Anne W Robertson

There is scant evidence of the seven deadly sins in medieval music, compared with the manifold treatment of this theme in theology and art. Early sacred texts set to melody were based almost exclusively on the Bible, sources of which predate the first Western teaching against the sins. Even when composers began to use their own texts, the sins only rarely commanded their attention. This article deals with the small but fascinating repertory of music on the seven deadly sins from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: several conductus and motets from works of Philip the Chancellor, Guillaume de Machaut and the Roman de Fauvel. These unique pieces, straddling the divide between liturgical and pedagogical music, are shown to have unusually dramatic texts that often addressed the sins directly. In the fifteenth century, these works disappeared, replaced by music that expressed the idea of defeating the sins through the use of musical symbols rather than by singing their names aloud.