Description
Book SynopsisIn the motets of Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, and their contemporaries, tenors have often been characterized as the primary shaping forces, prior in conception as well as in construction to the upper voices. Tenors are shaped by the interaction of talea and color, medieval terms now used to refer to the independent repetition of rhythms and pitches, respectively. The presence in the upper voices of the periodically repeating rhythmic patterns, often referred to as isorhythm, has been characterized as an amplification of tenor structure. But a fresh look at the medieval treatises suggests a revised analytical vocabulary: for many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers, both color and talea involved rhythmic repetition, the latter in the upper voices specifically. And attention to upper-voice taleae independently of tenor structures brings renewed emphasis to the significant portion of the repertory in which upper voices evince formal schemes that differ from those in t
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Music Examples
List of Figures
List of Tables
[Acknowledgements]
Note on Music Examples and Naming Conventions
1 Introduction
2 Foundational Tenors and the Power Dynamics of Compositional Process
3 Talea and/as Color
4 A Catalogue of Upper-Voice Structures
5 The Hermeneutic Stakes: Reading Form in S’il estoit/S’Amours
6 A New Paradigm for Motet Composition: Colla/Bona Reconstructed
Conclusion
Appendix: Music-Theoretical Discussions of talea and color, c. 1340–1430
Bibliography
[Index]
