Editing Ars subtilior (section)

==Overview and history==

Musically, the productions of the {{lang|la|ars subtilior}} are highly refined, complex, and difficult to sing, and probably were produced, sung, and enjoyed by a small audience of specialists and connoisseurs.  Musicologist [[Richard Hoppin]] suggests the superlative ''ars subtilissima'', saying, "not until the twentieth century did music again reach the most subtle refinements and rhythmic complexities of the [[Mannerism#Mannerism in literature and music|manneristic]] style."<ref name="Hoppin"/>  They are almost exclusively [[secular music|secular songs]], and have as their subject matter love, war, chivalry, and stories from classical antiquity. There are even some songs written in praise of public figures (for example [[Antipope Clement VII]]).  Daniel Albright<ref name="Albright">Albright 2004, 10.</ref> compares [[avant-garde]] and [[modernist music]] of the [[20th-century classical music|20th century]]'s "emphasis on generating music through technical experiment" to the precedent set by the {{lang|la|ars subtilior}} movement's "autonomous delight in extending the kingdom of sound."  He cites Baude Cordier's [[perpetual canon]] ''Tout par compas'' (All by compass am I composed), notated on a circular staff.

Albright contrasts this motivation with "expressive urgency" and "obedience to rules of craft" and, indeed, "{{lang|la|ars subtilior}}" was coined by musicologist [[Ursula Günther]] in 1960 to avoid the negative connotations of the terms ''manneristic style'' and ''mannered notation''.<ref>Günther 1960.</ref>{{Failed verification|date=March 2014}}<!--Electronic search of the entire article fails to turn up the words "subtilior", "Manier", "manieriert", "Manierismus", or "vermeiden" (German for "avoid").-->  (Günther's coinage was based on references in ''Tractatus de diversis figuris'', attributed to [[Philippus de Caserta]], to composers moving to a style "post modum subtiliorem comparantes" and developing an "artem magis subtiliter".)<ref>Günther 1960, summarized in Josephson 2001.</ref>{{Failed verification|date=March 2014}}<!--Josephson may well "summarize" all this, but certainly not from Günther 1960, who never uses the word "subtilior", nor the words "magis" or "Tractatus".-->

One of the centers of activity of the style was Avignon at the end of their [[Avignon Papacy|Papacy]] and during the subsequent [[Western Schism|Great Schism]] (1378–1417), the time during which the Western Church had a pope both in Rome and in Avignon. Avignon had developed into an active cultural center, and produced a significant surviving body of secular song in the late fourteenth century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Burkholder |first=J. Peter |title=Concise History of Western Music |publisher=W. W. Norton and Company |year=2006 |isbn=978-0393928952 |edition=3rd |location=United States}}</ref> The style spread into, or was simultaneously developed in northern Spain, Italy (especially [[Pavia]])<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stone |first=Anne |date=1996 |title=Che cosa c’è di più sottile riguardo l’''ars subtilior''? |journal=[[Rivista Italiana di Musicologia]] |volume=31 |pages=3–31}}</ref> and as far east as Cyprus (which was a French cultural outpost at the time).<ref>Josephson 2001.</ref>  French, Flemish, Spanish and Italian composers used the style.