Articulating Ars Subtilior Song (2003 Leech-Wilkinson).pdf

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l The three-voice ballade Se Galaas by Jo. Cunelier [Johannes Cuvelier] in the ChantiUy Codex, a portion of which is

transcribed in score as ex.11 below (ChantiUy, Bibliotheque de Mus6e Conde, Ms.564, f.38/-, by permission)

EARLY MUSIC

FEBRUARY 2003

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ARS SUBTILIOR IN PERFORMANCE

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson

Articulating Ars Subtilior song

Sounddips to accompany this article may be found at the Early music website:

http://www.em.oupjournals.org

HERE has been very little research on the way

medieval musicians shaped phrases in perfor-

mance, which is perhaps not surprising, for you

might think there could hardly be any evidence.

About 20 years ago Margaret Hasselman and David

McGown argued that something might be learnt

about woodwind articulation from onomatopoeia in

the texts of 14th-century chaces and so-called realis-

tic virelais: the 'po po po\ 'ton tititon tititon', and

other phrases that only medieval cornemusists can

ever have said without getting their tongues twisted. 1

(Try singing 'ture lure ture lure' in the shower.) But

there seems to have been little other discussion of the

subject in modern times. Yet there is actually some

evidence, and it has been staring us in the face ever

since Friedrich Ludwig transcribed the complete

repertory 100 years ago. 2 The evidence comes in

minim rests (quaver rests in most modern transcrip-

tions). Exx.i and 2 show cases from Machaut's two-

voice songs, Quant j'ay Vespart (rondeau 5, sound-

clip 1) and Pour ce que tons mes charts (ballade 12,

sounddip 2). Exx.3 and 4 show extracts from

Machaut's three- or four-voice songs, the ballade II

m'est avis (ballade 22, sounddip 3) 3 and—perhaps

the example most often heard—the rondeau Rose, lis

(rondeau 10, sounddip 4). 4 These minim rests come

into none of the common categories of rests: they are

not phrase-ends; they do not start a syncopation;

and they are not breathing points—they are too

short for a breath at any plausible speed, and they

come at places near the beginning of a phrase where

no singer would need a breath anyway. The melodic

distance between the pitches split by the minim rest

is small, often one step, because they are placed

within a continuing melodic phrase; in these early

examples the note abbreviated is always on the beat,

so that the shortness of the note contributes to its

stress. They are points of emphasis: in other words,

they are written-in articulation.

Machaut is not the only composer who does this.

In fact, there are dozens of examples scattered

throughout the repertories of late 14th- and early

15th-century song. Ex.5 shows an extract from the

anonymous (in view of its style, perhaps Anthonello

da Caserta's) Langue puens. The most interesting

note, from our point of view, is the cantus b: it is the

penultimate note of the local phrase, leading imme-

diately into its completion, and yet is still cut short

by a minim rest There is no necessity for this, unless

as articulation adding emphasis to the arrival on a.

Looking back, the/seems cut-off in a similar way,

shaping off the end of the previous subphrase, and

adding stress to the opening of the next on c'. In

this case the syllables of 'perillieuse' are increasingly

strongly accented as the phrase proceeds (sounddip

5). Yet in ex.6, from the anonymous Dame sans per,

text has no role at all; the rests are there to articulate

melodic units in the sequence. Thus there seems

no reason to see this kind of articulation as first

and foremost about text emphasis; rather, it points

up patterns of melody and directed harmony,

emphasizing them audibly in performance, encour-

aging us to hear the long melodic phrases of later

14th-century song as sequences of smaller units, each

very clearly delineated (sounddip 6). Ex.7, a phrase

from Franriscus's Phiton, shows how a rest which

may have been placed in order to transfer stress onto

a note (the e in beat 44 and then, by sequence, the c'

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson is Reader in Historical Musicology at King's College, London.

EARLY MUSIC

FEBRUARY 2003 7

Ex.i Guillaume de Machaut, Quant j'ay Vcspart (rondeau 5), semibreves 1-11 (after Vg [private collection, USA], f.3i7r)

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Ex.2 Guillaume de Machaut, Pour ce que tous mes chans (ballade 12), semibreves 91-116 (after Vg, f.3O2r)

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Ex.3 Guillaume de Machaut, /Z m'ert avis (ballade 22), semibreves 1-13 (after Vg, ff.3O7v-8r)

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Ex.4 Guillaume de Machaut, Rose, lis, printemps, verdure (rondeau io), semibreves 34—54 (after Paris, Bibliotheque

Nationale, f.fr. 1584, f.478r). The version on the soundclip omits the triplum (topmost voice).

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8 EARLY MUSIC

FEBRUARY 2003

Ex.5 Anon., Languepuens envenimee, semibreves 55-63 (after Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS.OLM.5,24, f. i4r)

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Ex.6 Anon., Dame sans per, semibreves 1-13 (after Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, n.a.fr. 6771, f.68r)

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Ex.7 Franciscus, Phiton, Phiton, semibreves 34-49 (after ChantiUy, Bibliotheque de Muse^ Cond6, Ms.564, f.2ov; Paris,

Bibliotheque Nationale, n.a.fr.6771, £s6r)

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Ex.8 Egidius, i?ojes et lis, semibreves 63-73 (after Chantilly, Bibliotheque de Mus£e Conde\ Ms.564, f.22r)

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EARLY MUSIC

FEBRUARY 2003

in beat 47—in other words to produce an accented

syncopation) also forces strongly defined articu-

lation (soundclip 7). Again, whatever the reason for

inserting the rest, the results include a strongly

articulated performance style (and this is true

whichever reading of the cantus one prefers in beats

44-5)-

Ex.8 is a passage from Egjdius's Roses et Us. The

first cantus rest may have been put there simply to

enforce an articulation between 'en' and 'En', which

is necessary for grammatical sense, but we must

assume that the resulting isolated minim was felt to

be stylistically appropriate. The very crisp articula-

tion that it requires, if it is to work, is inevitably

produced again two beats later, making a sequence

with it (soundclip 8). In this example we see lower

voices that, until about 20 years ago, anyone would

have assumed were instrumental. But whatever one

might read into the disjunct lines and fast-repeating

notes, the short rests are clearly not uniquely instru-

mental features, since they occur most often in

cantus parts. 5 That is not to say, however, that

instrumental articulation had no part in their

becoming a normal feature of song style. Whether

or not instruments took part in medieval perfor-

mances of such pieces, it is at least possible that the

kinds of woodwind articulations to which Hassel-

man and McGown drew attention, or other kinds of

instrumental practices now entirely lost, could have

had an impact on singing. We have seen in recent

times how reproduction medieval instruments

encouraged the development of a singing style more

precise in pitch, timing and articulation than was

common before. One need only compare perfor-

mances by Safford Cape's Pro Musica Antiqua and

Noah Greenberg's New York Pro Musica (the latter

using a wider range of 'medieval' instruments), not

to mention Michael Morrow's Musica Reservata, to

see how one kind of sound encouraged another.

The same thing happened again later, when

Baroque instruments began to be reused; and we

can see a trend in the opposite direction, towards

warmer and more overtly expressive instrumental

and singing styles, right now. Of course, we can

know nothing of this relationship in the Middle

Ages, but it seems reasonable to suppose that

instrumental and vocal styles were audibly coherent

to a significant degree, even though we can only

guess what that might mean in practice.

Consequently it is not surprising to find these

kinds of articulations notated in instrumental music

from this same period. There are several examples in

the Faenza Codex's instrumental Mass movements, 6

implying articulations that would hardly have been

worth writing in unless they made a difference in

performance—perhaps a small indication that the

instrument(s) for which the Faenza Mass music was

intended, whatever they were, were not plucked. 7 In

the Faenza song elaborations, articulation rests in

the originals tend to get filled in with melodic deco-

ration, though that could just represent a different

tradition of arrangement.' In the end we can only

guess whether or not instrumental practices had any

influence on vocal articulation, or vice versa. What is

more interesting is that minim-rest articulations are

found in both, and so are apparently features of gen-

eral performance style in this period. Later experi-

ence, available to us from a century of recording,

tells us that performance styles change over time,

just as composition styles do, and so we should not

expect a similar style of articulation to have been

characteristic of much earlier, nor of much later

performance practices. For what it may be worth,

during the 20th century styles took about 40 years

to change radically. In the 14th century, of course,

the pace may have been quite different, but we

can be fairly confident that performance styles

for Ars Subtilior song were not characteristic of,

say, 13th-century motets, and did not continue

indefinitely. 9

As must now be obvious, short articulation rests

are not just features of performance style imposed

upon existing rhythmic and melodic practices in

composition. Because polyphonic performance in

this period, so far as we know, tends to be perfor-

mance of fairly recent compositions, performance

style and composition style inevitably run in parallel.

Consequently, a boundary between articulation

rests—notated performance practice—and 'compo-

sitional' rests—essential elements in the melodic

structure—would be impossible to draw and, for a

14th-century musician, would probably have been

meaningless. Taking a very narrow definition of an

articulation rest, as I did at the beginning, excluding

10 EARLY MUSIC

FEBRUARY 2003

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