Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - The Ars Nova in France
  - Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century
The Ars Nova in France
  1. Historical Background

    1. Dual papacy—one pope in Rome and one in Avignon (France)—for most of the fourteenth century led to criticism of the church.

    2. Increasing secularization led to separation of church and state, and to more vernacular literature and secular music.

  2. Ars Nova (new art)

    1. Treatises from 1322 to 1323 introduced the term ars nova and named Philip de Vitry (1291–1361) as its inventor.

    2. Older styles were still defended by conservatives who criticized the new ways (see Jacques de Liège vignette in CHWM).

  3. Early Ars Nova Music

    1. Roman de Fauvel
      1. Manuscript from ca. 1310–14
      2. Satirical poem with interpolated musical works
      3. Its motet texts are critical of church and political figures (see CHWM p. 68).

    2. De Vitry's motets
      1. At least five of the Roman de Fauvel motets are probably by De Vitry.
      2. De Vitry influenced composers and theorists.

    3. Isorhythmic motets
      1. Motet in which tenor uses repeating melody (color) and a repeating rhythm (talea)
        1. Color and talea sometimes coincide, sometimes overlap.
        2. Upper voices sometimes also have repetitions, but only the tenor needs to be organized this way for a motet to be considered isorhythmic.

  4. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300–1377)

    1. Biographical background
      1. Born in northern France
      2. Religious education; became a cleric, took holy orders
      3. Worked as a secretary for King John of Bohemia
      4. At end of his life was a canon at Rheims
      5. Famous as a poet

    2. Motets
      1. Twenty-three motets
      2. Some are panisorhythmic (all three voices isorhythmic).
      3. Longer, more complex, more secular than DeVitry's

    3. Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame (Mass of Our Lady)
      1. Composed in the 1360s
      2. Polyphonic setting of the Ordinary portions of the Mass
      3. First example of a Mass Ordinary cycle composed by one person
      4. Isorhythmic movements: Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Ite, missa est
      5. Gloria and Credo are note-against-note (conductus style) with long Amens.
      6. NAWM 21, Agnus Dei
        1. Tenor voice is from chant (Liber usualis, page 61) and is isorhythmic (CHWM, ex. 4.1).
        2. Upper voices are in syncopated rhythms.

    4. Secular songs
      1. Monophonic songs: continuation of trouvère tradition
      2. Fixed forms ( formes fixes). Strophic poems with refrains (see etude, p. 73, in CHWM)
      3. Musical rhymes sometimes occur at the ends of two melodic sections.

    5. Ballade style (or cantilena style)
      1. The top voice has the text; the two lower voices (tenor and contratenor) were instrumental.
      2. Some of Machaut's four-voice ballades have two independently texted voices and are therefore called double ballades.

    6. Rondeau form NAWM 20, Rose, liz
      1. Long melismas on some words ("liz" = lily; "fleur" = flower)
      2. His Ma fin est ma commencement ("My end is my beginning") uses palindrome.

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