YEARBOOK

OF THE
ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

6
Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation

Leuven – Neerpelt
2008
Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation 6

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CONTENTS

PREFACE 7

DRINKING MOTETS IN MEDIEVAL ARTOIS AND FLANDERS 9

Mary E. Wolinski

FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 21

Julie E. Cumming

THE ROLE OF ACOUSTICS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF RENAISSANCE POLYPHONY 45

AT THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF SAINT MARY IN AACHEN
Eric Rice

POLYPHONY AND WORD-SOUND IN ADRIAN WILLAERT’S LAUS TIBI SACRA RUBENS 61

Katelijne Schiltz

VIRTUS SCRIPTORIS:
STEPS TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF ILLUSTRATION BORROWING IN 77
MUSIC THEORY TREATISES OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
Luminita Florea

UT HEC TE FIGURA DOCET: THE TRANSFORMATION OF 97

MUSIC THEORY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM MANUSCRIPTS TO PRINT
C. Matthew Balensuela

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXTBOOKS 111

ON SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COUNTERPOINT
Thomas Holme Hansen

ORLANDO DI LASSO ET AL.: 125

A NEW READING OF THE ROMAN VILLANELLA BOOK (1555)
Donna G. Cardamone Jackson

THE TWO EDITIONS OF LASSO’S SELECTISSIMAE CANTIONES, 1568 AND 1579 147
Peter Bergquist

WHO OWNED LASSO’S CHANSONS? 159

Richard Freedman
 21

FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION:

THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY*
Julie E. Cumming
McGill University

The emergence of pervasive imitation in polyphonic music in the decades leading up

to 1500 marks a major change in musical style. The kind of imitation developed in
the Josquin era dominated musical composition for the rest of the Renaissance in
almost every genre. In spite of its importance, however, there has been surprisingly
little discussion of how pervasive imitation evolved. I looked for a discussion of this
issue in all the major Renaissance text books (Reese, Brown, Atlas, Perkins, Sparks,
Strohm).1 While all of them say that imitation emerged in the late fifteenth century,
and some say that it emerged first in Milan in the 1470s, none of them say how it
developed.2 I am trying to trace the origins and development of pervasive imitation
in the decades before 1500, especially in the motet.3 This article is a first stab at the
issues, and presents some hypotheses on the mechanisms involved.
What is pervasive imitation? It is imitation as used in the late fifteenth- and the
sixteenth-century motet, called pervasive because it pervades all the voices and the
structure of the work. Let us see how it functions at the beginning of a late fifteenth-
century piece that achieved archetypal status in the sixteenth and twentieth centuries:

*
Versions of this paper were presented at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, on November 2,
2001, and at McGill University, Montréal, on June 8, 2003, as well as at the 17th International Congress
of the International Musicological Society (IMS) in Leuven, August 2, 2002. I would like to extend my
thanks to the people who made it possible to present the paper in these various venues, and who pro-
vided valuable inspiration and feedback, especially Thomas Brothers (Duke University) and Peter
Schubert (McGill University).
1
G. REESE, Music in the Renaissance, New York, 1959; H.M. BROWN, Music in the Renaissance,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1976, 2nd ed., with L.K. STEIN, 1999; A. ATLAS, Renaissance Music:
Music in Western Europe, 1400-1600, New York, 1998; L. PERKINS, Music in the Age of the Renais-
sance, New York, 1999; E.H. SPARKS, Cantus firmus in Mass and Motet, 1420–1520, Berkeley, 1963;
R. STROHM, The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500, Cambridge, 1993.
2
See PERKINS, Music in the Age of the Renaissance, p. 514; and ATLAS, Renaissance Music, p. 252.
For some preliminary reflections on how imitation developed, see R. WEXLER, Simultaneous Concep-
tion and Compositional Process in the Late Fifteenth Century, in P. HIGGINS ed., Antoine Busnoys:
Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music, Oxford, 1999, pp. 389–398; and L. FINSCHER,
Zum Verhältnis von Imitationstechnik und Textbehandlung im Zeitalter Josquins, in Renaissance-Studien
Helmuth Osthoff zum 80. Geburtstag, (L. FINSCHER ed., Frankfurter Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft,
11), Tutzing, 1979, pp. 57–72.
3
I am working on this with my McGill colleague Peter Schubert; we have a grant funded by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. See also the work on imitation in the Mass by
Mary Natvig: M. NATVIG, Investigating Imitation in the 15th-Century Mass Ordinary, paper presented
at the conference Josquin and His Models: The Emergence of Pervasive Imitation, June 7–8, 2003,
McGill University, Montréal.
22 JULIE E. CUMMING

Josquin’s Ave Maria (Example 1). I chose this piece because it is so often used to
exemplify the new style, and also because it resembles in many respects the ‘Milan
motet’, as shown by Joshua Rifkin and others.4
Imitation in the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century motet consists of a series of
‘points of imitation’ corresponding to a unit of text, defined as a poetic line or gram-
matical unit such as the clause or sentence. Example 1 begins with very short units
of text: Ave Maria, then gratia plena and so on. When all the voices have completed
one text unit (Ave Maria), a new point of imitation begins with a new motive (gratia
plena). Cadences are used to close individual points of imitation, or larger text units
such as stanzas, sentences or paragraphs made up of several points of imitation (as
in bar 15, at Virgo serena). In a ‘point of imitation’ (like those at the opening of Ave
Maria): (1) all voices enter one after another with the same motive (sometimes they
enter in pairs, as in the second stanza, bar 16: Ave cuius conceptio);5 (2) each entry is
preceded by silence (rests); (3) entries begin with syllabic text declamation of the
same text phrase; (4) each new voice enters after several beats (time interval of imi-
tation: at the opening of Ave Maria the time interval is a long, or four semibreves);
(5) the time interval normally conforms to the mensural structure (multiples of two
in duple meter; the periodic style created by the regular entries is one of the most
striking features of Ave Maria).
Let us now contrast this style with that found in the mid-fifteenth century.
Imitation and canon have been around almost since the beginning of polyphony: think
of voice exchange in Perotin organa, or the Sumer canon. It was certainly present in
the mid-fifteenth century, but its function in the musical form was very different from
its use in later music. Imitation was rarely highlighted, and sometimes it was deli-
berately concealed: here the prime example is Ockeghem’s Missa prolationum, an
entire Mass cycle built around concealed canons.6 But Ockeghem is not the only com-

4
Ave Maria is the first motet in the first printed book of motets (Petrucci’s Motetti A, Venice, 1502,
RISM 15021). On the sixteenth-century sources and dissemination of Ave Maria see J.S. THOMAS,
The Sixteenth-Century Motet: A Comprehensive Survey of the Repertory and Case Studies of the Core
Texts, Composers, and Repertory, Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1999, pp. 177–180 and
419–423. Joshua Rifkin first discussed the similarities between Ave Maria and the ‘Milan style’ in his
widely circulated but unpublished paper of 1978: Josquin in Context: Toward a Chronology of the
Motets, in Abstracts of the Papers Read at the 44th Annual Meeting of the American Musicological
Society, Minneapolis, Minnesota: October 19–22, 1978, pp. 36–37. Much of that paper is now expanded
on and included in: J. RIFKIN, Munich, Milan, and a Marian Motet: Dating Josquin’s Ave Maria…
virgo serena, in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 56 (2003), pp. 239–350. He includes
a thorough review of the extensive literature on this piece. I am grateful to Professor Rifkin for pro-
viding me with copies of both papers before publication. My argument does not depend on the dating
of this work. See also L. PERKINS and P. MACEY, art. Motet, Renaissance, in S. SADIE and
J. TYRRELL eds., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 17, London, 2001, pp. 207–208.
5
For a discussion of the ‘imitative duo’ and the ‘non-imitative duo’ as presentation types in Renaissance
counterpoint, see P. SCHUBERT, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style, Oxford, 1999, pp. 264–294.
6
See also I. GODT, An Ockeghem Observation: Hidden Canon in the Missa Mi-Mi?, in Tijdschrift van
de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 41 (1991), pp. 79–85.
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 23

Vir - - - go se - re - - na
24 JULIE E. CUMMING

Example 1. Josquin Desprez, Ave Maria, bb. 1–35, Motetti A numero trentatre A, Petrucci, Venice (RISM
15021), fol. 2v–3. Material in boxes is the only music not repeated.
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 25

poser to conceal or avoid imitation; most mid-fifteenth-century sacred music con-

tains imitation only in certain limited contexts. Let us look, for example, at Flos de
spina, a motet by Johannes Pullois, probably composed in the 1450s (Example 2).7
The imitative passages are enclosed in boxes.
Imitation in mid-fifteenth-century sacred music serves as an ornamental addi-
tion to a fundamentally non-imitative texture. It rarely corresponds in a noticeable
way with units of text, due in part to the highly melismatic style, and the fact that it
emerges in the middle or at the end of a phrase, rather than at the beginning, without
being preceded by rests. It usually occurs: (1) in two voices only, either in duet sec-
tions (Example 2, bb. 19–21)8 or over a pedal tone in one voice (Example 2, bb. 6,
11–12, 18–19, contratenors over held cadential pitches in the tenor); (2) the second
voice often follows very closely, after only one beat or half a beat (short time interval
of imitation, as in Example 2, b. 20 ff.);9 (3) rhythmic values between the two parts
are different, resulting in shifting time intervals of imitation (Example 2, bb. 19–21);
(4) the time interval of imitation often conflicts with the mensural structure (one
minim, as in bar 20; three minims as in bar 12).
This mid-fifteenth-century use of imitation is clearly very different from the per-
vasive imitation found in Josquin. So how did we get from Flos de spina to Ave Maria?
What allowed pervasive imitation to emerge? I suggest that the late fifteenth century
saw a radical shift from an aesthetic that valued ‘variety’ to one that valued ‘repeti-
tion’ as an organizing force.

7
J. CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 239–253, esp. pp. 245–246.
8
Thomas Brothers suggests that imitation in duet sections is a “vestige of the introitus sections of iso-
rhythmic motets of old”. See T. BROTHERS, Vestiges of the Isorhythmic Tradition in Mass and Motet,
ca. 1450–1475, in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44 (1991), p. 38.
9
Ludwig Finscher calls this fuga ad minimam, in L. FINSCHER, Loyset Compère (c. 1540–1518): Life
and Work, (Musicological Studies and Documents, 12), 1964, p. 136.
26 JULIE E. CUMMING
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 27

Example 2. Johannes Pullois, Flos de spina, bb. 1–34, TrentC 90 (Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio,
Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali, MS 1377), fol. 434v–436. Material in boxes is the
only music that is repeated.
28 JULIE E. CUMMING

VARIETY VERSUS REPETITION

It has often been noted that mid-fifteenth-century sacred music was characterized by
a musical aesthetic of varietas: variety of texture, rhythm, melody and form was more
highly valued than repetition.10 In the Liber de arte contrapuncti Tinctoris stresses
the importance of varietas and repeatedly warns against repetition.11
In book 2 he praises the varietas in diminished counterpoint, which he compares
to the ‘diversity of flowers in the field’:12

Diciturque contrapunctus huiusmodi diminutus, quoniam in eo notarum

integrarum fit in diversas minutas partes divisio. Hinc et floridus a non-
nullis per metaphoram appellatur. Quemadmodum enim diversitas florum
agros iucundissimos efficit, ita proportionum varietas contrapunctum
acceptissimum reddit.

And counterpoint of this kind is called diminished, since, in it, a certain

division of the basic notes into different minute parts is made; hence, it is
also called ‘florid’ by many, through metaphor, for, just as a diversity of
flowers makes the fields most pleasing, so the variety of proportions pro-
duces a most agreeable counterpoint.

The last three of the eight rules in book 3 are devoted to varietas. In rule 6, Tinctoris
stresses the importance of avoiding repetitions (redictas). He allows exceptions only
when imitating bells or trumpets:13

Sexta regula est quod super cantum planum canentes in quantum possumus
redictas evitare debemus maxime si aliquae fuerint in tenore… Et quamvis
ex omni parte in re facta regulariter etiam prohibeantur, aliquando tamen
sonum campanarum aut tubarum imitando, ubique tollerantur. … Utque
patet in his exemplis, redicta nihil aliud est quam unius aut plurium coniunc-
tionum continua repetitio.
10
On varietas in fifteenth-century music see BROTHERS, Vestiges, p. 35, pp. 42–47. For a thorough
discussion of the concept and its origins in classical rhetoric, see S.T.P. GALLAGHER, Models of
Varietas: Studies in Style and Attribution in the Motets of Johannes Regis and his Contemporaries,
Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998.
11
A. SEAY ed., [Johannis Tinctoris] Opera theoretica, (Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 22), 2, 1975
[henceforth: TINCTORIS, Liber de arte contrapuncti]; J. TINCTORIS, The Art of Counterpoint (Liber
de arte contrapuncti), transl. A. SEAY, (Musicological Studies and Documents, 5), 1961.
12
TINCTORIS, Liber de arte contrapuncti, Book 2, ch. 19, p. 107; TINCTORIS, The Art of Counterpoint,
p. 102.
13
TINCTORIS, Liber de arte contrapuncti, Book 3, ch. 6, pp. 152–154; TINCTORIS, The Art of Counter-
point, pp. 137-138. As is seen in these examples, repetition is nothing other than the continuous reiter-
ation of one or many motifs (conjunctiones).
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 29

The sixth rule is that, in singing above plainchant, we ought to avoid repe-
titions as much as we can, particularly if some appear in the tenor … And,
although these are also prohibited by rule from every part in composed
music, sometimes, however, in imitating the sound of bells and trumpets,
they are tolerated everywhere. ... As is seen in these examples, repetition is
nothing other than the continuous reiteration of one or many motifs (con-
junctiones).

In the seventh rule Tinctoris explicitly contrasts repetition with variety, and warns
that successive perfections on the same pitch ‘must be completely avoided as the
opposite of variety’(varietati contraria):14

Septima regula est quod super planum cantum etiam cantum etiam canendo
duae aut plures perfectiones in eodem loco continue fieri non debent, licet
ad hoc quodammodo cantus ipse planus videatur esse coaptatus, …
Quaequidem regula tam exacte a compositoribus est observanda ut nec
etiam huiusmodi tenorem conficere debent, qui bis in eodem loco duarum
aut plurium continuarum perfectionum dispositionem habeat. Talis enim
compositio cum redicitis evidentissimam contrahit affinitatem, unde
tamquam varietati contraria omnino est evitanda.

The seventh rule is that, in also singing above plainchant, two or more per-
fections ought not to be made continuously in the same place, granted that
this plainchant is seen to be appropriate to this procedure. This particular
rule must be so exactly observed by composers that they should not make
a tenor of this kind, one which has the placing of two or more continuous
perfections twice in the same place. Since such composition shows a most
obvious affinity with repetitions, it must be completely avoided as an oppo-
site category.

The eighth and last rule ‘teaches that variety must be most accurately sought for in
all counterpoint’, and goes on to list all the ways variety can be achieved:15

De octava et ultima generali regula que varietatem in omni contrapuncto

exquirendam accuratissime praecipit … si nunc per unam quantitatem, nunc
per aliam, nunc per unam perfectionem, nunc per unam proportionem, nunc

14
TINCTORIS, Liber de arte contrapuncti, Book 3, ch. 7, p. 154; translation from GALLAGHER, Models
of Varietas, p. 61, note 56.
15
TINCTORIS, Liber de arte contrapuncti, Book 3, ch. 8, p. 155; TINCTORIS, The Art of Counterpoint,
p. 139.
30 JULIE E. CUMMING

per aliam, nunc per unam coniunctionem, nunc per aliam, nunc cum syn-
copius, nunc sine syncopis, nunc cum fugis, nunc sine fugis, nunc cum
pausis, nunc sine pausis, nunc diminutive, nunc plane, aut componat aut
concinnat.

Now by one quantity, then by another, now by one perfection, then by

another, now by one proportion, then by another, now by one conjunction,
then by another, now with syncopations, then without syncopations, now
with fugae, then without fugae, now with pauses, then without pauses, now
diminished, now as written.

Tinctoris’s aesthetic of varietas therefore valued constant variety of melody, rhythm,

and counterpoint. Repetition of material in one or more voices was avoided or con-
cealed. Like many other mid-fifteenth-century motets, Flos de spina (Example 2)
embodies this aesthetic. The only music that is repeated is the imitative passages
enclosed in boxes. Every other bar has a different rhythm; melodic contour is con-
tinually changing and varying.16
Late-fifteenth-century imitative polyphony, in contrast, embraces repetition. In
his dictionary Tinctoris defines fuga as ‘the identity of the parts of a line (cantus) as
to the value, name, form, and sometimes placement of notes and rests’.17 For Tinctoris,
therefore, fuga means repetition: either in a single line, or in different voices. Josquin
in particular is known for his literal repetition of motives and duos, and for his sequen-
tial repetition of contrapuntal blocks. Let us look at Ave Maria (Example 1) again.
Here only passages that are not repeated are enclosed in boxes. Practically every ele-
ment in the piece is repeated, either in another voice (imitation and parallel motion)
or in the same voice (free repetition or sequence) or both (celestia, bar 22, harmonic
sequence with canon). Sometimes the element that is repeated is a single line; most
of the time it is a two-voice contrapuntal combination. This is especially clear in the
repeated duos, but it is also true for overlapping imitative textures (thus the contra-
puntal combination between the soprano and alto in bar 2 is repeated between the
alto and tenor in bar 3 and the tenor and bass in bar 4). Even when one voice has free

16
This constantly varied endlessly evolving style, in which no two bars have the same rhythm probably
comes out of English music. See M. BENT, Dunstaple, (Oxford Studies of Composers, 17), London
1981, p. 36: “each successive bar in a phrase has a different rhythm”. Thomas Brothers describes how
Du Fay adopted this style in the 1430s in combination with the new ‘lyric top voice’in: T. BROTHERS,
Contenance angloise and Accidentals in Some Motets by Du Fay, in Plainsong and Medieval Music,
pp. 28–35. See also CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 91–95, 193, 244–245.
17
TINCTORIS, Terminorum Musicae Diffinitorium, C. PARRISH ed. and transl., London, 1963, p. 3,
s.v. ‘fuga’: Fuga est idemtitas partium cantus quo ad valorem, nomen, formam, et interdum quo ad
locum tonarum et pausarum suarum. The English translation is by Peter Schubert, who brought this
passage to my attention. See P. SCHUBERT, Counterpoint Pedagogy in the Renaissance, in T. CHRIS-
TENSEN ed., The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, Cambridge, 2002, p. 511.
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 31

counterpoint against repeated material in other voices the tendency is to repeat

melodic material: thus in bars 10–11 the soprano repeats its descending scale when
the tenor imitates (repeats) the alto line. This is exactly the kind of thing against which
Tinctoris inveighed.
Not only is there a lot of repetition, but the repetition is meant to be obvious.
The time interval of imitation is long enough so that we can hear the element to be
repeated; the repeated motive is associated with repeated text set syllabically; the
texture is reduced to allow the voices to come out clearly. What is new here is not
just the use of imitation – it is the audible and even obsessive repetition of musical
material at every possible opportunity.
It is this new style, in which repetition – of melodic material and of contrapuntal
combinations – comes to be the primary way of constructing a work, that I wish to
explain. I suggest that several different interconnecting forces in late fifteenth-cen-
tury music combined to effect this change in the motet: (1) movement down in the
genre hierarchy; (2) a new kind of motet with a new kind of text; and (3) a new kind
of patron.

THE GENRE HIERARCHY

In the Terminorum musicae diffinitorium Tinctoris established a threefold genre hier-

archy of chanson (cantus parvus), motet (cantus mediocris) and Mass (cantus magnus):18

Cantilena est cantus parvus, cui verba cuiuslibet materiae sed frequentius
amatoriae supponuntur.

A cantilena is a small piece which is set to a text on any kind of subject, but
more often to an amatory one.

Motetum est cantus mediocris, cui verba cuiusvis materiae sed frequentius
divinae supponuntur.

A motet is a composition of moderate length, to which words of any kind

are set, but more often those of a sacred nature.

Missa est cantus magnus cui verba Kyrie, Et in terra, Patrem, Sanctus, et
Agnus, et interdum caeterae partes a pluribus canendae supponuntur, quae
ab aliis officium dicitur.

18
See TINCTORIS, Terminorum Musicae Diffinitorium, pp. 12–13, 42–43, 40–41.
32 JULIE E. CUMMING

The Mass is a large composition for which the texts Kyrie, Et in terra, Patrem,
Sanctus, and Agnus, and sometimes other parts, are set for singing by several
voices. It is called the office by some.

In the eighth rule of the Liber de arte contrapuncti he associates the use of varietas
with the genre hierarchy:19

nec tot nec tales varietates uni cantilenae congruunt quot et quales uni
moteti nec tot et tales uni moteti quot et quales uni missae. Omnis itaque
resfacta pro qualitate et quantitate ejus diversificanda est.

… There is not as much variety in a chanson as in a motet, nor is there as

much variety in a motet as in a Mass. Every resfacta, therefore, must be
made diverse according to its quality and quantity.

nor do so many and such varieties enter into one chanson as so many and such in a
motet, nor so many and such in one motet as so many and such in one mass. Every
composed work, therefore, must be diverse in its quality and quantity.

The lowest genre in Tinctoris’s hierarchy is the chanson; it therefore has the least
varietas – and the most repetition. Something very like Josquin-style pervasive imi-
tation occurs in the chanson before it occurs in sacred music. The chanson is a set-
ting of a rhyming, scanning poem in a ‘forme fixe’. Each line of text receives a phrase
of music. Imitation at the beginning of a phrase serves to clarify presentation of the
poetic text: it introduces a new line of text, or articulates major sectional divisions.
The music of a chanson in a ‘forme fixe’, especially a rondeau, is also repeated mul-
tiple times in a complete performance.20 Many chansons of mid-century are imita-
tive – Ockeghem routinely uses imitation in his chansons (e.g. Ma bouche rit) even
though he avoids or conceals it in his sacred music.21 The imitation found in the mid-

19
TINCTORIS, Liber de arte contrapuncti, Book 3, ch. 8, p. 155; my translation is followed by Seay’s
more literal translation (TINCTORIS, The Art of Counterpoint, p. 139). The tripartite division of genres
found here and in the dictionary recalls the Rota virgiliana, the medieval division of literature into
Virgil’s three genres, Eclogue or Bucolic (humilis stilus), Georgic (mediocris stilus) and Epic (gravis
stilus). See T. LAWLER ed., The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garland, with introd., transl. and notes,
(Yale Studies in English, 182), New Haven, 1974, figure 3, pp. 40–41 and 86–89. The threefold
hierarchy also recalls the rhetorical division into three styles: grave, mediocre, and adtenuatum. See
GALLAGHER, Models of Varietas, p. 64.
20
This point was brought to my attention by David Fallows.
21
J. OCKEGHEM, Collected Works, 3: Motets and Chansons, ed. R. WEXLER with D. PLAMENAC,
Boston, 1992. Ma bouche rit is on p. 73. Other chansons in the same volume that use imitation, often
after the medial cadence if not at the opening, include Baisiés moy (p. 60), D’un autre amer (p. 61),
Fors seulement l’actente (pp. 62–63), L’autre d’antan (p. 71), and S’elle m’amera/Petite camusete (pp.
88–89).
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 33

fifteenth-century chanson resembles the later Josquin type: it occurs at the beginning
of a unit of text (the line of verse) and often begins with syllabic text setting, it is pre-
ceded by silence, and the time interval of imitation is normally at least a breve. Antoine
Busnoys and Firminus Caron are especially fond of imitation and sequential repeti-
tion. A famous example of an imitative chanson comes at the beginning of the Mellon
Chansonnier, Busnoys’ Bel aceuil.22 Here every phrase begins with imitation at the
unison after one breve, with a periodic effect very similar to that of Ave Maria.
The motet has a middle position in the genre hierarchy, and throughout the fif-
teenth century it borrows features from the outer limits of the hierarchy. Subgenres
of the motet therefore participate in genre hierarchies just as the overarching genres
do. The high-status motet subgenres resemble Mass movements, the low-status sub-
genres resemble chansons. Many of the big four-voice motets of the third quarter of
the fifteenth century aspired to the style height of the Mass, as shown by their bipar-
tite structure, use of duos, and tenor cantus firmi. These motets embraced variety and
shunned repetition, as we have seen in Flos de spina.23 If we are looking for repeti-
tion, therefore, we need to look at the bottom of the genre (and subgenre) hierarchy.
When I looked for imitation in motets copied between c. 1450 and 1470 I found it
primarily in two low subgenres: the song motet and the chant-paraphrase motet.24
Song motets are normally three-voice works with Latin texts; often they are
indistinguishable from chansons, or differ from chansons only in their avoidance of
the typical formal structures associated with the ‘formes fixes’. Many three-voice
pieces lead double or triple lives: as chansons with French texts, as textless, pre-
sumably instrumental pieces, often with descriptive titles, and as motets with Latin
texts. Caron’s Helas que pourra devenir (Example 3) is a perfect example, as we can
see from its inclusion with a Latin text (Ave sidus clarissimum) and a German tag
(Der seyden schwantcz) in the Glogauer Liederbuch (BerlPS 40098). This is one of
the most widely disseminated chansons of the period, found in twenty-two sources;
it inhabited a special borderland between the chanson, the motet, and the instrumental
trio known as the fantasy or the tricinium.25 Here we see many of the features of mid-
fifteenth-century-style imitation: short time interval, contradiction of meter, and con-
centration on two voices. Nevertheless there is a great deal of repetition here, much
of it quite obvious (material in Example 3 that is not repeated is enclosed in boxes).
As in the chanson the imitation serves to introduce new phrases of text. Only the con-

22
Transcribed in L.L. PERKINS and H. GAREY eds., The Mellon Chansonnier, New Haven, 1979, no.
1. On the date of this piece see D. FALLOWS, ‘Trained and immersed in all musical delights’: Towards
a New Picture of Busnoys, in P. HIGGINS ed., Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in
Late Medieval Music, Oxford, 1999, pp. 21–50; he puts it at 1470 or before, because its first appear-
ance is in the Dijon chansonnier (p. 45).
23
See CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 254–287.
24
See CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 200–204, 266–278.
25
D. FALLOWS, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, Oxford, 1999, pp. 181–182.
34 JULIE E. CUMMING
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 35

Example 3. Firminus Caron, Helas/Ave sidus/Der seyden schwantcz, bb. 1–39, Glogauer Lieder-
buch (BerlPS 40098, now in Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska), fol. Aiiiv, Aiiiv, Aiiiv.
Material in boxes is the only music not repeated.

tratenor part in the first three systems and the material leading up to the cadences are
not repeated.
Johannes Touront’s Compangant omnes/ O generosa/ Je suis seulet (Example
4) is another song motet found in several different forms. It is found in five different
sources with two different Latin texts, no text at all, and with a French ‘incipit’ in a
chansonnier, BolC Q16.26 It is in three voices and sometimes uses imitation similar
to that found in the chanson, to begin phrases and articulate the form (see bb. 11–12,
28–30). Nevertheless, Compangant omnes (Example 4) is higher in the subgenre
hierarchy than Caron’s Helas (Example 3), because it looks more like a Mass move-
ment and less like a chanson. It has the bipartite OC (triple to duple) structure of the
Mass movement and the big four-voice motets. Because Compangant is higher in
the subgenre hierarchy it also uses less repetition, and the repetition is often con-
cealed in the middle of a phrase, as in Example 2, Flos de spina (repeated passages
in Example 4 are enclosed in boxes; see bb. 17–18, 24–6, and 32–35).

26
See CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 180, 197, 202–204.
36 JULIE E. CUMMING
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 37

Example 4. Johannes Touront, Compangant omnes/O generosa/Je suis seulet, bb. 1–38, TrentC 89
(Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio, Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali, MS 1376),
fol. 123v–124. Material in boxes is the only music that is repeated.

Repetition and pervasive imitation thus enter the motet via the lowest subgenre of
the motet: the song motet. In the chanson and in the Latin-texted song motet, imita-
tion serves to bring out the structure of the text. In the textless instrumental versions
of these pieces imitation becomes a way of articulating form in the absence of text.
The same could be said of the highly melismatic duet and trio sections of Mass move-
ments, which are usually much more imitative than the four-voice sections. Imitation
is intensified in the textless instrumental tricinia composed in the decades around
1500; think of Josquin’s La Bernardina, or Johannes Ghiselin’s La Alfonsina.27

27
On this kind of piece see STROHM, The Rise of European Music, pp. 560–570. There were also four-
voice song motets closely related to the three-voice motet/chanson/tricinium group, such as the four-
voice pieces in the ‘peacock’s tail complex’ including Barbingant’s Pfawinschwanz and sections of
Martini’s Mass on that model; see CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 254–256.
38 JULIE E. CUMMING

Another subgenre of the mid-fifteenth-century motet that includes imitation is the

chant-paraphrase motet. Like the song motet, the chant-paraphrase motet is low in
the subgenre hierarchy, recalling – if sometimes distantly – prescribed liturgical music
and improvised polyphony, genres so low that they do not even make it into Tinctoris’s
schema. Some chant-paraphrase motets aim high; they use the form and scale of the
Mass movement, and paraphrase the melody so elaborately that it is almost unrec-
ognizable (e.g. Ockeghem’s Alma redemptoris). But many chant-paraphrase motets
are concerned with presenting the chant and its text in a recognizable form. A good
example of a chant-paraphrase motet that uses imitation and repetition is the anony-
mous Ave beatissima from TrentC 89 (Example 5).28 The chant is paraphrased in the
discantus, but also appears often in the tenor voice. Imitation is found here at the
beginning of every chant phrase. Often the chant is subject to Vorimitation (see bb.
56, 66, 71, 84, and 90). Sometimes only one voice will imitate the chant (as in m.
78), but often imitation in this piece is found in three or four voices (imitation and
repeated material is enclosed in boxes on the score). In other cases the imitation of
the chant, begun in three or four voices, will continue to the end of the phrase in the
discantus and tenor (as in mm. 55–64). As in the chanson, imitation serves to clarify
the structure of the work by emphasizing the opening of each new phrase of the chant
melody.

28
CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 271–274.
FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 39
40 JULIE E. CUMMING
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 41

Example 5. Anonymous, Ave beatissima, bb. 55–103, TrentC 89 (Trent, Castello del Buon Con-
siglio, Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali, MS 1376), fol. 352v–354. Material in
boxes is the only music that is repeated.

A NEW KIND OF MOTET

While the song motet and the chant-paraphrase motet do make use of imitation, they
do not yet quite resemble Ave Maria. They are still melismatic, use imitation some-
what erratically, and lack the repeated duos and paired imitation so typical of the style
we are looking for. In the 1470s or 1480s, however, a new subgenre of motet emerged:
the subgenre of which Ave Maria is a member, and which includes the Milanese
motetti missales. I will therefore call it the ‘Milan motet’.29 This new, simpler kind
of four-voice motet is very different from the great bipartite tenor motets that aspired
to the status of the cyclic Mass. It uses a much larger selection of texts, drawn from

29
This is inspired by Joshua Rifkin’s description of the style in J. RIFKIN, Munich, Milan, and a Marian
Motet.
42 JULIE E. CUMMING

a variety of sources, including poetic prayers and sequences. These texts often divide
into stanzas, and use accentual meter and rhyme, like chansons.30 New kinds of texts
were accompanied by a new kind of music: a music that looks to the chanson for
many of its features. Most of these motets abandon perfect tempus and the free-
wheeling constantly changing melismatic style. Instead they use the cut-C typical of
chansons after c. 1470, with the occasional song-like tripla section. Like chansons
they set text syllabically at the beginnings of phrases, with many repeated rhythmic
patterns. Some even quote chansons – Josquin examples include Christe fili Dei from
Vultum tuum (J’ay pris amours), Tu facis (D’ung aultre amer), Victimae paschali
(J’ay pris and De tous biens).31 Some of the new motet texts have no associated pre-
existent chant melody. Where there is a textual reference to chant, however, these
new motets often recall the imitative treatment of the chant-paraphrase motet by
quoting the chant in imitation in all voices. This is exactly what happens at the opening
of Ave Maria, where the sequence melody is used as the basis for the first four points
of imitation, after which the piece is freely composed.
This new subgenre, the ‘Milan motet’, thus adopted and adapted the techniques
of repetition and imitation that had been developed in the lower genres and subgenres
such as the chanson, the song-motet, and the chant-paraphrase motet. The position
of the motet in the middle of the genre hierarchy allowed it to reinvent itself time
after time. In the late fifteenth century reference to the low end of the hierarchy opened
the door to repetition and pervasive imitation in all genres of sacred music. By c.
1500 pervasive imitation had taken over. But why did this happen? What kinds of
forces could have caused composers to abandon Tinctoris’s preference for varietas
in sacred music?

30
For studies of motteti missales and their texts, see: T. NOBLITT, The Ambrosian Motetti Missales
Repertory, in Musica disciplina, 22 (1968), pp. 77–103; L.H. WARD, The Motetti Missales Repertory
Reconsidered, in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), pp. 491–523; P. MACEY,
Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Musical Patronage in Milan: Compère, Weerbeke, and Josquin, in Early
Music History 15 (1996), pp. 147–212; L. FINSCHER, Motetti missales, in L. FINSCHER ed., Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd ed., Kassel, 1994, Sachteil 6, cols. 549–552; N. GASSER,
The Motet Cycles of the Gaffurius Codices and the New Status of the Motet in Late-Fifteenth-Century
Italy, in Abstracts of Papers Read at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Kansas
City, 5 November, 1999; and PERKINS and MACEY, Motet, Renaissance, pp. 207–208.
31
Other motets that could be said to belong to this same subgenre quote relatively ‘low status’ lauda
tunes; see J. BLOXAM, ‘La Contenance italienne’: The Motets on Beata es Maria by Compère,
Obrecht, and Brumel, in Early Music History, 11 (1992), pp. 39–89.
 FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY 43

A NEW KIND OF PATRON

The reasons for an aesthetic change such as the shift from variety to repetition des-
cribed here are very difficult to establish. But perhaps we can connect it to changing
forms of music patronage in the second half of the fifteenth century.
Most of the leading mid-fifteenth-century composers of the generation of
Ockeghem and Busnoys lived and worked in northern France and the Low Countries.
They were trained in Northern choir schools, and were employed either by cathe-
drals and collegiate churches, or by the King of France or the Duke of Burgundy,
patrons with vast amounts of power and few direct competitors. The arbiters of
musical taste in sacred music were churchmen and other musicians. Musicians
working in France and the Netherlands were therefore free to develop a highly com-
plex style of great beauty that is perhaps deliberately mysterious, or self-consciously
arcane: a music that valued varietas over repetition. Complex, difficult music in this
context could have been a sign of power and authority.
Most musicians of the Josquin generation, in contrast, spent much of their adult
lives working in Italy for Italian princes such as the Dukes of Ferrara and Milan.
These princes were in immediate competition with a substantial peer group.32 In con-
trast to the King of France or the Duke of Burgundy, the Italian princes had relatively
small holdings and sometimes tenuous claims to power and authority. They sought
to win people over, cultivate support, and make alliances. They may have wanted
motets that were easy for courtiers and envoys to understand and enjoy: music that
was more like the French chansons found in so many Italian manuscripts of the mid-
to late fifteenth century.
Music characterized by repetition is easier for a lay audience to process, and
easier to remember. As Leonard Meyer observes, “in music the existence of redun-
dancy … facilitates perception and comprehension”.33 Ave Maria is much easier to

32
See STROHM, The Rise of European Music, p. 602 and ff., on the “three young rulers [who] must
have planned long beforehand to establish themselves in the great series of musical patrons”, Lorenzo
de’ Medici of Florence, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, duke of Milan, and Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara.
On the competition between Ferrara and Milan see L. LOCKWOOD, Strategies of Musical Patronage
in the Fifteenth Century: The Cappella of Ercole I d’Este, in I. FENLON ed., Music in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources, and Texts, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 227–248. The literature
on the Italian patrons is now vast; major studies include L. LOCKWOOD, Music In Renaissance
Ferrara 1400–1505, Oxford, 1984; P. MERKLEY and L.M. MERKLEY, Music and Patronage in the
Sforza Court, Turnhout, 1999; W. PRIZER, Music at the Court of the Sforza: The Birth and Death of
a Musical Center, in Musica disciplina, 43 (1989), pp. 141–193; A. ATLAS, Music at the Aragonese
Court of Naples, Cambridge, 1985; F. D’ACCONE, The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during
the 15th Century, in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 14 (1961), pp. 307–358.
33
L. MEYER, A Universe of Universals, in The Spheres of Music: A Gathering of Essays, Chicago, 2000,
p. 292.
44 JULIE E. CUMMING

recall than is Flos de spina, and it has a greater immediate impact on the listener. The
‘dumbing down’ of sacred music through the introduction of repetition may have
appealed to these Italian patrons of the Josquin generation, out to impress their sub-
jects and their competitors with music that was easy to appreciate, not difficult to
understand.
Tinctoris’s almost exaggerated emphasis on the importance of varietas in his
treatises of the 1470s may have resulted from his own sense that variety and com-
plexity were no longer sufficiently valued by Italian patrons and audiences, including
his own patron in Naples, Ferrante I of Aragon.34 Tinctoris is known for speaking
most strongly about musical matters when correcting others’ errors or misconcep-
tions. Perhaps he sensed that the aesthetic tide was turning away from variety and
toward repetition.

34
On Tinctoris and the Aragonese court of Naples, see PERKINS and GAREY, The Mellon Chansonnier,
1, pp. 17–22.