Calliope CAL 9360
2004
Calliope CAL 9360
2004
Multiple voices, multiple texts
Polyphony with separately texted voices
The Montpellier Manuscript (Montpellier, Faculté de
Médecine, H196 [Mo]) is one of the major sources of
thirteenth-century French polyphonic music. Its eight fascicles, the
work of several different scribes, contain over 330 secular or
religious compositions, illustrating the evolution of styles and genres
over that period, from the organum and conductus of the Notre Dame
School to late motets, some of them attributed to Petrus de Cruce.
Fascicles I-VI, copied around 1270, represent the 'old corpus', while
fascicles VII and VIII, copied at the very end of the thirteenth
century (VII) and in the very early years of the fourteenth century
(VIII), contain more recent pieces. In the fascicles the layout of the
voices on the folios varies, as does the classification of the pieces,
chiefly according to the number of voices and the language used for the
text. Thus fascicle II contains only 4-voice French motets, fascicle V
only 3-voice French motets, fascicle VI only 2-voice French motets.
Fascicle IV is devoted entirely to 3-voice Latin motets, and fascicle
III contains ten or so motets in which the 2 upper voices sing the one
in Latin, the other in French (Mo 45*). As a consequence of the
chronological extension of the repertoire, the evolution of the
rhythmic notation is very noticeable and shows up other differences:
some compositions are dependent on the system of rhythmic modes, but
others move away from that and gradually adopt a system giving more
precise indications of the rhythmic values of the notes. Finally, the
character of the texts and their relationship within each composition
are very variable: religious themes are present (prayers tour songs in
praise of the Virgin Mary [Mo 322], meditations on death [Mo
35], and so on) but the subject is most often courtly love, with
pieces that are more or less personal in tone, sometimes popular,
sometimes more refined in register, and with moods alternating between
joy and sadness; occasionally the tone is moralistic, as in Mo 328
or the duplum of Mo 274. In these pieces the voices may
be in harmony or, on the contrary, in opposition, and some of the
motets have been grafted onto probably pre-existing refrains. The
pieces presented on this recording illustrate the diversity of the
pieces contained in the Montpellier Manuscript, not only in their music
but also in their texts.
The only compositions included here that do not strictly speaking
belong to the motet genre are the conductus Benedicamus Domino (Mo
4) and a hocket on the tenor portare (Mo 5). ln
neither case do the upper voices use a text that is distinct from that
of the tenor, reduced to one or two words. The conductus represented
here is quite simple: it is a short polyphonic piece, in which the two
upper voices (duplum and triplum) embellish a tenor
melody in regular notes. This short verse, to which the usual response
was the Deo gratias, was used at the end of Office and sometimes Mass.
Hocket ('hiccough') is a device whereby rests were inserted into the
upper vocal parts, often causing a play of echo effects. Sometimes
chopped into very short values, the notes of the triplum thus
alternate with those of the duplum, the latter taking advantage
of the off-beats: the result is a sort of complex, but essentially
rhythmic (as opposed to melodic) ornamentation. This composition is in
fact a type of clausula, i.e. in medieval organum, a rhythmic
polyphonic segment, embellishing a particular word in the plainchant.
Always based on a plainchant tenor, a clausula rarely ornaments
more than one word, and sometimes just one syllable, but several
different clausulas could be invented on the same tenor,
probably with the purpose of being able to renew the polyphonic
insertions within a chant or a larger-scale composition.
The motet, a major genre of the thirteenth century that is particularly
well represented in the Montpellier Manuscript, came into being with
the application of poetic words to the vocalises of the clausula,
whence the origin of the term. The duplum thus came to be known
as motetus, and a text, generally different from that of the motetus,
was also attributed to the triplum; more rarely one finds a
fourth voice (as in Mo 22, 27 and 35 on this
recording). A motet is therefore often a polytextual genre based on a
borrowed tenor, and that was its principal definition until the end of
the fourteenth century. Some motets, however, are for two voices, with
a single text sung over the tenor; it is quite possible that texts were
sometimes added later to create polytextual motets. The same polyphony
may also give rise to contrafacta: it may have carried Latin
texts first of all, then have appeared in another source with a single
French text, and finally have been copied elsewhere with two vernacular
texts. Mo 22, for example, which comprises three texts (with a quadruplum
part), appears in a 4-voice version only in the Montpellier Manuscript,
where it also appears without the triplum, but in two other
sources it is presented in two versions for 2 voices: twice with the
motetus and the tenor and once with the triplum and the tenor. In some
pieces on this recording, the voices come in one after the other, thus
enabling us to listen more carefully to the layering of the polyphony,
but ills impossible to tell whether these compositions were performed
in that way in former times.
The fundamental voice-part of a polyphonic composition, the tenor is
often identified by a word that is not intended to be sung. Its melody,
often repeated several times, unfolds in simpler rhythmic values than
the upper voices, equal long notes or simple, repetitive formulas
devised according to the rhythmic modes. There is no indication on any
of the staves of instrumental use, but that does not exclude the
possibility of using instruments, particularly for the tenor.
Most tenors come from Gregorian chant but occasionally motets are based
on secular melodies or even folk tunes. Examples of this are the motet A
Paris / On parole (Mo 319), based on Frese nouvelle
(a sort of 'cri de Paris'), and A Cambrai (Mo 49), the
words of which are quite rude. A secular tenor, He mi enfant,
is also used as the basis for Mo 325, Prenez i garde / S'on
me regarde, based on the refrain of a rondeau by Guillaume
d'Amiens. The motet Lonc tans a / Amis / Dame que je n'os noumer
(Mo 337) is very unusual: the tenor is in fact a chanson, with a
text as long as those of the two upper voices. The latter take
the form of a dialogue between the lover and his lady, while in the
tenor the lover is talking to himself, echoing the sufferings described
by the triplum. This unusual device of a song with three texts
prefigures Machaut's ballad De triste cuer / Quant vrai amant /
Certes je di (ballad no. 29), written about half a century later.
Some Gregorian tenors were used more than others as the fundamental
voice-part for polyphonic compositions. The melisma on the words in
seculum was used very often: it is heard in Mo 138 and
about thirty others in the Montpellier Manuscript. This tenor is a
fragment of the verse from the Easter gradual Haec dies. The
opening words of the latter also serve as tenor for several motets (Mo
45 and 184).
The art of the motet is also the art of combining texts. For example,
some compositions include pre-existing refrains (poetic and sometimes
musical elements), as in Mo 22, 161, 228, 236
and 265. Mo 228 is an example of a 'grafted' motet: the
invented text of the motetus is set between the two lines of a
refrain; Mo 161 uses the same technique for the motetus
but also quotes the refrain in the triplum at the beginning,
the two lines being sung in chiasmus with the motetus voice.
Texts sung simultaneously may sometimes be redundant, but they may also
complete each other, like the three meditations on death of Mo 35.
Elsewhere the texts present contradictory discourses, or at least ones
expressing opposite feelings, as in Mo 22, in which the
dialogue between a shepherd and a gentleman shows the difference
between ordinary and courtly love, or in Mo 265, where the
girl's joy is contrasted with the lovers unhappiness.
Texts were sometimes combined to give the appearance of an academic
debate, showing that this repertoire was found among cultivated
clerics, but who also knew how to integrate elements from diverse
musical and poetic traditions, from trouvère songs, for
example, or even a more popular repertoire.
Gilles Dulong
Translation: Maly Pardoe
* The abbreviation Mo followed by a number indicates the position of
each piece in Me Montpellier Manuscript.