Description
Book SynopsisThis book presents together a number of path-breaking essays on different aspects of medieval music in France written by Manuel Pedro Ferreira, who is well known for his work on the medieval cantigas and Iberian liturgical sources. The first essay is a tour-de-force of detective work: an odd E-flat in two 16th-century antiphoners leads to the identification of a Gregorian responsory as a Gallican version of a seventh-century Hispanic melody. The second rediscovers a long-forgotten hypothesis concerning the microtonal character of some French 11th-century neumes. In the paper Is it polyphony? an even riskier hypothesis is arrived at: Do the origins of Aquitanian free organum lie on the instrumental accompaniment of newly composed devotional versus? The Cistercian attitude towards polyphonic singing, mirrored in musical sources kept in peripheral nunneries, is the subject of the following essay. The intellectual and sociological nature of the Parisian motet is the central concern of the
Trade Review'... this is all readable, challenging material, hard to find otherwise.' Early Music Review
Table of ContentsContents: The lamentation of Asterix: conclusit vias meas inimicus; The Cluny Gradual: its notation and melodic character; Is it polyphony?; New light on St Bernard's chant reform: Guido of Eu and the earliest Cistercian choirbooks; Early Cistercian polyphony: a newly-discovered source; Mesure et temporalité: vers l'ars nova; L'identité di motet parisien; Compositional calculation in Philippe de Vitry; Dufay in analysis, or - who invented the triad?; Proportions in ancient and medieval music; Indexes.
