Table Of Content001 FM i-xii.2nd rev 5/17/02 12:16 PM Page i
Counterpoint, Composition,
and Musica Ficta
001 FM i-xii.2nd rev 5/17/02 12:16 PM Page ii
CRITICISM AND ANALYSIS OF EARLY MUSIC
JESSIE ANN OWENS, Series Editor
TONAL STUCTURES IN EARLY MUSIC
edited by Cristle Collins Judd
COUNTERPOINT AND COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS
IN THE TIME OF DUFAY
Perspectives from German Musicology
edited and translated by Kevin N. Moll
THE LANGUAGE OF THE MODES
Studies in the History of Polyphonic Modality
by Frans Wiering
COUNTERPOINT, COMPOSITION, AND MUSICAFICTA
by Margaret Bent
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Counterpoint, Composition,
and Musica Ficta
Margaret Bent
Routledge
New York and London
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Published in 2002 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright © 2002 by Margaret Bent
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bent, Margaret.
Counterpoint, composition, and musica ficta / Margaret Bent.
p. cm. – (Criticism and analysis of early music; v. 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3497-4
1. Musica ficta. 2. Counterpoint. 3. Composition (Music). 4. Music theory—History—
500–1400. 5. Music theory—History—15th century. I. Title. II. Series.
ML174.B46 2002
781.2—dc21 2001048110
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Table of Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword, vii
Preface, ix
Introduction, 1
1 Musica Recta and Musica Ficta, 61
2 Pycard’s Credo No. 76, 95
3 Renaissance Counterpoint and Musica Ficta,105
4 DiatonicFicta,115
5 Accidentals, Counterpoint, and Notation in Aaron’s Aggiuntato theToscanello in
Musica, 161
6 DiatonicFictaRevisited: Josquin’sAve Mariain Context, 199
7 Editing Early Music: The Dilemma of Translation, 219
8 Some Factors in the Control of Consonance and Sonority: Successive
Composition and the Solus Tenor, 241
9 Pycard’s Double Canon: Evidence of Revision?, 255
10 Text Setting in Sacred Music of the Early 15th Century: Evidence and
Implications, 273
11 ResfactaandCantare Super Librum, 301
Bibliography, 321
Permissions, 329
Index, 331
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Series Editor’s Foreword
General Introduction to
Criticism and Analysis of Early Music
JessieAnn Owens
Recent years have seen a critical reassessment of our approach to early music. Musicians,
scholars, and critics have been searching for ways of talking about and reacting to the
music that engage it not from the perspectives of later music but rather on its own
terms. These new approaches would not be possible without the scholarship of the
previous decades. The discovery and cataloguing of musical sources, the preparation
of critical editions, and the investigation of archival documents have furnished
important information about composers, performers, patrons, and institutions that
supported the creation and performance of early music. Building on this work, the
editors of these volumes now seek to develop and explore analytical methodologies for
the discussion of early music as music.
Analytic methods are not easily found for early music. The theorists of the time had
their own agendas, and they do not provide models that suit our purposes. As a
consequence, many twentieth-century scholars have chosen approaches that reflect
their own beliefs about early music and its relation to later music. While some
continue to rely on common practice tonality as a prism through which to view early
music, others have begun to explore methods that respect the integrity and self-
sufficiency of the languages of early music.
We offer a forum for exploration of particular topics, from both a methodological
and critical viewpoint. Our premise is that we can best develop new methodologies by
encouraging debate. We will explore compositional procedures, tonal structures,
musical borrowing, and other topics, focusing both on individual compositions and
on theoretical systems. We seek to encourage critical writing about music that will be
useful to performers, listeners, and scholars.
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Preface
Friends and students have encouraged me to collect together thematic groups of
essays that represent the various strands of my scholarly work over the past thirty
years. This one is the first such collection I have made, and includes essays on
counterpoint, musica ficta, compositional procedure and some related topics
published up to about five years ago. It does not include “The Grammar of Early
Music: Preconditions for Analysis,” which appeared recently in another volume
in this series, nor does it include other studies (currently in press) that may
eventually form a sequel to this collection.1 Most of the essays in this volume
present aspects of a still-evolving view of the relationship between notated music
and its realisation in sound. They are concerned with how pitch relationships
worked, how composers composed, what notation means, how performers dealt
with the written notes and words, and how they applied their internalised training
to it. There is much more to be said, but it seemed time to take stock, to annotate
where revision is needed, or where I have corrected or modified my views or
improved their formulation. Much of what I wrote in earlier articles has
percolated through to general acceptance, though naturally it is points of
disagreement that are most clearly signalled, and I attempt in the Introduction to
give an interim reassessment of some points that have attracted criticism. Debates
about musica ficta, the rationale, provision, and consequences of written and
unwritten accidentals, and in general the actual pitch content of early music: all
these have aroused strong opinions and feelings throughout the twentieth
century, for almost as long as musicology has been a self-conscious discipline. I
have tried to address some of the views of those who disagree with the positions
developed here, signalling where they proceed from different and sometimes
incompatible premises.
