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A COURTLY LOVER AND AN EARTHLY KNIGHT TURNED SOLDIERS OF CHRIST IN MACHAUT'S MOTET 5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2005

Yossi Maurey
Yossi Maurey
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The tenor occupies a special role in vernacular motets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: not only does it underpin the melodies of the upper voices contrapuntally, it also provides intellectual and interpretative undergirding for the texts of these pieces. The biblical or liturgical context of a tenor, drawing on well-understood exegetical and literary traditions, often facilitates an allegorical reading of the upper voices, and vice versa. Because of the foundational nature of the tenor within the Ars nova motet in particular, the identification of the exact musico-liturgical sources of this voice, where possible, is of special significance. While the origins of most of Machaut's twenty-one Latin tenors have been identified, the tenor of one work, Motet 5 (Aucune gent/Qui plus aimme/ T. Fiat voluntas tua, hereafter M5), is alleged to have a most unusual source. I offer new observations about the tenor of M5 that emphasise certain compositional procedures congruent with Machaut's practice in writing his motets and may tie together the various secular and sacred references in the piece.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 24 , October 2005 , pp. 169 - 211
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

   Large portions of this paper were written at the Center for Renaissance Studies, the Newberry Library, Chicago, while I was an Annette Kade Fellow in French Studies in the Middle Ages during 2001–2. I am particularly grateful to Professor Paul Gehl, Custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing at the Newberry Library, who read an earlier version; I greatly benefited from his prudent observations. I would also like to thank Professors Margaret Bent, Amnon Linder and Craig Wright, who read this paper in various stages of writing and made several invaluable comments. I also benefited from the comments of colleagues who attended readings of earlier versions of this paper at the meeting of the International Musicological Society in 2002, at a colloquium held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2003, and also at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in November 2003. Finally, I am most grateful to Professor Anne Walters Robertson, who accompanied this paper from its inception, and made critical suggestions throughout its development. The epigraph comes from Richard of St Victor, The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Arc, Book Three of the Trinity, trans. and ed. G. A. Zinn (The Classics of Spirituality; New York and Toronto, 1979), p. 76.