka’ and ‘Kb’ (see CMM 1/2:34 and 36) with the opening bars of sections A (CMM 1/2:30), D (CMM 1/2:31), and H (CMM 1/2:35).

17 On the Q15 compiler's access to Du Fay's music, see Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:1–3.

18 The critique of valuation based on assumptions of authorial intent that rest on ‘external’ or ‘contextual’ factors such as biography or source layout was first formulated in Wimsatt, William and Beardsley, Monroe, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, The Sewanee Review, 54 (1946), 468–88Google Scholar. While this seminal article took on tendencies in literary criticism, its arguments were brought to bear on musicological studies as well; see, for example, Meyer, Leonard, Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1973)Google Scholar. A wide-ranging response to anti-intentionalist critiques within musicology is given in Kivy, Peter, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance (Ithaca, 1995), 946Google Scholar. Kivy argues that ‘Wimsatt's and Beardsley's “intentional fallacy” has been transformed from the fallacy … of inferring an author's meaning from his or her intentions to a universal interdict against inferring to a composer's intentions from any evidence whatsoever’, and that this indictment is ‘completely destructive of the whole musicological enterprise’ (ibid., 16).

19 This point is made elegantly by Andrew Kirkman and Philip Weller in ‘Binchois's Texts’, review of The Sacred Music of Gilles Binchois, by Kaye, Philip, Music and Letters, 74 (1996), 566–96, at 566Google Scholar. They assert that scribes, ‘so often characterised by modern scholarship as corrupters of the Urtext, should more accurately be viewed as the legitimate interlocutors through whose agency the work of composers habitually reached its users’.

20 See note 1.

21 Tapissier's Credo: Q15, no. 44, fols. R48v–49/A49v–51r; Apt, no. 42, fols. 34v–36r. Fabri's Gloria: Q15, no. 43, R47v–48r/A48v–49r. Palmer mentions the possibility that Fabri might have been responsible for the emendation of Tapissier's Credo, but convincingly dismisses this in favour of the hypothesis of scribal responsibility (Palmer, ‘Squaring the Triangle’, 502). In Apt, Tapissier's Credo is paired with a Gloria by Baude Cordier (fols. 26v–27r).

22 BU, no. 21, fols. 11v–12r/pp. 22f.; Q15, no. 42, fols. R45v–47/A46v–48r.

23 It should be noted that the BU reading is a2 (C–T) as opposed to Q15, which is a3 (C–T–Ct).

24 See Cox, Bobby Wayne, ‘The Motets of MS Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Q 15’, Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University (1977), 1:142f.Google Scholar, and Westerhaus, Andrew, ‘A Lexicon of Contratenor Behaviour: Case Studies of Equal-Cantus Italian Motets from the MS Bologna Q.15’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 18 (2009), 113–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Although the Q15 scribe was an interventionist in many cases, we ought not to assume in every case that an alternate Q15 reading is the result of his activity. Claims that the Q15 scribe had a ‘penchant for extending … closing Amens’ (Palmer, ‘Squaring the Triangle’, 506–7) may need to be re-assessed, as they rest on the assumption that shorter Amen settings were the norm.

26 Fallows has noted on the basis of a number of corrected ascriptions in Ox that its scribe had at his disposal a variety of exemplars and that a new acquisition might lead him to correct or emend a previous ascription (facsimile of Ox, ed. Fallows, 2–3). Bent has argued that the scribe of Q15 likewise had access to multiple exemplars, although not necessarily all at the same time, and that he would go so far as to re-copy entire pieces in order to add a Contratenor. See, for example, Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:164 and 181.

27 This Gloria is unique to Q15 (no. 4, fols. R2v–4/A4v–6). See Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:164.

28 Bent, Margaret, ‘Ciconia's Dedicatee, Bologna Q15, Brassart, and the Council of Basel’, in Trento, Manoscritti di Polifonia nel Quattrocento Europeo: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio 18–19 Ottobre 2002, ed. Gozzi, Marco (Trent, 2004), 3556Google Scholar.

29 This lone case (PMFC 24, no. 4) is found in the Polish sources W8054, fols. 9v–11r, and W378. fols. 202v–204r, whose scribes do not seem to have had the obsessive streak of the Q15 scribe, and who did not necessarily have access to the most complete exemplars.

30 See Bent, and Hallmark, 's critical commentary in PMFC 24:201, where they note that ‘the inessential [Contratenor] creates some problemsGoogle Scholar. For more on the role of the Contratenor, see Bent, Margaret, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’, in L'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento VI, ed. Cattin, Giulio (Certaldo, 1992), 85125Google Scholar, and Westerhaus, ‘A Lexicon of Contratenor Behaviour’, passim.

31 This scenario corresponds to that posited by Bent and Hallmark in their critical commentary to the edition (PMFC 24:201). Noting the unusual layout of the second opening in Q15, they propose that ‘some anomaly of the exemplar is preserved, perhaps indicating that the [Contratenor] was written before the long Amen.’

32 The same is true for the first half of the piece; the Contratenor is squeezed in on fol. 5r, below Cantus II.

33 Tr921, no. 1367, fols. 5v–8r; Q15, no. 121, fols. R132v–134r/A155v–157r; Ox, no. 2, fols. 2v–4r); Ca11, no. 19, fols. 35r–38r.

34 Palmer erroneously implies that Tr92 and Ox present concordant readings of the Amen (Palmer, ‘Squaring the Triangle’, 508). Actually, the Tr92 reading is unique, as is correctly noted by Kirkman and Weller in ‘Binchois's Texts’, 569.

35 See note 19 above.

36 Kirkman and Weller, ‘Binchois's Texts’, 569.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Tr921, fols. 7v–8r.

40 Blackburn, Bonnie, ‘The Dispute about Harmony ca. 1500 and the Creation of a New Style’, in Théorie et analyse musicales (1450–1650), ed. Ceulemans, Anne-Emmanuelle (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2001), 137Google Scholar. Blackburn notes thirty instances of fermata Amen settings (ibid., 18). See also Warren, Charles, ‘Punctus Organi and Cantus Coronatus in the Music of Dufay’, in Dufay Quincentenary Conference, ed. Atlas, Allan (Brooklyn, 1976), 128–43Google Scholar. On earlier instances of fermata passages, see Bent, Margaret, ‘The Harmony of the Machaut Mass’, in Machaut's Music: New Interpretations, ed. Leach, Elizabeth Eva (Woodbridge and Rochester, 2003), 7594Google Scholar.

41 Blackburn, ‘The Dispute about Harmony’, 16–19. Whether or not these chordal Amen settings reflect connections to improvisatory practices remains an open question. Blackburn notes only a single instance where it is certain that the fermatas acted as cues for ornamentation along the lines of cantus coronatus, and argues that ‘in most cases they probably have the meaning … of holding the note somewhat longer than written’ (17). I am inclined to think that fermatas in Amen sections indicate relative freedom of performance (with the maintenance of approximate proportions as voices move simultaneously from sonority to sonority) rather than a signal to put on the brakes. I base this idea of moderate flexibility on the fact that on the rare occasions when Gloria or Credo incipits are provided, they are usually notated in the same fashion as long homophonic Amen settings: mensurally, with fermatas over each note (see, for example, Ca11, fol. 38v). This does not rule out the possibility that the fermatas signal moments of guided improvisation, something akin to embellished falsobordoni, and that composers chose to write out all the voices as a way of introducing a degree of harmonic control over an automatic practice.

42 Ibid., 25–8.

43 The Gloria is transmitted in the following sources: Ca6, no. 17, fols. 31v–33r; Ca11, no. 11, fols. 14r–15r; Q15, no. 157, fols. R171v–178r/A193v–194r; Tr871, no. 10, fols. 15v–16v; Tr88, no. 487, fols. 384v–386r.

44 BU, no. 6, fols. 2v–3r/pp. 4–5; Ox, no. 133, fols. 64r–64v; Q15, no. 139, fols. R150v–151r/A173v–174r. It was formerly referred to as Verbum incarnatum. See Bent, Bologna Q15, 194–5, citing the findings of Strohm, Reinhard, The Rise of European Music 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), 177Google Scholar; and idem, ‘Einheit und Funktion früher Messzyklen’, in Festschrift Rudolf Bockholdt zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Dubowy, Norbert and Meyer-Eller, Sören (Pfaffenhofen, 1990), 141–60Google Scholar.

45 BU, no. 38, fols. 24v–26r/pp. 48–51; Q15, no. 91, fols. R112bisv–114r/A115v–117r. Widaman, Jean, ‘The Mass Ordinary Settings of Arnold de Lantins: a Case Study in the Transmission of Early Fifteenth-Century Music’, Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University (1988), 191–5Google Scholar. The Arnold de Lantins Mass pair is a rare case of a continuous figural Amen being altered.

46 Widaman (ibid., 191) also notes that in BU the final octave Contratenor cadences are replaced in both movements with old-fashioned double-leading-tone cadences.

47 Ibid., 195.

48 BU, no. 37, fols. 23v–24r/pp. 46–47; Q15, no. 90, R111bisv–112bisr/A114v–115r.

49 BU, p. 47.

50 Ibid.

51 Q15, no. 71, fol. R92r/A93r; Tr87, fol. 53v.

52 Q15, no. 27, fols. R26v–28r/A28v–30r.

53 Bent, Margaret, ‘Divisi and a versi in Early Fifteenth-Century Mass Movements’, in Antonio Zacara da Teramo e il suo tempo, ed. Zimei, Francesco (Lucca, 2004), 99, 105 and 108Google Scholar.

54 That this constitutes a single Amen section rather than two alternatives is indicated by the placement of an imperfect sonority (m3) requiring resolution at the end of the a2 section, and is supported by the absence of any demarcation between the a2 and a4 sections in the manuscript.

55 Another example of a4 scoring in an a versi piece occurs in Hymbert de Salinis's Salve Regina (Q15, no. 232, fols. R236v–237r/A265v–266r). For a list of all such instances see Bent, ‘Divisi and a versi’, 105 and 114.

56 Q15, no. 80, fols. R101v–103r/A102v–104r.

57 Formerly R176v–177r; now A1v–2r. On the complicated provenance of the earlier reading, see Bent's critical commentary in Bologna Q15, 1:164.

58 Q15, no. 83, fols. R106v–107r/A107v–108r; BU, no. 16, fols. 8v–9r/pp. 16–17; MuEm, no. 59 [69], fols. 35v–36r. Cattin and Facchin's transcription of this piece in PMFC 23a:184–9 is preferable to Reaney's (CMM 11/2, 7–12) in providing both the alternate BU Amen and the alternate BU Contratenor.

59 BU, no. 16, fols. 8v–9r/pp. 16–17.

60 PMFC 23b, ed. Cattin and Facchin, 483.

61 On the connections between the ballade Resvelliés vous and the Mass, see Fallows, David, Dufay (London, 1982), 165–8 and 296 n2Google Scholar. Fallows (ibid.) notes that ‘Anthony Pryer reached the same conclusion independently’.

62 Ao, no. 34, fols. 32v–33r; Ao, no. 61, fols. 66v–68r; Q15, no. 10, R9v–11r/A11v–13r. The Trent sources transmit this Gloria, but all lack Qui sedes onwards, suggesting that the scribe was working from an incomplete exemplar. See Tr90, no. 931, fols. 165v–166r, Tr92, no. 1482, fols. 125v–126r; Tr93, no. 1741, fols. 197v–198r.

63 Ven, fols. 3v–5r. Ven provides only the Cantus and Tenor parts, where other sources provide Cantus, Tenor and Contratenor.

64 Gloria: Q15, no. 33, fols. R33v–35r/A35v–37r; Ca6, no. 4, fols. 2v–5r; Ca11, no. 8, fols. 6v–8v. Credo: Q15, no. 34, fols. R35v–38r/A37v–40r; BU, no. 40, fols. 26v–28r/pp. 52–55; Ca6, no. 6, fols. 5v–10r; Ca11, no. 16, fols. 23r–27r.

65 In both Amen sections, the Contratenor was probably part of the original conception: in each, there is room left for the Contratenor to have its own complete statement of the troped phrase. In the Gloria and Credo, this occurs in the ‘question-answer’ pairs I–II, Ct–T. In the Credo, they are heard from highest to lowest (I–II–Ct–T). Whether or not they are grammatically essential is harder to determine, however. There are no glaring examples in either movement or either Amen in which the Tenor sounds a simultaneous fourth with an upper voice, such that the Contratenor has to step in to correct it. In the Credo, however, it does do this briefly in m. 108 (Credo proper) and m. 171 (Amen). Additionally, Contratenors are stably transmitted: the Gloria Contratenor occurs in all sources (Q15, Ao, Ca6, Ca11) except MuEm, whose readings are generally less reliable than others, while the Credo Contratenor is found in all sources (Ao, BU, Ca6, Ca11). It should be noted that MuEm also omits the figural Amen, transmitting only the short, homophonic Amen.

66 Bent, following Alejandro Planchart, observes that this is ‘a common phrase most often found in the Peregrinus plays’. See Planchart, , Guillaume Du Fay (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar, cited in Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:171.

67 Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:171. Kirkman points out that the Superius gives ‘asoté’ rather than ‘monté’. See Kirkman, , The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass: Medieval Context to Modern Revival (Cambridge, 2010), 272, n. 13Google Scholar.

68 CMM 1/4, ed. Besseler, iii.

69 Prizer, William, ‘The Frottola and the Unwritten Tradition’, Studi musicali, 15 (1986), 337, at 21Google Scholar. Noting the awkward fit of music and text in the barzelletta, Prizer suggests that Capriola ‘may … have been intending simply a joking reference to the text without quoting the tune at all’.

70 The placement of the vernacular words under just the last statement of the melody would seem also to support this idea of the vernacular text as being solely a marker of the melody's origin. Kirkman, citing Prizer's findings, states that ‘the Italian song is clearly one of those vestiges of popular traditions that from time to time pierce the surface of written Italian “art” music’. See Kirkman, The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass, 314, n. 24.

71 CMM 1/4, ed. Besseler, iii. See also note 66, above.

72 Ibid., iv.

73 In some sources, rubrics dividing the text up between ‘Angeli’ and ‘Maria’ suggest that the prose was dramatised. See, for example, the ludus paschalis from the Lichtenthal Codex (lost), a Cistercian source from Lichtenthal bei Baden-Baden, transcribed in Lipphardt, Walther, Lateinische Osterfeiern und Osterspiele (Berlin, 1976), 5:1720Google Scholar. See also the discussion in Donovan, Richard, The Liturgical Drama in Medieval Spain (Toronto, 1958), 104–7Google Scholar, where he connects the prose to an Easter ‘representatio’ in Gerona.

74 See Bent, Bologna Q15, 1:171.

75 Blackburn, ‘A Dispute about Harmony’, 18.

76 This is especially audible (and visible) in the Ca11 reading (no. 11, fols. 14r–15r) of Du Fay's Gloria numbered 157 in Q15 and discussed earlier with reference to its homophonic Amen. The fermata passages are: ‘Jesu Christe / miserere nobis / Tu solus dominus / Jesu Christe / Amen’. Thus a parallel supplication and statement of praise, followed by the customary conclusion to a prayer, ‘Amen’, emerge out of the intricate polyphony.

77 A conductus with the text ‘O Maria, virgo pia / Plena Dei gratia’ is found on fols. a2r–v of Worcester, Cathedral Library, Addition 68 (fragment 29). It is transcribed English Music of the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Sanders, Ernest H., PFMC 14 (Monaco, 1979), 179Google Scholar; Worcester Mediaeval Harmony of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Hughes, Dom Anselm (Nashdom Abbey, 1928), 114fGoogle Scholar.; Dittmer, Luther, The Worcester Fragments: A Catalogue Raisonné and Transcription (Rome, 1957), 180Google Scholar. The fifteenth-century source, Munich, Bavarian State Library, Lat. 19363, also transmits a rhyming text beginning with these lines. The text is transcribed in Analecta Hymnica 32: 155f.

78 See, for instance, the reading of the Du Fay troped Credo in Ca11, fols. 26v–27r.

79 Schlager, ‘Amen’: ‘Die Amen-Wendung [weitet sich] in der Einstimmigkeit und vor allem in der Mehrstimmigkeit auf dem Weg zum MA. in die Neuzeit zu einem selbständigen Formenteil aus, in dem nach den vorausgehenden textabhängigen Melodiegliedern Gesetze der absolut musikalischen Gestaltung werden.’

80 One of the more obvious cases in support of this hypothesis of abbreviation is Ciconia's Gloria Spiritus et Alme (PMFC 24, no. 6), where the homophonic Amen and the final cadence of the figural Amen are identical.

81 For a wide-ranging treatment of the past and present significance of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Mass settings, see Kirkman, Andrew, The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar.

82 For the expression ‘propering the Mass Ordinary’, I draw upon the title of a 2004 graduate seminar, ‘Propering the Ordinary’, given by Anne Walters Robertson at the University of Chicago.

83 Palmer, ‘Squaring the Triangle’, 503.