Academic literature on the topic 'Songs, French 500-1400 History and criticism'

Interactions between polyphonic motets and monophonic trouvère song in the long thirteenth century have been characterised in a number of different ways. Mark Everist and Gaël Saint-Cricq have focused on motets' use of textual and musical forms usually thought of as typical of song. Judith Peraino, on the other hand, has explored the influence of motets on a range of pieces found in manuscripts that mainly contain monophonic songs. This thesis re-examines motet-song interaction from first principles, taking as its basis the 22 cases in which a voice part of a polyphonic motet is also found as a monophonic song. The thesis's analysis of this corpus has two central themes: chronology and quotation. In addressing the first, it develops a music-analytical framework to address the compositional processes involved in these case studies, arguing that in some of them a monophonic song was converted into a motet voice, while in others a motet voice was extracted from its polyphonic context to make a song. It also emphasises, however, that chronology is often more complicated than these two neatly opposed categories imply, showing that different song and motet versions can relate to each other in ways that are dynamic, complex, and often hard to recover from the extant evidence. The conversion of song material for motets and vice versa is placed within a larger context of musical quotation and re-use in the thirteenth century, showing that many of these case studies play with the pre-existence of their song or motet material: some transfer their voice parts from one medium to another in a way that consciously foregrounds their previous incarnations, whereas others mask the pre-existence of the voice part by absorbing it into new textual and musical structures. The thesis closes with a consideration of the wider implications of the motet-song interaction it analyses. It examines the generic boundary between songs and motets and suggests a model of generic analysis that centres on the complexities of manuscript transmission. Finally, it considers the use of refrains within its corpus of motets and songs, demonstrating that these short passages of music and text are often quoted in ways similar to those analysed in motets and songs earlier in the thesis.

The medieval planctus is a Latin lament, composed in great numbers on Biblical themes as well as for the death of political figures or the destruction of cities. It appeared in both monophonic and polyphonic form, and had counterparts in a number of vernacular languages. The manuscript Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana Pluteo 29.1, known as the Florence manuscript, contains eight monophonic planctus in the memory of well-known public figures of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This thesis will examine these compositions as a collection. The monophonic repertoire of the middle ages has been examined in a relatively limited fashion; the florid Latin repertoire, which includes these planctus, has been studied hardly at all. This thesis will provide a musical analysis based upon the text, to prove that the underlying compositional basis for these widely disparate pieces was the same. The planctus span a period of seventy years, and differ greatly in length, textual structure, and musical form. However, as this work will demonstrate, despite their differences, they follow essentially the same inner logic. The analyses contained in the thesis are based upon study of both the syntax and poetry of the text, and seek to discover the relationship of the music to these textual aspects. Various facets of the music (cadence structure, melodic outline, ambitus, and mode) are included in the study. In the process of this study, other facts about the planctus also come to light: the importance of pitches grouped into melodic phrases; mode as an expressive tool rather than a restrictive set of parameters; and the presence of various forms of descriptive composition, or word-painting, often considered not to exist in medieval music. The thesis draws conclusions regarding these aspects of the music, and how they are all used to the greater expression of the texts. The results of this analysis conclude that the eight planctus, while differing in surface characteristics, are the outcome of a single compositional approach, that of the text as a departure point for the music.