The Missa carminum, a Renaissance mass type cultivated by several composers that is structured around a tenor built by stringing together different pre-existent tunes, provides interesting examples of the practice of musical imitatio. The musical borrowing in these pieces highlights a composer’s innovative compositional technique while still linking to the traditions of the past. By using known tunes as the basis of new musical creations, these composers encourage the comparison of their new compositions with those whose legitimacy as musical objects is already established. In their reuse of music of the past, composers negotiate two important elements of memory. First, they navigate between their own originality and the conventions established by past composers. Second, their use of borrowing creates tension between a composer’s memory and the memory of their audience.

Works: Obrecht: Missa carminum I (91), Missa carminum II (92-93); Costanzo Festa/Andreas Da Silva: Missa carminum II (94-95).

Sources: Dufay/Binchois: Je ne vis oncques la pareille (91); Anonymous: Bon temps (91); Anonymous: Ou le trouveray (91); Anonymous: Ha! Coeur perdu et desolle (91); Busnois: Une filleresse/S’il y a compagnon/Vostre amour (91), Joye me fuit (91), Acordes moy (91), Mon mignault/Gracieuse (91), J’ai mains de bien (91); Loyset Compère/Pietrequin: Mais que se fut secretement (91); Ockeghem: S’elle m’amera/Petite camusette (91), Petite camusette (94-95); Anonymous: Je ne porroie plus celer (91); Josquin: Adieu mes amours (91, 94-95); Busfrin: Et trop penser (91); Jacobus Barbireau: Scoen lief (91-93); Hayne van Ghizeghem: Ce n’est pas jeu (91), De tous biens plaine (94-95); Anonymous: Quant je vous dys (91); Adrien Basin: Madame, faites moy savoir (91); Rubinus: Entre Paris et Saint Quentin (92-93); Johannes Martini: La Martinella (93-94); Loyset Compère: A qui diraige mes pensée (92-93), Le renvoy (92-93); Anonymous: L’homme armé (94).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

The tradition surrounding the L’homme armé tune is an example of musical imitatio. There is little consensus in musicological literature over a precise description of the relationship between musical borrowing and imitatio, a literary concept with roots in rhetoric. Opinions on the matter are so varied that some, Honey Meconi and Rob Wegman in particular, find little value in the term. Nevertheless Meconi’s and Wegman’s conclusions are drawn from an overly constricted conception of what was a widely varied, complex, and hotly debated concept in the Renaissance. There were, in fact, three general types of imitatio that Renaissance literary theorists discussed: non-transformative, transformative, and dissimulative. The last of these three included an element of competition between a work at its model, through which a writer attempted to surpass his or her predecessors to achieve fame and glory. A discussion of competition of this type, though never by the name imitatio, is present in writings about music, particularly dealing with the L’homme armé tradition. Many composers use the tune as a cantus firmus in mass movements, and with it each seems to demonstrate their technical skill through mensural manipulations, extravagant transpositions, or the canonic treatment of the tune. Josquin’s two masses, the first of this tradition to be published by Petrucci in 1502, seem to consciously compete with settings of this tune by earlier composers, and composers that came later seem to consciously compete with Josquin’s settings. The goal of this competitive relationship between these composers coincides with the goal associated with eristic imitatio in the Renaissance and thus may be comprehended as musical imitatio.

Works: Josquin: Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales (269-77), Missa L’homme armé sexti toni (269, 277-81); La Rue: Missa L’homme armé (281-82); Obrecht: Missa L’homme armé (268-69); Forestier: Missa L’homme armé (282-83); Morales: Missa L’homme armé (284-85); Palestrina: Missa L’homme armé (284-86).

Sources: Anonymous: L’homme armé (262-63); Josquin: Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales (281-83, 285-86 ), Missa L’homme armé sexti toni (284-85); Regis: Missa L’homme armé (263-70); Busnoys: Il sera pour vous conbatu/L’homme armé (263), Missa L’homme armé (263-69); Ockeghem: Missa L’homme armé (263-69); Du Fay: Missa L’homme armé (263-69); De Orto: Missa L’homme armé (285-86).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

Similar to some occasional motets of the fourteenth century that celebrate specific historical figures, three motets from the same period draw on the liturgical context of their borrowed tenors to refer to identifiable women. The borrowed tenors of these motets are drawn from the chants for virgin martyrs, specifically Saint Agnes and Saint Lucy. This use of non-Marian Sanctorale material in motet tenors is common for works that honor a living individual, often the namesake of the chant’s textual subject and named in the text of the upper voices. Unlike other motets of this tradition where the upper voices are Latin-texted, these three motets combine French amatory texts with their tenors, creating a hybrid genre between Latin motet and French ballade. These texts (in the voice of a male) interact with the chant text (in the voice of a female) in a way that suggests that they were originally composed as occasional pieces intended to honor a living individual rather than a martyred saint. The geographical and historical evidence suggests that these motets honored Agnès de Navarre and Lucia Bernabò Visconti.

Works: Anonymous: Tant a souttille pointure/Bien pert qu’en moy n’a d’art point/Cuius pulcritudinem sol et luna mirantur (42, 50-56); Anonymous: Se päour d’umble astinance/Diex, tan desir estre amés de m’amour/Concupisco (42, 50-56); Anonymous: L’ardure qu’endure/Tres dous espoir/Ego rogavi Deum, ut ignis iste non dominetur michi/Contratenor (42, 56-59).

Sources: Anonymous: Cuius pulcritudinem sol et luna mirantur (51-53); Anonymous: Concupisco (51-53); Anonymous: Ego rogavi Deum, ut ignis iste non dominetur michi (56-57).

Index Classifications: 1300s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

The use of variation as a compositional technique in the Middle Ages falls into four broad categories: the variation motet, hocket variations, the ostinato motet, and harmonic ostinato. These categories call into question the belief that composition in the Middle Ages was strictly additive. Many of the works that employ variation technique also borrow material from pre-existing tunes. In addition, hocket variation is one way in which vocal compositions were reworked for instruments.

Works: Anonymous: Plus joliement/Quant li douz/Portare (38-39); Anonymous: Mundi dolens/Tenor (38-40); Anonymous: Sicut a prophetis/Propter (40); Anonymous: Deus tuorum militum/De flore martyrum/Ave Rex Gentis (40-41); Anonymous: Regina celi letare/Ave regina/Ave (45).

Sources: Anonymous: Portare (38-39); Anonymous: Propter (40); Anonymous: Ave Rex Gentis (40-41); Anonymous: Ave (45).

Index Classifications: Polyphony to 1300

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

In compositions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the tenor and the contratenor had similar structural roles. From their structural interaction and overlap, composers extracted a new voice called the solus tenor. This new voice, which functioned as a replacement for both the tenor and the contratenor, effectively reduced a four-part composition to three. The result is that some sources transmit a particular piece with the solus tenor, others retain the tenor and contratenor, while still others transmit all three voices.

Works: Vitry: Gratissima Virginis species/Vos quid admiramini/Gaude gloriosa (45-47, 50, 53-54), Virtutibus laudabilis/Impudenter circuivi/Alma redemptoris mater (46-47, 50-51, 53); Anonymous: Gloria (48); Binchois: Dueil angoisseux, rage demeseurée (48-49); Pennard: Credo (51-52); Du Fay: Apostolo glorioso/Cum tua doctrina/Andreas Christi famulus (52, 55); Franchois: Ave Virgo lux Maria/Sancta Maria (52); Pycard: Gloria (53); Lantins: Celsa sublimatur victoria/Sabine presul dignissime (54); Anonymous: O Maria virgo davitica/O Maria maris stella (54).

Sources: Vitry: Gratissima Virginis species/Vos quid admiramini/Gaude gloriosa (45-47, 50, 53-54), Virtutibus laudabilis/Impudenter circuivi/Alma redemptoris mater (46-47, 50-51, 53); Anonymous: Gloria (48); Binchois: Dueil angoisseux, rage demeseurée (48-49); Pennard: Credo (51-52); Du Fay: Apostolo glorioso/Cum tua doctrina/Andreas Christi famulus (52, 55); Franchois: Ave Virgo lux Maria/Sancta Maria (52); Pycard: Gloria (53); Lantins: Celsa sublimatur victoria/Sabine presul dignissime (54); Anonymous: O Maria virgo davitica/O Maria maris stella (54).

Index Classifications: 1300s, 1400s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

Heinrich Isaac structured his tribute to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Quis dabit capiti meo aquam, around the concluding phrase of the antiphon Salva nos, Domine. The melody is present in nearly every measure of the piece. The borrowing becomes most explicit in the secunda pars, where the tune is set as a descending ostinato. In addition, Isaac borrows three sections from his own Missa Salva nos. This borrowing is all the more curious when one considers the contrast of style between Quis dabit capiti meo aquam and the prevailing character of Isaac’s sacred polyphony. That the sections in common between these two pieces are in such contrast with the rest of the polyphonic setting in Missa Salva nos suggests that the borrowing was from motet to mass rather than the other way around, as is commonly believed.

Works: Isaac: Quis dabit capiti meo aquam (57-85), Missa Salva nos (74-76).

Sources: Anonymous: Salva nos, Domine (63-66); Isaac: Missa Salva nos (64), Quis dabit capiti meo aquam (74-76).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

The musical funeral lament is a genre that is prone to the use of musical symbolism. Musical signs can take one of three forms. They can be icons, musical objects that have a close relationship with their meaning (such as word painting); indices, musical objects that are more removed from their meaning; or symbols, musical objects that must be decoded to comprehend. The most common type of musical index in funeral dirges is a quotation from another musical source. Most of these works draw on the Mass for the Dead through the use of various chants, like Requiem aeternam or Dies irae. Often composers transposed these chant segments into the Phrygian mode so as to reflect the character of the work. In so doing, composers reveal that these works are not only laments for the deceased but also prayers on their behalf. In addition, some composers borrow from non-chant sources in a gesture of homage. Josquin’s Absolve, quaesumus Domine, for example, borrows from Obrecht’s Missa Fortuna desperata and was perhaps composed to honor Obrecht at his death.

Works: Josquin: Absolve, quaesumus Domine (39), Nymphes des bois (39); Gombert: Musae Jovis (39); Obrecht: Mille quingentis (40); Isaac: Quis dabit capiti meo aquam (40-41).

Sources: Obrecht: Missa Fortuna desperata (39, 43); Ockeghem: Missa Cuiusvis toni (39); Josquin: Domine, exaudi orationem meam (39); Anonymous: Requiem aeternam (40); Anonymous: Dies irae (40); Anonymous: Salva nos, Domine (40).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

The literature that considers the development of the genre of French polyphonic song around 1300 overlooks a collection of motets built on French tenors in the Montpellier Codex (F-MOf H 196), the Turin motet book (I-Tr vari 42), and the Roman de Fauvel (F-Pn fr. 146). Rather than following the style of polyphonic chanson by composers like Adam de la Halle, which includes the near homophonic setting of a single text in all voices, composers of these motets took their ideas from the compositional practices of the early motet, including the conventional treatment of overlapping musical phrases and a polytextual setting. In addition to these features, the upper voices of these motets mirror the structure of their borrowed tenors in a variety of ways and to varying degrees. Throughout this body of motets, two techniques are prominent. The first includes the adopting of the repetitive structure of the tenor in the upper voices, both musically and textually. The second prominent technique composers use to reflect the structure of the tenor in the upper voices is to retain the conventional overlapping of phrases between voices while creating song structures in all three parts.

Works: Anonymous: Tout solas et toute joie/Bone amour/Ne me blasmes (374-80); Anonymous: Dame bele et avenant/Fi, mari/Nus n’iert (380); Anonymous: Par une matinee/O clemencie/D’un joli dart (381-82); Anonymous: Entre Copin et Bourgeois/Je me cuidoie/Bele Ysabelos (382-85); Anonymous: Amours m’a pris/Bien me maine/Riens de vous vaut (382-86); Anonymous: En mai, quant rosier/L’autre jour/Hé, revelle toi (386-87); Anonymous: Au cuer ai un mal/Ja ne m’en repentiray/Jolietement (387-90); Anonymous: Au tans nouvel/Chele m’a tollu ma joie/J’ai fait tout nouvelement (391-93); Anonymous: S’on me regarde/Prennés i garde/Hé, mi enfant (391-98); Anonymous: Je voi douleur/Fauvel nous a fait present/Autant (398-400).

Sources: Anonymous: Ne me blasmes (374-80); Adam de la Halle: Fi, mari (380); Anonymous: O clemencie (381-82); Anonymous: Bele Ysabelos (382-85); Anonymous: Riens de vous vaut (383-86); Anonymous: Hé, revelle toi (386-87); Anonymous: Jolietement (387-90); Anonymous: J’ai fait tout nouvelement (391-93); Anonymous: Hé, mi enfant (391-98).

Index Classifications: Polyphony to 1300, 1300s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

The contents of the chansonnier Bologna Q16 probably originate in instrumental music from the fifteenth century. Two pieces in particular undoubtedly stem from instrumental practice. La bassa castiglia is the earliest known polyphonic setting of the basse danse and is built around the familiar tune La Spagna. The second is an arrangement of the upper voice of Dufay’s Le servitor with an additional florid tenor attributed to Hanart. In each of these settings a newly composed voice is far more elaborate than the borrowed tune. Another piece, Vostre amor, may also belong to this group, though the source of the borrowed tune is unidentified.

Works: Anonymous: La bassa castiglya (94); Hanart: Le servitor (94); Anonymous: Vostre amour (95).

Sources: Anonymous: La Spagna (94); Dufay: Le servitor (94).

Index Classifications: 1300s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

Ragtime took the United States by storm in the early twentieth century, and Charles Ives incorporated ragtime elements into numerous works. Nevertheless, a closer examination of musical and biographical evidence reveals the composer’s ambivalent and even contradictory attitude towards the genre. On the one hand, Ives demonstrates an enthusiasm for ragtime through his bold embrace of a genre associated with African Americans in a racially divided era. On the other hand, this positive engagement is at odds with the tone of his writings, which often dismissed ragtime as inferior to art music and Protestant hymns. The disparity can be explained by considering the popularity of ragtime during Ives’s youth, how he reworked his early ragtime-based pieces later in life, and the significant time lapse that often occurred between composing a piece and writing about it. Four Ragtime Dances also reflects this ambivalence, and the work can be interpreted either as a statement of progressive inclusivity or of racial inequality. This diversity of hearings is possible because Four Ragtime Dances engages with many types of musical friction—sacred and secular, classical and popular, and racial—and in this regard the work reflects the inherent “messy quality” of Ives’s music in general.

Works: Ives: Four Ragtime Dances (24-46), Central Park in the Dark (46-47).

Sources: George Minor: Bringing in the Sheaves (26, 31); Edward Rimbault: Happy Day (26); Lewis Hartsough: I Hear Thy Welcome Voice (26, 31); Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson: Hello! Ma Baby (46-47).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Matthew G. Leone, Daniel Rogers, David G. Rugger

Two paradoxical interpretations of Charles Ives’s use of borrowed music coexist: an authorial reading and a reading based on the element of lost time (“temps perdu”). The mature music of Charles Ives is internally teleological, building pieces or movements out of “memory fragments” of pre-existing American popular or sacred tunes and quoting the entire tune only at the end of the work (a form called “teleological genesis” or elsewhere “cumulative form”). An authorial reading of this technique situates the meaning of the piece in the creation of a peak experience, which itself intimates to the audience a transcendental understanding of the music beyond the sound itself. Listeners might consider thinking of Ives’s use of “memory-fragments,” or musical borrowings, through the filter of Ives’s personal experiences with his sources, which they may discover (at least in part) through his writings. The second reading of this phenomenon is that striking dissonance, “memory fragments,” and musical manipulation in Ives’s mature pieces represent his attempt to protect a treasured American past from the effects of adulthood and the modern world. Ives’s stylistic plurality in his mature years can be heard as a radical attempt to recover traditional securities of the past, a narrative thread (the “Motive of Lost Wholeness”) common in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought in general. Such pieces depict the past as only existing imperfectly in memory; thus listeners are invited by Ives to embark on a musical journey in search of lost time.

Works: Ives: The Fourth of July (747), Symphony No. 3 (747), Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass., 1840-60) (747), String Quartet No. 2 (747), Violin Sonata No. 2 (747-49), Violin Sonata No. 4 (749-50), Violin Sonata No. 3 (750).

Sources: Robert Lowry: Need (750); Asahel Nettleton or John Wyeth (attr.): Nettleton (747); David T. Shaw: The Red, White, and Blue (Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean) (747-49); William Bradbury: Jesus Loves Me (749-50).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Kate Altizer, Chelsea Hamm, Daniel Rogers

A sizeable body of melodies survives from the troubadour, trouvère, and Minnesinger repertories that demonstrate intentional modal variation. In comparing the appearance of a tune in different manuscripts, whether accompanying the same text or as a contrafactum, one can observe three changes in modal structures in the melodies. The different variants of the same melody may (1) emphasize opposing scale patterns, (2) emphasize a difference in the relationship between focal centers (pitches), and (3) affect both of these characteristics equally. The evidence suggests that these modal variations are the result of compositional planning and that medieval musicians did not feel bound to the mode of a borrowed tune so long as they retained the original melodic outline of the tune.

Works: Châtelain de Coucy: L’an que rose ne feuille (119, 126), Quant voi esté (199-22), A vous, amant, plus qu’a nule autre gent (122), La douce vois du rossignol salvage (123), Mout ai esté longuement esbahis (126); Anonymous: Souvent souspire (123); Anonymous: Veris ad imperia (123); Thibaut de Navarre: Pour conforter ma pesance (127).

Sources: Châtelain de Coucy: L’an que rose ne feuille (119, 126), Quant voi esté (199-22), A vous, amant, plus qu’a nule autre gent (122), La douce vois du rossignol salvage (123), Mout ai esté longuement esbahis (126); Raimbaut de Vaqueiras: Kalenda maya (123); Anonymous: A l’entrada del tens clar (123); Thibaut de Navarre: Pour conforter ma pesance (127).

Index Classifications: Monophony to 1300

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

Beneath the radical heterogeneity of Ives’s style runs a strong undercurrent of moral ambivalence which reinforces the regressive hierarchies—especially those of gender, race, and class—inherent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. By placing certain tunes, such as Protestant hymns, at the top of this hierarchy, Ives musically articulates his nostalgia for his idealized America, where traits such as white-ness, rural-ness, and masculinity dominate social order. In multi-movement works especially, Ives performs his ambivalence using three strategies. First, “Interplay” pits representations of heterogeneity against those of homogenizing idealism within a programmatic context. Second, “Excess” occurs in up-tempo second movements framed by soft, static music that contains and negates the hectic energy and suggests a transcendental truth. Finally, “Hierarchy” resolves the previous movements by privileging a single, often ideologically weighted, musical gesture, affording hegemonic status to white, rural Protestant culture. The recognition of this hierarchical structure leads to a more thorough interpretation of Ives’s music, its cultural context, and the composer’s ideals.

Works: Ives: String Quartet No. 2 (178-79, 187-91), Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England (182), Majority (185-87), Orchestral Set No. 2 (189-92), Song of Myself (191), Symphony No. 4 (192-94), Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840-60 (194-98).

Sources: David T. Shaw: Columbia, Gem of the Ocean (178); George Frederick Root: Battle Cry of Freedom (182); Henry Clay Work: Marching Through Georgia (182); Stephen Foster: Old Black Joe (182); Lowell Mason: Watchman, Tell Us of the Night (188); Joseph P. Webster: In the Sweet Bye and Bye (191-92); Lowell Mason: Bethany (194).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Matthew G. Leone, Daniel Rogers, David G. Rugger

Despite the common interpretation that Johannes Ciconia’s quotations of polyphonic songs by Filippotto da Caserta in Sus une fontayne reflect a relationship of homage between the two composers, the evidence suggests that contemporary audiences would have understood the quotations as ironic gamesmanship. Although the sources of the quotations are never acknowledged in Ciconia’s text, their appearance can be interpreted as a type of diegetic music within the fictional realm of Ciconia’s virelai. That is, the fictional speaker of Ciconia’s text can hear Filippotto’s music. Similar to the word play of some contemporaneous poems, which require a reader to follow encoded instructions to discover the author’s name, Ciconia’s unattributed quotations invite the audience to identify the quoted composer through the interplay of metaphors (such as the fountain) and musical symbols (such as mensuration signs). Thus, Ciconia’s work seems to suggest that he was not a student paying homage to a teacher but a master composer.

Works: Ciconia: Sus une fontayne (361-90).

Sources: Filippotto da Caserta (Philipoctus de Caserta): En remirant vo douce portraiture (362-64, 371-72, 380, 388-89), En attendant soufrir m’estuet (365, 372-79), De ma dolour (362, 366-67, 372).

Index Classifications: 1300s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers

Despite the debate between scholars, there is sufficient musical evidence to demonstrate conclusively that Isaac’s Missa Salva Nos predates his funeral motet Quis dabit capiti meo aquam. The mass draws its cantus firmus from the antiphon Salva nos, Domine, which consists of five phrase segments. Isaac exclusively uses the last of these segments for the Kyrie II, Cum Sancto (Gloria), and Osanna II (Sanctus). This same segment appears as a cantus firmus in his motet along with musical material from the other voices in these same sections of the mass. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that Isaac extracted the motet from the mass rather than used the motet as a model for the mass. This type of musical extraction is at work in other musical genres, such as tricinim that are drawn from “tenor tacet” sections of masses.

Works: Quis dabit capiti meo aquam (82-87), Missa Quant j’ay au cor (88); Anonymous: Bassadanza (89).

Sources: Anonymous: Salva nos, Domine (83-87); Isaac: Missa Salva nos (82-87), Missa Quant j’ay au cor (88), Missa La Spagna (89).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Daniel Rogers