Counterpoint, Composition and Musica Ficta

Margaret Bent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780815334972
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136534911
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Musica ficta is the practice of sharpening or flattening certain notes to avoid awkward intervals in medieval and Renaissance music. This collection gathers Margaret Bent's influential writings on this controversial subject from the past 30 years, along with an extensive author's introduction discussing the current state of scholarship and responding to critics. Also includes 25 musical examples.

Chapter 1

Musica Recta and Musica Ficta*

A twofold dilemma faces the editor of early music when he comes to supply accidentals. Firstly, he has insufficient evidence on which to base a definitive solution but must nevertheless specify what is to be performed; and secondly, such evidence as he does have appears to embody a conflict between the testimony of theorists and the evidence of manuscript accidentals. The present article attempts to set out a working hypothesis, presenting the main theoretical evidence relevant to the early fifteenth century; it arose as a by-product of the task of editing the music of the Old Hall manuscript.¹

It is axiomatic of this hypothesis that theoretical testimony and manuscript evidence are in fact complementary, and that taken together they point clearly towards a practical solution. I take it as a precondition of any set of principles for the supplying of accidentals that it must be reconcilable with both available bodies of evidence. Some previous investigators in the field of musica ficta have tended to reject one in favour of the other. Those who have favoured the theoretical evidence have drawn up rules based on harmonic criteria,² while those who have favoured manuscript evidence have adopted melodic criteria.³

In establishing a set of principles I make one basic assumption: that the fifteenth-century singer had in front of him the sort of manuscripts that have come down to us (Old Hall shows clear signs of use by performers), and in particular that the accidentals written in such manuscripts were adequate visual clues for performance. In other words, the application of unwritten accidentals was essentially part of the medieval performer's art. Modern performers are no longer able to perceive instinctively the problems and choices involved: at the present time, the editor must still act for the performer, suggesting decisions which the medieval performer would have made himself. His task is^∥74 to uncover the criteria of musicianship, the methods of teaching singing⁴ and the theoretical principles which regulated chromaticism. These he must apply as far as possible to the actual situations he finds in the manuscripts; the main function of manuscript accidentals, in turn, is to guide the detailed application of theoretical principles.*

There are two corollaries to this practical approach. In the first place, if the editor is to simulate a performance practice, then he should formulate practical rules of thumb which a singer could grasp and apply on the spot. Secondly, by its nature as a performing art, there must have been some room for flexible application of the rules, even after full allowance has been made for differing local traditions, and varying degrees of skill, conservatism, and contact with fresh or foreign ideas. We cannot expect, here or in any comparable performing technique, to uncover rules which would yield infallible results at first sight of a new piece, even for experienced singers working within a single tradition. But techniques which evolve practically and, in the final resort, instinctively, rarely lend themselves at any period of musical history to logical formulation in manuals of instruction, partly because contemporary writers take them for granted and have not themselves learned them by rote. There are bound to be equally acceptable alternatives, just as there are for the editor who realises a figured bass; spontaneous realisation is likely to incur discussion and mutual adjustment between players in rehearsal.

The operation of one or other of these two variables in the performance of medieval music is occasionally implied by the presence of conflicting written accidentals in two sources of the same piece, or of incompatible accidentals within a single source, representing two different layers of performing activity. Or in other circumstances, differences in written accidentals may be complementary and do not necessarily conflict. What the editor supplies, therefore, maybe only one of several possible interpretations based on a single set of principles.

If the singer was responsible for applying accidentals, he must have done so in the first instance to the single part in front of him, and according to melodic criteria. Cadences and structural harmonic points can normally, in any case, be anticipated by identifying the characteristic cadential figures appropriate to each single line of the polyphony. The simultaneous result, the superimposition of each part upon the others, could then be adjusted in rehearsal to meet any overriding harmonic considerations which individual singers had been unable to anticipate. The fact that many of these additions and adjustments were not added to the manuscripts but retained in the memory need not tax our credulity: medieval singers were subjected to disciplines^∥75 which must have equipped them for life with enviable musical memories.*

Individual theorists give relatively little help on the subject of ficta, and in order to assemble evidence in reasonable quantity it is tempting to draw it from a wide chronological range. It is hardly surprising when, in these circumstances, some results are at variance with others and with the musical situations they are applied to. Performance practices are always closely tied to stylistic and technical changes. Earlier teaching may be absorbed into later practice: thus, the writings of Jean de Muris are of great value in dealing with the Old Hall music a century later, when they were still respected and recopied. The Old Hall composers had been brought up on teachings dating from the fourteenth century or earlier. But since the teachings of Tinctoris and sixteenth-century theorists, however authoritative for their own period, can hardly have been an ingredient of their musical training, it is hardly surprising that some of them have been judged incompatible with music of earlier date. Only by stripping our minds of anachronistic teachings can we hope to see the problems and solutions through contemporary eyes and tackle them with contemporary tools. The case for adopting a similar restriction geographically is much less strong; I have found no major contradictions on the subject of ficta among theorists of different nationality.

The principles governing musica ficta are closely related to general contrapuntal rules. As the collisions of successive counterpoints, built around a tenor, gave way to something approaching accompanied melody, so angular chromaticism and false relations gradually yielded to smoother melodic contours and more euphonious chromatic inflections.

The Value of Theoretical Evidence

Theoretical evidence has sometimes been set aside on the grounds that it deals primarily with harmonic reasons for chromatic inflection and refers to two-part progressions.* The chief difficulty is to bridge the gap between this and the polyphony of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in three or more parts where each singer had only his own part in front of him. The answer to this lies, again, in the principle of successive composition. The author of the Quatuor principalia gives rules for three-, four-, and even five-part writing:

Qui autem triplum aliquod operari voluerit, respiciendum est ad tenorem. Si discantus itaque discordat cum tenore, non discordat [rede discordet?] cum triplo, et e contrario, ita quod semper habeatur concordantia aliqua ad graviorem vocem, et procedat ulterius per concordantias, nunc ascendendo, nunc descendendo cum dis-cantu, ita quod non semper cum altero tantum. Qui autem quadruplum vel quintu-plum facere voluerit, inspicere debet cantus prius factos, ut si cum uno discordat, cum aliis non discordat [discordet?], ut concordantia semper habeatur ad graviorem ^∥76 vocem, nee ascendere vel descendere debet cum altero ipsorum sed nunc cum tenore nunc cum discantu, etc. (GS IV, p. 295)⁵

He who wishes to fit a third part to something must look to the tenor. If the discant is discordant with the tenor, it should not be discordant with the third part, and vice versa, so that there is always some concordance with the lower voice, and that if it [the lower part] proceeds by concords with the discant, rising and falling, there is not always only [consonance] with the other. He who wishes to compose a fourth or fifth part must look at the parts already written, and see that if it is discordant with one of them it is not discordant with the others, and that there is always consonance with the lower part; neither ought it to ascend or descend with any one part, but now with the tenor, now with the discant, etc.

This tells us that each added voice must always agree with at least one of the others, and that it sh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Criticism and Analysis of Early Music
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor's Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Musica Recta and Musica Ficta
• 2 Pycard's Credo No. 76
• 3 Renaissance Counterpoint and Musica Ficta
• 4 Diatonic Ficta
• 5 Accidentals, Counterpoint, and Notation in Aaron's Aggiunta to the Toscanello in Musica
• 6 Diatonic Ficta Revisited: Josquin's Ave Maria in Context
• 7 Editing Early Music: The Dilemma of Translation
• 8 Some Factors in the Control of Consonance and Sonority: Successive Composition and the Solus Tenor
• 9 Pycard's Double Canon: Evidence of Revision?
• 10 Text Setting in Sacred Music of the Early 15th Century: Evidence and Implications
• 11 Resfacta and Cantare Super Librum
• Bibliography
• Permissions
• Index