Understanding Fifteenth-Century Chansonniers

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Notes

¹On this aspect of the layout of words in Cord and its unusual nature at this time, see David Fallows, Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu (ca. 1475): Commentary to the Facsimile (Valencia, 2008), 45.

²See Bernard Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, trans. Betsy Wing (Baltimore, MD, 1999).

³David Fallows, ‘“Trained and Immersed in All Musical Delights”: Towards a New Picture of Busnoys’, Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music, ed. Paula Higgins (Oxford, 1999), 21–50 (pp. 41–2).

⁴David Fallows, ‘Late Survival of the 15th-Century Song Repertory’, Sine musica nulla disciplina …: Studi in onore di Giulio Cattin (Padua, 2006), 213–20 (p. 213).

⁵Fallows dates the entry of Se la face ay pale into Ox213 as c.1435 and regards NYB as perhaps a little earlier; see his ‘Ballades by Dufay, Grenon and Binchois: The Boorman Fragment’, Musikalische Quellen – Quellen zur Musikgeschichte: Festschrift für Martin Staehelin zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ulrich Konrad et al. (Göttingen, 2002), 25–35. On the copying process in Ox213, see especially Hans Schoop, Entstehung und Verwendung der Handschrift Oxford, Canonici misc. 213 (Berne, 1971). The song was also in the second layer (believed to date from after about 1435) of the destroyed Strasbourg Chansonnier, though – according to Coussemaker's transcription (Stras-Br, p. 79) – without text beyond incipit. For full details of the transmission of Se la face ay pale, see David Fallows, The Songs of Guillaume Dufay: Critical Commentary to the Revision of Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, ser. 1, vol. VI (American Institute of Musicology, 1995), 78–82.

⁶For a summary of the relevant copying processes, see Lawrence Earp, ‘Texting in Fifteenth-Century French Chansons: A Look Ahead from the Fourteenth Century’, Early Music, 19 (1991), 194–212.

⁷This at least seems evident in cases where the Niv scribe spaces out musical notes to avoid collisions with text underlaid immediately beforehand to the staff above (e.g. on f. 13^v, fourth stave down).

⁸Theodor Dumitrescu argues that Prioris's authorship, questioned by many on grounds of the song's appearance in sources as early as these, now looks entirely probable in the light of the new biographical information on the composer he presented in his recent article ‘Who Was “Prioris”? A Royal Composer Recovered’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 65 (2012), 5–65.

⁹David Fallows, ‘Texting in the Chansonnier of Jean de Montchenu’, Songs and Musicians in the Fifteenth Century (Aldershot, 1996), X.5.

¹⁰Joshua Rifkin, ‘Scribal Concordances for Some Renaissance Manuscripts in Florentine Libraries’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 305–26 (pp. 318–26). See also Alden, p. 127.

¹¹Joshua Rifkin, ‘Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 29 (1976), 284–96. As Rifkin remarks, Pietrequin may conceivably have taken the chansonnier with him from the French to the Savoyard court, where he worked in 1488–9, and thence to Florence, where he resided intermittently from 1490 to 1493. On composers, scribes and texting, see further Warwick Edwards, ‘Alexander Agricola and Intuitive Syllable Deployment’, Early Music, 34 (2006), 409–26.

¹²Louise Litterick, ‘The Manuscript Royal 20.A.XVI of the British Library’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1976), Chapter 2.

¹³On EscB, see especially Dennis Slavin, ‘On the Origin of Escorial IV.a.24 (EscB)’, Studi musicali, 19 (1990), 260–303. On the aspect of Pav362 presentation noted here, see further Henrietta Schavran, ‘The Manuscript Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, Codice Aldini 362’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1978), i, 28. Schavran says that the scribe ‘generally attempted to place a lengthy text phrase as close as possible to the musical phrase to which it should be sung, even if this meant squeezing the words together and bringing them out into the right-hand margin’, as, for example, in Le serviteur (no. 23, on f. 40^v). On the various scribes in Col, francophone and otherwise, see Joshua Rifkin's detailed analysis in ‘Busnoys and Italy: The Evidence of Two Songs’, Antoine Busnoys, ed. Higgins, 505–71.

¹⁴David Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999), 38.

¹⁵See further on Pix, Sean Gallagher, ‘The Berlin Chansonnier and French Song in Florence, 1450–1490: A New Dating and its Implications’, Journal of Musicology, 24 (2007), 339–64, and ‘Caron and Florence: A New Ascription and the Copying of the Pixérécourt Chansonnier’, ‘Recevez ce mien petit labeur’: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Ignace Bossuyt (Leuven, 2008), 83–92.

¹⁶See Gallagher, ‘The Berlin Chansonnier’, 349–51.

¹⁷Stanley Boorman, ‘Did Petrucci's Concern for Accuracy Include Any Concern with Performance Issues?’, Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis, 25 (2001), 23–37 (p. 37). See also James Haar, ‘Petrucci as Bookman’, Venezia 1501: Petrucci e la stampa musicale: Atti del convegno internazionale Venezia 10–13 ottobre 2001, ed. Giulio Cattin and Patrizia Dalla Vecchia (Venice, 2005), 155–74.

¹⁸See Warwick Edwards, ‘Agricola's Songs Without Words: The Sources and the Performing Traditions’, Alexander Agricola: Musik zwischen Vokalität und Instrumentalismus, ed. Nicole Schwindt, Trossinger Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 6 (Kassel, 2006), 83–121 (pp. 93–4); also at <http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/4576>.

¹⁹ See Warwick Edwards, ‘Agricola's Songs Without Words: The Sources and the Performing Traditions’, Alexander Agricola: Musik zwischen Vokalität und Instrumentalismus, 83–4 and 96–7, with transcription and English translation of the publication's preface at pp. 120–1.

²⁰ See Warwick Edwards, ‘Agricola's Songs Without Words: The Sources and the Performing Traditions’, Alexander Agricola: Musik zwischen Vokalität und Instrumentalismus., esp. pp. 88–94.

²¹David Fallows, ‘French as a Courtly Language in Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Musical Evidence’, Renaissance Studies, 3 (1989), 429–41 (p. 434), repr. in Fallows, Songs and Musicians, VI.

²²See James Haar, Città del Vaticano MS Urbinas Latinus 1411 (Lucca, 2006), 18.

²³Warwick Edwards, ‘Word Setting in a Perfect Musical World: The Case of Obrecht's Motets’, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 3 (2011), 52–75, esp. pp. 52–3, and ‘Text Treatment in Motets around 1500: The Humanistic Fallacy’, The Motet around 1500: On the Relationship of Imitation and Text Treatment?, ed. Thomas Schmidt-Beste (Turnhout, 2012), 113–38, esp. pp. 116–17.

²⁴As I acknowledge in ‘Text Treatment in Motets around 1500’, 116, my thinking on this aspect of the topic is influenced particularly by Reinhard Strohm, ‘Music, Humanism, and the Idea of a “Rebirth” of the Arts’, Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn, New Oxford History of Music, 3/i (Oxford, 2001), 346–405, esp. pp. 353–5.

²⁵Edwards, ‘Text Treatment in Motets around 1500’, passim.

²⁶Strohm, ‘Music, Humanism, and the Idea of a “Rebirth” of the Arts’, 346–7, 395–9.

²⁷The chansonnier P12744 is exceptional in this regard: it is a collection of poems, each supplemented by a copy of its melody underlaid with a duplicate of the first stanza.

^aFacsimiles of unica in Peter Reidemeister, Die Chanson-Handschrift 78 C 28 des Berliner Kupferstichkabinetts (Munich, 1973).

^b<http://www.bibliotecamusica.it/cmbm/viewschedatwbca.asp?path=%2Fcmbm%2Fimages%2Fripro%2Fgaspari%2F_Q%2FQ016%2F> (accessed 14 March 2013).

^cSee Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscripts Sevilla 5-I-43 and Paris N. A. Fr. 4379 (Pt. I), ed. Dragan Plamenac (Brooklyn, NY, 1962).

^d<http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/702/eng> (accessed 14 March 2013).

^eFacsimile (Valencia, 2008).

^fSee Dijon, Bibliothèque publique, manuscrit 517, facsimile, ed. Dragan Plamenac (Brooklyn, NY, [1971?]).

^gSee Le jardin de plaisance et fleur de rethorique, facsimile of first edn in Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris, 1910).

^h<http://wwwrarebookroom.org/Control/unkthe/index.html?page=1> (accessed 14 March 2013).

ⁱSee Renaissance Music in Facsimile, 10, ed. Howard Mayer Brown (New York, 1987).

^jSee The Mellon Chansonnier, ed. Leeman L. Perkins and Howard Garey, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT, 1979); <http://www.undoulxregard.org/mellon/mellon.html> (accessed 14 March 2013).

^kSee Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée, facsimile, ed. Paula Higgins (Geneva, 1984).

^lFacsimile in David Fallows, ‘Ballades by Dufay, Grenon and Binchois’ (see note 5 above).

^mSee Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Misc. 213, facsimile, ed. David Fallows (Chicago, IL, 1995); <http://www.diamm.ac.uk/jsp/Descriptions?op=SOURCE&sourceKey=716> (accessed 14 March 2013).

ⁿSee Renaissance Music in Facsimile, 16, ed. Frank A. D'Accone (New York, 1986).

^o<http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9007335q/f6.image.r=Pixerecourt.langEN> (accessed 14 March 2013).

^pSee A Ferrarese Chansonnier: Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense 2856: ‘Canzoniere di Isabella d'Este’, facsimile, ed. Lewis Lockwood (Lucca, 2002); <http://opac/casanatense.it/Record.htm?idlist=&record=19917287124917354699> (accessed 14 March 2013).

^qFacsimile, ed. Adalbert Roth (Lucca, 2006).

^rSee Das Liederbuch des Dr. Hartmann Schedel, facsimile, Das Erbe deutscher Musik, 84 (Kassel, 1978).

^sFacsimile of Brussels manuscript in Le manuscrit musical M 222 C 22 de la Bibliothèque de Strasbourg XVe siècle, ed. Albert Vander Linden (Brussels, [c.1975]). Lorenz Welker points out that the call number 222.C.22 in common use today is in fact a conflation of two distinct numbers in use before fire consumed the MS in 1870, and gives reasons for preferring that cited here. See his ‘Dufay Songs in German Manuscripts’, Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles, and Contexts, ed. John Kmetz (Cambridge, 1994), 3–26 (p. 4n.).

^t<http://diglib.hab.de/wdb.php?dir=mss/287-extrav> (accessed 14 March 2013).