An examination of Obrecht's Latin-texted motet Inter preclarissimas virtutes conducted for the 2005 conference on him in Antwerp found that the Segovia manuscript exhibited errors not attributable to the author and omissions not required by the setting. It therefore seemed appropriate to survey the other Latin texts.

In masses, we are not surprised when words are selectively underlaid, as they are in the Isaac mass at the beginning; but in Josquin's Missa L'homme armé sexti toni there is nearly a full texting, presumably because the source had it. To the scribe's credit be it noted that throughout the early mass section ‘Kyrie eleyson’ and ‘Christe eleyson’ are written with their full complement of es, contrary to (for instance) some Cappella Sistina manuscripts; though later, in Agricola's mass beginning on fol. 135r, we find ‘Leyson’ five times and ‘eleyson’ four.

Still, our man could underlay the mass text in his sleep, and sometimes did: on fol. 57v (Plate 5.1), in the superius of the Credo of Pipelare's first Missa sine nomine – the one shared with Jena 32 – after ‘deum verum de deo vero’ he first wrote ‘genitum non factum’, which is the next phrase of the Niceno- Constantinopolitan Creed, then crossed it out when he discovered that in that voice Pipelare, not fearing any recrudescence of the Arian heresies, had skipped over both this phrase and ‘consubstantialem Patri’ to ‘per quem omnia facta sunt’. Likewise unrevealing are the Salve regina and Magnificat texts that follow the masses; it is original Latin that is significant.

The first piece of this nature is Obrecht's Inter preclarissimas virtutes (excerpt 1), whose transmission is very far from being amongst the most illustrious virtues of this manuscript. Not only are there verbal differences between the voices, but the text in several places needs emendation; Albert Smijers made a good start, on which I have attempted to advance.

The Latin poetry set to music during the Middle Ages and discussed in this chapter may be divided into two main types, metra, based on syllabic quantity, and rhythmi (in the Middle Ages often spelt rithmi or the like), based on accent and syllable count, but from the fourteenth century often on the latter alone. Not regarded are psalms and other texts of like form such as the Te Deum, based on paired phrases of parallel or quasi-parallel but unregulated structure.

The term ‘verse’ will be used throughout as a synonym of ‘line’, not of ‘stanza’, though ‘verse-form’ will be used to accommodate both the measures of single verses and their combinations into stanzas as a single concept. To avoid confusion, only quantitative measures will be called ‘metres’.

It is on verse-forms that primary emphasis will be laid, the better to assist study of the relation, or lack of relation, between words and music. Some literary criticism will be offered, principally of motet texts, since these have been neglected by students of literature and only of late considered by musicologists. (This neglect is not only modern: the state of many texts in our manuscripts indicates that music copyists did not always take much interest in them; sometimes it was already a corrupt text that the composer set.)

Aulus Gellius' theoretical attitude to current spoken usage is clear-cut (Wolanin 1999): it is a degenerate aberration from the pure Latin spoken before Augustan times (13.6.4), corrupted by the ignorant (15.5.1) and to be rejected even when not confined to the common herd (1.22.2). In this judgement there is no ambiguity; it remains only to see how far theory is supported by practice.

However unwilling Gellius may be to speak like the masses of his own day, he has no objection to speaking like the masses of long ago. In Noctes Atticae 17.8 the philosopher L. Calvenus Taurus, having invited his students in Athens to dinner, sends for oil to pour into the pot of Egyptian lentils and diced gourd on which the feast is based; a pert slave-boy accidentally brings an empty jar and, amidst much shaking and grimacing, claims perquam Attice that the oil is frozen: §7 μὴ γελᾶτε, inquit, ἔνι τοὔλαιον· ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἴστε οἵα φρίκη περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον γέγονε τήμερον; κεκρυστάλλωται. Taurus laughingly bids him in Latin to run and fetch some: §8 Verbero, inquit ridens Taurus, nonne is curriculo atque oleum petis?

That the exchange is of Gellius' own concoction is clear enough from the confusion between φρίκη and frigus (Holford-Strevens 2003: 232); we need therefore not worry about the kind of Latin Taurus used, or whether on such an occasion he would have spoken Latin at all. It is far more important to notice the echoes of early drama, in particular comedy.