Ars subtilior

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A chanson about love, Belle, bonne, sage, by Baude Cordier, is in a heart shape, with red notes indicating rhythmic alterations.

Template:Medieval music sidebar {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Latin for 'subtler art') is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered on Paris, Avignon in southern France, and also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century.<ref name="Hoppin">Hoppin 1978, 472–73.</ref> The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory. Often the term is used in contrast with ars nova, which applies to the musical style of the preceding period from about 1310 to about 1370; though some scholars prefer to consider {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} a subcategory of the earlier style. Primary sources for {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} are the Chantilly Codex, the Modena Codex (Mod A M 5.24), and the Turin Manuscript (Torino J.II.9).

Overview and historyEdit

Musically, the productions of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 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 manneristic style."<ref name="Hoppin"/> They are almost exclusively 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's "emphasis on generating music through technical experiment" to the precedent set by the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 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, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" 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>Template:Failed verification (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>Template:Failed verification

One of the centers of activity of the style was Avignon at the end of their Papacy and during the subsequent 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>Template:Cite book</ref> The style spread into, or was simultaneously developed in northern Spain, Italy (especially Pavia)<ref>Template:Cite journal</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.

Notational characteristicsEdit

Manuscripts of works in the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} occasionally were themselves in unusual and expressive shapes, as a form of eye music. As well as Baude Cordier's circular canon and the heart-shaped score shown above, Jacob Senleches's La Harpe de melodie is written in the shape of a harp.

List of composersEdit

The main composers of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (those from whom at least three compositions in this style are known) are Anthonello de Caserta, Johannes Cuvelier, Egidius, Galiot, Matteo da Perugia, Philipoctus de Caserta, Jacob Senleches, and Trebor.<ref>Apel 1973, 55.</ref> Other composers associated with the style include:

Johannes Ciconia, Sus un fontayne
Baude Cordier, Tout par compas (Rondeau-canon) and Belle bonne sage
Martinus Fabri
Paolo da Firenze
Guido de Lange, Dieux gart (Rondeau)
Johannes Symonis Hasprois
Matheus de Sancto Johanne
Solage, Fumeux fume par fumée (Rondeau)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Antonio Zacara da Teramo, Sumite karissime
Anonymous composers at the Nicosia court of King Janus of Cyprus

ExamplesEdit

{{#if:SENLECHES Fuions de ci.mid|{{#ifexist:Media:SENLECHES Fuions de ci.mid|<phonos file="SENLECHES Fuions de ci.mid">Senleches: Fuions de ci</phonos>|{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "SENLECHES Fuions de ci.mid" not found}}Template:Category handler}}}}
{{#if:SOLAGE Fumeux fume par fumee.mid|{{#ifexist:Media:SOLAGE Fumeux fume par fumee.mid|<phonos file="SOLAGE Fumeux fume par fumee.mid">Solage: Fumeux fume par fumee</phonos>|{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "SOLAGE Fumeux fume par fumee.mid" not found}}Template:Category handler}}}}

ReferencesEdit

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SourcesEdit

Albright, Daniel. 2004. Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. University of Chicago Press. Template:ISBN.
Apel, Willi. 1973. "The Development of French Secular Music During the Fourteenth Century". Musica Disciplina 27:41–59.
Günther, Ursula. 1960. "Die Anwendung der Diminution in der Handschrift Chantilly 1047". Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 17:1–21.
Hoppin, Richard H. 1978. Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. Template:ISBN.
Josephson, Nors S. 2001. "Ars Subtilior". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.