Niels Berentsen

This essay focusses on two lacunary ballate by Johannes Ciconia: Ben che da vui and Io crido amor. After a brief discussion of the fragment I-Str, the unique source of these pieces, models are identified on which re- constructions can be based, mapping rela- tionships between these lacunary pieces and complete works by Ciconia and his contem- poraries. A discussion of contrapuntal hab- its in Ciconia’s songs introduces a detailed account of the reconstruction effort, laying out methods and hypotheses underlying the two reconstructions (presented in full as an appendix). In the case of Io crido amor, the process of close-reading and reconstruction also enables proposing improved readings of the music transmitted by the source. The central argument presented is that re- construction – although speculative in na- ture – can help us better understand these pieces, determining their place within the repertoire, all the while getting closer to un- derstanding the way composers like Cico- nia crafted their works.

I wish to express my gratitude to Eulmee Park for the constructive, in-depth response to my article. It pleases me to learn that Prof. Park is in the process of preparing her edition and translation of Guilielmus Monachus’s De preceptis artis musicae for publication. The treatise—we agree—is in urgent need of a satisfactory modern edition.

Published in Journal of the Alamire Foundation 9 (2017)

The importance of an oral and aural understanding of counterpoint in the fifteenth cen- tury has been widely recognized by both scholars and performers of early music. In this essay I reflect on the way I have attempted to ‘reconstruct’ an itinerary for teaching the skill of extemporizing simple two- and three-voice types of fifteenth-century counterpoint, based on a close reading of Guillelmus Monachus’s treatise De preceptis artis musicae and a comparative analysis of extant compositions. De preceptis informs us that the learning of counterpoint can start from the singing of simple parallels in imperfect consonances, called gymel. These gymels can be combined into dierent types of sim- ple three-voice counterpoint (fauxbourdon) or in a horizontal way, alternating between dierent parallels. To this technique of ‘mixed gymel’ elements of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century discantus teaching, such as stepwise contrary motion, may be added to achieve a freer type of counterpoint.

Cambrai, juni 1485. Een geestelijke uit Bergen op Zoom zoekt emplooi in een van de rijkste, meest gecultiveerde kerkelijke instellingen van Europa: de Notre Dame van Cambrai. De kapittelakten vermelden: “25 juni 1485. Vandaag wordt iemand uit Berg toegelaten als onder-vicaris (‘petit viaire’). De zangmeester belooft dat hij hem graag zal onderrichten en hem voortgang zal laten boeken bij het zingen op het boek.” Uit de kapittelakten blijkt dat musiceren de belangrijkste taak was van een ‘petit viaire’. Falset-zangers (‘sopraan vicarissen’) werden bijvoorbeeld gewaarschuwd dat ze, mochten ze hun stem verliezen, op staande voet zouden worden ontslagen. Naast zes koorknapen, die een zelfstandig polyfoon ensemble konden vormen, onderhield de kerk een koor van tussen de dertien en vijftien lagere geestelijken, waartoe ook de anonieme clericus uit Zeeland zou gaan behoren.

Today’s performances of medieval polyphony have a lot in common with those of other ‘classical’ or ‘early’ music. Ensembles perform pieces written by known or lesser known composers, which the listener can revisit by listening to recordings or reading a score. In the middle ages, however, the performance of compositions was only one of the ways available to singers for creating polyphonic music. The ability to improvise a second or third voice above a plainchant melody, called discantare super planum cantum (‘singing above the plainchant’) or cantare super librum (‘singing on the book’), was a crucial skill for a church musician in the middle ages, and singers were trained at this from an early age. Niels’ project aims to expand our knowledge of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony, through music-historical scholarship as well as practical experiences. An in-depth investigation of the material remains of late medieval musical culture—compositions and theoretical writings abou...

The importance of an oral and aural understanding of counterpoint in the fifteenth century has been widely recognized by both scholars and performers of early music. In this essay I reflect on the way I have attempted to ‘reconstruct’ an itinerary for teaching the skill of extemporizing simple two- and three-voice types of fifteenth-century counterpoint, based on a close reading of Guillelmus Monachus’s treatise De preceptis artis musicae and a comparative analysis of extant compositions. De preceptis informs us that the learning of counterpoint can start from the singing of simple parallels in imperfect consonances, called gymel. These gymels can be combined into different types of simple three-voice counterpoint (fauxbourdon) or in a horizontal way, alternating between different parallels. To this technique of ‘mixed gymel’ elements of fourteenth- and fifteenth- century discantus teaching, such as singing by neighbouring consonances, may be added to achieve a freer type of counterpoint.

The title of this paper is taken from the fourteenth-century English treatise Quatuor Principalia Musicae, which describes a rather curious practice of improvised polyphony. The technique entails the singing of a kind of organum at the fifth, octave and possibly twelfth, by three or four singers, to which an expert in discant adds a voice using mainly imperfect consonances. The author of the Quatuor principalia states that such music can ‘strike the ear as artful, while actually being very easy’.

The chapter in the Quatuor principalia has aroused considerable interest in counterpoint scholarship, dating back to Hugo Riemann’s Geschichte der Musiktheorie (1898), and more recently in contributions by Ernest H. Sanders and Luminata Florea Aluas. This paper will propose a new interpretation of the chapter, by means of a close reading of the treatise description, as well as a comparison with a number of fourteenth-century English compositions. As such, the paper hopes to shed a new light on the ‘unwritten’ practices of polyphonic singing in later middle ages.

Besides these analytical and historical approaches, the paper includes a discussion of practical experiments with this type of improvised polyphony the author has carried out with a group of fellow singers. Result of these experiments will be shown in audio and video, or by means of a live demonstration. In this way the author hopes to show how scholarship on improvised polyphony may be valorised in early music performance, as well as musical education.

In his influential study Der Contrapunctus im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, Klaus-Jürgen Sachs has pointed out that the teaching of discant and counterpoint treatises stands in an ambiguous relationship to music for more than two voices. The core teaching (‘Kernlehre’) of these treatises concerns itself only with two-voice counterpoint, giving only a few sparse ‘implementation rules’ (‘Ausführungsbestimmungen’) for three- and four-voice polyphony. The question arises if, as Sachs seems to suggest, the construction of three-voice polyphony would perforce have been a ‘learned’, compositional activity, or if—like their fifteenth-century counterparts—fourteenth-century musicians would have possessed certain ‘recipes’ for creating three-voice settings ex tempore on a plainchant.

The first technique discussed in this paper is a rather curious ‘art in which several men appear to be discanting, while in reality only one of them does’, described in the English treatise Quatuor principalia musicae. The technique entails the singing of a kind of organum at the fifth, octave and possibly twelfth, by three or four singers, to which an expert in discant adds a voice using mainly imperfect consonances. The author of the Quatuor principalia states that such music can ‘strike the ear as artful, while actually being very easy’. This paper will propose a new interpretation of the chapter, by means of a close reading of the treatise description, as well as a comparison with a number of fourteenth-century English compositions.

Besides this kind of ‘trickery’, combing discant with organum, the analysis of a number of three-voice compositions and treatise-examples will reveal another possibility for creating polyphony, in which all the voices move in contrary motion with the tenor. This paper will shed light on the importance of the ‘adjacent consonances principle’—a type of simple stepwise contrary motion— for the creation of three-voice settings.

Parallel to these analytical and historical approaches, the paper includes a discussion of practical experiments with these types of improvised polyphony the author has carried out with the ensemble Diskantores. Results of these experiments will be shown in audio and video, or by means of a live demonstration. In this way the author hopes to show how scholarship on improvised polyphony may be valorised in early music performance, as well as musical education.

Various 14th treatises on discant and counterpoint inform us about a simple way to add a voice to an pre-existing melody, by means of ‘neighboring consonances’ (species vicinori or proximas concordantias). In this lecture-demonstration I will show this principle may be used to extemporize two and three-voice settings, including canons. A comparison with canonic compositions, such as those recently identified in the Ms Tournai 476, shows that these may have been composed according to similar principles.

The way in which fifteenth century musicians viewed – or rather heard – counterpoint was radically different from the way we generally do today. For us counterpoint means the creation of a musical exercise according to a strict set of rules, on paper. For them counterpoint was primarily sung and heard, constructed without the aid of a vertically aligned score and in many cases ‘sung on the book’ (improvised on a melody from a chant-book).

The treatise De preceptis artis musicae, written around 1470 by one 'William the Monk' is arguably our most complete account of fifteenth century practices of sung counterpoint. In this paper I will present a pedagogic itinerary, derived from this treatise and a comparison with extant compositions, for teaching two- and three-voice counterpoint. From singing in simple parallel thirds and sixths, called gymel, we may progress through discantus in contrary motion to free two-voice counterpoint. The vertical combination of different gymels gives us different possibilities to improvise simple types of three-voice counterpoint, known chiefly as fauxbourdon.

One of the objectives of teaching extempore counterpoint is to provide students with a ‘historically informed’ way of hearing Renaissance music. Students become aware of the musical grammar of this music, understanding the choices a composer has made in combining and adapting contrapuntal techniques. This type of hearing is eminently suited as a balance to a ‘modern’ way of approaching these compositions, as ‘fixed objects’ in the shape of a score-transcription or even a recording. 

The presentation will be accompanied by a small workshop for the students of the Israel Conservatory of Music. The results of this workshop will be presented during the presentation as illustrations.

The Historical Performance Institute of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (Bloomington), founded in 1979 by performer-scholar Thomas Binkley, and led since last year by countertenor Dana Marsh, hosted its second annual conference last month. The theme of the conference centering on ‘interdisciplinarity’ lend itself to discussions of historical performance traditions of the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, as well as early recordings, the early music revival, and the role of historically informed performance in the current conservatoire curriculum.

Access: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/45012

This dissertation documents my  research into late medieval and early Renaissance extempore polyphony, through music-historical scholarship as well as practical experiments with students and fellow-singers. The author’s aim is to expand current knowledge of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony, and thereby to develop new music-analytical and -pedagogic tools for approaching this repertoire. An in-depth investigation of the material remains of late medieval musical culture—the extant compositions and theoretical treatises—forms the basis for experiments with vocal polyphonic improvisation above plainchants. These practical experiences, in turn, can shed new light on the historical pieces and texts.

Medieval practices of vocal production and ornamentation are notoriously difficult to grasp, due to the scarcity of written evidence and the ambiguity of the terminology used by authors to describe vocal sound. A precious insight into one such practice of ornamented singing is provided in the English fourteenth-century treatise Quatuor principalia musicae, which encourages singers to ‘break’ (fractio) and ‘flourish’ (florificatio) rhythmically organized chants. The treatises’ examples show how the notes of the plainchant are broken up into quick, repeated notes, and leaps are filled out with rapid stepwise passages. The treatise repeatedly stresses that such ornaments need to be ‘repeated sweetly in the throat’ (dulciter or suaviter in gutture dupplicata). Interestingly this type of ornamentation surfaces in the Quatuor principalia’s description of a kind ‘fake discant’, a virtuosic trickery in which ‘several men appear to be improvising polyphony’ (ars in qua plures homines discantare apparent). This paper aims to elucidate the method for ornamental singing put forward in the Quatuor principalia, mapping its relations with other medieval descriptions of vocal sound, as well as notated specimens of fourteenth-century English polyphony.