Trying to ID the tenor in a Montpelier Codex piece
Brian Link
obviously a chant or song of some sort, but the edition I have
provides no text - it's from CPDL, and found at
http://maucamedus.net/PDF/huic-ut.pdf.
Any ideas on how I'd find out what that tenor is?
Thanks!
BLink
"God created all tribes of men, and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each"
- Geronimo
John Howell
>The piece is "Huic Ut", Montpellier codex, f.393v-394v. The tenor is
>obviously a chant or song of some sort, but the edition I have
>provides no text - it's from CPDL, and found at
>http://maucamedus.net/PDF/huic-ut.pdf.
>
>Any ideas on how I'd find out what that tenor is?
>
>Thanks!
>
>BLink
Not much of an edition, actually, with so little of the text
underlaid. But no, I can't identify the tenor tune. Sorry.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:John....@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
Brian Link
wrote:
>At 9:43 PM -0500 10/18/09, Brian Link wrote:
>>The piece is "Huic Ut", Montpellier codex, f.393v-394v. The tenor is
>>obviously a chant or song of some sort, but the edition I have
>>provides no text - it's from CPDL, and found at
>>http://maucamedus.net/PDF/huic-ut.pdf.
>>
>>Any ideas on how I'd find out what that tenor is?
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>BLink
>
>Not much of an edition, actually, with so little of the text
>underlaid. But no, I can't identify the tenor tune. Sorry.
>
>John
I'm curious how you or other musicologists would approach a puzzle
like this, though. It's definitely a tuneful melody, but you can't
Google a melody...
BLink
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
- Richard Feynman
jerom...@comcast.net
> On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:25:22 -0400, John Howell <John.How...@vt.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >At 9:43 PM -0500 10/18/09, Brian Link wrote:
> >>The piece is "Huic Ut", Montpellier codex, f.393v-394v. The tenor is
> >>obviously a chant or song of some sort, but the edition I have
> >>provides no text - it's from CPDL, and found at
> >>http://maucamedus.net/PDF/huic-ut.pdf.
>
> >>Any ideas on how I'd find out what that tenor is?
>
> >>Thanks!
>
> >>BLink
>
> >Not much of an edition, actually, with so little of the text
> >underlaid. But no, I can't identify the tenor tune. Sorry.
>
> >John
>
> I'm curious how you or other musicologists would approach a puzzle
> like this, though. It's definitely a tuneful melody, but you can't
> Google a melody...
>
No, and online melody finders are not likely to be of much use,
either. If a liturgical melody is suspected, then the place to start
is with the modal classification (in this case, mode 8,
Hypomixolydian). Then start combing the sources for chants in that
mode.
There are a fair number of tenors in Montpellier that are not of
liturgical origin, however, and their identification is much more
difficult, since few secular tunes from that long ago occur in
multiple sources. Discovering a "lost" tenor of this sort, when it
does occur, is largely a matter of luck. I have not checked the
scholarly sources for this motet, but I fully expect they have not
succeeded in identifying this tenor, either.
--
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."
John Howell
>On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:25:22 -0400, John Howell <John....@vt.edu>
>wrote:
>
>>At 9:43 PM -0500 10/18/09, Brian Link wrote:
>>>The piece is "Huic Ut", Montpellier codex, f.393v-394v. The tenor is
>>>obviously a chant or song of some sort, but the edition I have
>>>provides no text - it's from CPDL, and found at
> >>http://maucamedus.net/PDF/huic-ut.pdf.
> >>
> >>>
>>underlaid. But no, I can't identify the tenor tune. Sorry.
>>
>>John
>
>I'm curious how you or other musicologists would approach a puzzle
>like this, though. It's definitely a tuneful melody, but you can't
>Google a melody...
Well, I can think of several ways to approach it, but most of them
require a well-stocked library and some serious research.
Since it's Montpellier, I would start with the assumption that it is
indeed a fragment of chant melody (which would then have allowed it
to be inserted into that particular chant as a substitute clausula,
although obviously without the added texts in the upper voices). And
there may indeed be a searchable database of chant melodies somewhere
on line, although I haven't had need to search it out and it didn't
exist when I was in grad school.
The second approach might be to find the work of Hans Tischler, who
was on the I.U. faculty precisely because he was 'DA MAN' when it
came to 13th century motets! I can't recall where his work was
published--perhaps in the CMM or some similar collection. But while
he was sometimes arbitrary in his opinions in the courses he taught,
he was highly respected as an expert in his field, and if he studied
that particular motet I'm quite sure he would have identified the
chant.
The problem, of course, is that the particular chant fragment isn't
necessarily from the BEGINNING of a chant, and of course the fact
that in the CPDL version you have it isn't identified by any text
incipit. That means you can't simply look it up in the Liber or one
of the other chant books, and takes away the quick and easy way of
identifying it, which may make the job impossible.
But fortunately, you don't NEED to identify it to give a good
performance, and in that I definitely give you all my best!
jerom...@comcast.net
> At 11:42 PM -0500 10/19/09, Brian Link wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
I think Tischler's two most relevant publication are:
The Montpellier Codex (8 vols.)
Madison: A-R Editions, c1978-1985
The Earliest Motets (to Circa 1270): A Complete Comparative Edition
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
There is also the earlier complete edition of Mo, edited by Yvonne
Rokseth:
Polyphonies du XIIIe siècle: le manuscrit H 196 de la Faculté de
médecine de Montpellier (4 vols.)
Paris: Éditions de l'Oiseau lyre, Louise B. M. Dyer, 1935-[39],
though this has been largely superseded by Tischler's edition. In
addition, you may find this performing edition by Tischler useful:
A Medieval Motet Book: A Collection of 13th Century Motets in Various
Vocal and Instrumental Combinations, compiled and edited for study and
modern performance with notes and English translations
New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1973.
If memory serves (and, as I said in an earlier post, I have not yet
dropped by the library to consult these editions), a fair number of
the Mo motets have tenors whose identity has eluded musicologists
(even the redoubtable Hans Tischler) to date. John Howell has given a
better explanation than I did of why this might be so.
--
Jerry Kohl
Brian Link
wrote:
Thanks for the tips, John!
The only reason I'd like to locate the tenor is to program it with the
motet. The motet itself is only about 1'30" long, but it'd be nice to
situate it with its ancestor.
BLink
--------------------------
"The worst thing about censorship is [redacted]"
John Howell
>
>Thanks for the tips, John!
>
>The only reason I'd like to locate the tenor is to program it with the
>motet. The motet itself is only about 1'30" long, but it'd be nice to
>situate it with its ancestor.
Ah, that does make sense, yes. Didn't think of it that way.
jerom...@comcast.net
> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:34:01 -0400, John Howell <John.How...@vt.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >At 11:42 PM -0500 10/19/09, Brian Link wrote:
I suspect that this particular motet is one for which the tenor has
never been identified. In order to avoid the impression of programming
a brief encore, you might try the strategy of singing the tenor alone
first, then repeating and adding the duplum, and repeating again
adding the triplum. Not a particularly original idea, but is has
served well for many other groups in the past, and it has the didactic
merit of calling audience attention to the tenor.