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The Montpellier Codex (c1275)
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
The Montpellier Codex is a French manuscript, possibly from Paris from c1270-1310. It’s the largest
surviving collection of medieval motets and is kept at the Faculté de Médicine, at Montpellier University’s
library. Montpellier is a couple of hours drive north of the Spanish border near the Mediterranean Sea,
halfway between Toulouse and Marseille.
The Codex is one of the most lavish and comprehensive motet books to survive from the 13
th
century. It was
unearthed among other treasures at Notre Dame by Felix Danjou (1812-1866), the organist of Notre Dame.
In 1865 in Paris. Edmond de Coussemaker (1805-1876), was the first to draw attention to it in his L’Art
harmonique au xiie et xiiie siecles (Paris 1865). He would go on to reproduce and transcribe 50 of the pieces.
It was also the subject of a pioneering study of isorhythms (where all parts share a rhythmic pattern) by the
man who coined the word, German medievalist Friedrich Ludwig (1872-1930), in 1904.
Origin
It isn’t completely clear how the collection came into being. The most charming story is the one about Marie of Brabant (c1254-1321), who was the young queen of Philip III (the Bold, 1245-1285). Marie was a great patron of the arts and a relative of and friend to several trouvères. She and Philip III were married in 1274 and she was crowned at Sainte Chapelle in Paris in 1275. Her coronation was heralded by women and maidens singing chansons and motets, possibly a carole or two (a carole, or carol, was a circle dance performed outside. Yup, the whole flowing tresses and ribbons and gauzy dresses thing). Marie was estranged from Philip III early in their marriage through the machinations of the powerful chamberlain Pierre de la Broce (d. 1278). Pierre accused her of poisoning Philip’s oldest son from a previous marriage. It wasn’t long before a friend of the king’s implicated Pierre in the deed and Pierre was summarily hanged. It’s possible that the Codex was a gift as part of Marie’s reconciliation with the king, as it contains a celebration of love and courtly pleasures, as well as of hunting, Philip’s favorite pastime. Another interesting twist is that if Marie was either patroness or recipient of the book, it’s evidence of women’s influence on composition, copying, and the design of beautiful books and music.Contents
Most of the music contained within the Codex is anonymous, but a number of pieces can be matched with their composer either because they appear in other collections or by using stylistic similarity and some sleuth work. Identifiable composers include Perotin (c1160-c1220), Petrus de Cruce (c1260-c1300), Adam de la Halle (c1237-c1286), Guillaume d’Auvergne (c1180-1249), and Philippe le Chancelier (c1160-1236). One motet was copied from a polyphonic work by Willelmus de Winchecumbe (an Englishman, fl. 1270s). Most of the rest are presumed to be French. Music of this period, if it wasn’t chant (monody, or a single line of music performed in unison), used a device called the cantus firmus. This was a version of a known chant, usually sung in one of the lower lines, in a slow and drawn-out way. The other line (usually just one, but sometimes two) was melodically more intricate, intersecting with the cantus firmus only occasionally. The singer of the cantus firmus was called the tenor, which in our times means a specific range of voice, usually the higher male voice, but in medieval times, tenor just meant the voice everything else depended upon. Most of the cantus firmus parts in the Montpellier Codex are taken from the chants of Notre Dame. (There’s a whole other blog coming on that.) Few of the Codex’s motets are considered isorhythmic, as it was felt that Philippe de Vitry was the first to compose those in the early 14 th century. Some theorists disagree based on elements contained in isorhythms. You can read the Philippe de Vitry blog for more about isorhythms. The Montpellier Codex isn’t a small collection. It contains 400 folios (large pages folded to make four—or eight—smaller pages), gathered into eight fascicles (separately sewn sections), and containing 345 compositions, almost all of which are motets (religious polyphonic songs in Latin). The first six fascicles were gathered around 1280. The music is gathered by type. Fascicle I contains organa and conductus from the Notre Dame period. It’s all sacred polyphony. Fascicle II contains 17 four-voice motets. Fascicle III contains 11 three-voice motets with Latin motetus (the voice above the cantus firmus) and French triplum (the third voice, the highest above the cantus firmus), as well as 4 two-voice Latin motets. Fascicle IV contains 22 three-voice Latin motets. Fascicle V contains 9 hockets (rhythmic technique unique to the medieval period) and 104 three-voice motets, which have, with few exceptions, French texts in both upper parts and Latin in the cantus firmus. Fascicle VI contains 75 two-voice French motets. Fascicle VII contains 39 three-voice motets of various kinds. Fascicle VIII contains a conductus (two voices of a particular type) and 42 three-part motets. Fascicle I’s organa (a particular type of two-voice music) are written in modal notation, which was peculiar to rhythmic notation (see my blog on Musical Modes, Part 2: Rhythmic Modes, for more on this), with ligatures (a type of two-note neume; you can read more about neumes in my blog The History of Music Notation) in the upper voices. Fascicles II to VI contain the most extensive collection of motets of the mid- 13 th century, written in pre-Franconian notation (an obscure kind of notation that I’ll talk about in a minute). The last two fascicles are clearly later additions: the handwriting is different and more decorative; the systematic arrangement found in the first four fascicles isn’t carried out in the rest; and the Franconian notation is used exclusively, along with some even later notation forms, such as those from Petrus de Cruce (c1260-1300). Fascicle I contains six organa, two of which are by Perotin, a conductus, and three pieces in the hocket style (where one part spits out notes separated by rests and the other part supplies complementary notes or rests. Hockets were sometimes introduced near the end of Notre Dame clausulae—wiggly bits—but it was used here throughout the whole piece. It was a fashion that didn’t last more than 50 years, which is too bad, because it’s kind of fun). Fascicle I was written out as a score, with the parts aligned above one another. The remaining fascicles are written out with the upper parts in parallel columns and the instrumental tenor across the bottom of the page, a Notre Dame style of notation (see photo). This music was clearly for soloists, and other skilled musicians, such as clerics and scholars at the University of Paris.
ny,
Ne
w
Yo
rk,
19
59
.
The rest of the codex consists mostly of motets, more than 200 in Fascicles II-VI alone.
The Fascicle VII and VIII are from the turn of the 14
th
century, when Johannes de Grocheio (c1255-c1320)
was around. Grocheio put interesting bits into all voices, not limiting the flights of fancy to the higher
voices or relegating the stodgy chant to the lower voice. On one piece (El mois de mai), the tenor line sings
the cries of fruitsellers, and the other two voices embark on a somewhat Bacchanalian frat party. A song
like this has some connection to the songs of the trouvère chansons, but more for content than style.
The Fascicle VII, which dates to c1300, is opened by a motet pair, probably by Petrus de Cruce (c1260-1300
and also called Pierre de la Croix). The motets take on such a unique style that another six are attributed
to him because of similar features. They, like the Franconian pieces mentioned, take strong advantage of
the stratification of rhythmic voices, to the limit that the notation of the period would allow. Petrus
modified notation to exaggerate the layering affect. Petrus invented the use of a dot (punctum) to mark
off rhythmic sections, like modern measure lines. There can between two and seven “beats” between the
dots. It’s not clear whether the music marched militarily on at a set pace or if it accommodated the more
natural speech-like pattern, and the other parts would slow down if someone had a few extra beats or
words between punctum. It’s at this point that rhythmic modes begin to fade in popularity and the
repeating patterns are less important than the natural rhythms originating in the text.
The eighth fascicle dates from c1310.
Franconian notation doesn’t appear until Fascicle VII and VIII, forty years after Franco of Cologne (fl. mid-
13
th
century) wrote his treatise on the subject, Ars cantus mensurabilis. The Montpellier Codex contains a
wide repertory of notational styles, crossing a greater time span than other codices of the same period
(such as the Codex Las Huelgas de Compostela, blog to come). The early fascicles (II-VI) have “uncertain
ligature” styles, and later ones are Franconian (VII and VIII).
I want to point out how different part songs were in the 13
th
century from today. Modern notation lines
everything up vertically. Every voice-line has five lines on the staff, is written in the same key signature as
the other voices, and places one voice part above another with the highest voice at the top and the lowest
voice at the bottom all on the same page, with measure lines helping to keep everyone together. In the
12
th
and 13
th
century, there were sometimes separate pages for each part, the staff had anywhere from
four lines to a dozen, clefs moved depending on how the notes needed to be arranged so that there was
minimal need for ledger lines, there not only weren’t measure lines, but sometimes the notes were all
scrunched together to save space. Parts could be on separate pages, side-by-side in columns, or have the
cantus firmus running across the bottom. (See photo.)
The eighth fascicle is known for its Franconian motets, where the voices are strictly stratified rhythmically
according to pitch range, with the higher voices singing fastest and the lowest voices singing slowest. This is
a refinement on the discoridia concors idea. For instance, in one example, Pucelete, the triplum is a merry
frolic describing a loving woman, the tenor keeps an even tempo, and the lower voice is droopy and
complains of lovesickness in slow notes. Franconian notation died out at the onset of the ars nova period.
The three-voice pieces in Fascicles VII and VIII have the triplum and motetus on facing pages with the tenor
(cantus firmus) running along the bottom across both pages. Those in four voices have the two upper voices
in two columns on one page and the lower voices in two columns on the facing page. It looks odd to our
eyes—the cantus firmus part has just a sprinkling of notes across a staff with no bars, and the frequency of
notes increases as the voices get higher. There are no bar lines in the modern sense, but you can see bars
meant to indicate breaths. There’s no obvious way that the various parts would have stayed together, and
even the clefs are not the same.
Contributors
As I mentioned, most of the music is unattributed. The few that were acknowledged have only one or two facts associated with them. Tassin (dates unknown): He provided the tenor of a motet and is mentioned in 1288 as a minister in the Court Chapel of Philip IV (1268-1314) Jehannot de L’Escurel (d.1303), composer of monadic ballades, rondeaux, and virelais preserved in the Fauvel manuscript (14 th century allegorical poem, covered in some detail in my blog post about Philip de Vitry). de L’Escurel was hanged in Paris in 1303 for the murders of pregnant women, rape, and etc. Yikes! Many of the texts are in French rather than Latin, showing a new trend for writing in the vernacular. This includes a piece by Adam de la Halle (De ma dame vient). Some pieces, like de la Halle’s, harken to the loftiest class of trouvère chanson, with its tenor of the traditional type (cantus firmus), and borrowed from the Notre Dame organum. The Montpellier Codex is one of only two locations for the motet Super te Ierusalem. In the Montpellier version, it’s in three voices. The other occurrence is in the Worcester fragments (blog post to come) and has a fourth voice without text, possibly meant for an instrument. (All photos are from the Parrish source.). Sources: “The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1994. “The History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010. “Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century,” by Richard Turuskin. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010. “The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979. “The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600,” by Willi Apel. The Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, 1961. “The Notation of Medieval Music,” by Carl Parrish. Pendragon Press, New York, 1978. “Early Medieval Music up to 1300,” edited by Dom Anselm Hughes. Oxford University Press, London, 1954. “Music in the Medieval World,” by Albert Seay. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1965. “Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997. “Music in the Medieval West; Western Music in Context,” by Margot Fassler. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2014. “Music in the Renaissance,” by Gustave Reese. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1959.
