CHAPTER 9 MUSIC IN THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE AND UNIVERSITY: CONDUCTUS AND MOTET

The thirteenth century witnessed the advent of polyphony not tied exclusively to the church. At Paris polyphony spread from the confines of the cathedral and the liturgy to the close (a residential precinct next to the church), the fledgling university, and ultimately to purely worldly environments.

Île de la Cité The Île de la Cité (an island in the middle of the Seine River) and the close of Notre Dame of Paris as they appear in the earliest map of Paris. The area of the close is to the north (left) of the cathedral.

The Latin Quarter In the twelfth century the various schools located in the close and elsewhere near the cathedral of Notre Dame began to move across the Seine River to the Left Bank (south bank). Because the one language known universally by the students was Latin, the area came to be called the Latin Quarter. In 1215 the pope gave formal recognition to a new Universitas in Paris—a unified collection of all the schools and colleges under a single administrative head called the chancellor.

Phillip the Chancellor The most famous chancellor in the thirteenth century was Philip of Nemours, called Philip the Chancellor (c ). Some seventy musical settings with religious or moralistic texts are attributed to Philip. Most of these belong to the genre of medieval music called conductus.

CONDUCTUS The term “conductus” derives from the Latin infinitive ducere, to lead. As the name suggests, the conductus was sung as the clergy moved from place to place or was engaged in some other type of kinetic activity, such as dance. Conducti appear as processional pieces, as insertions into liturgical dramas, as accompaniments to dances, and as songs to celebrate Easter and Christmas, much as Christmas carols do today. Conducti for one, two, three, or occasionally even four voices survive. Unlike organum and the later motet, all voices of a conductus are newly composed, even the tenor.

Orientis partibus Orientis partibus is a semi-humorous conductus associated with the Feast of Fools, a day coming soon after Christmas when the lower (and generally younger) clergy took over the service of the church. The ass in Orientis partibus is the humble beast that carried Mary and the Christ child to Bethlehem, and a legacy of this melody (the lowest voice) and text survives today in the Christmas carol The Friendly Beast.

Orientis partibus

Dic, Christi veritas Philip the Chancellor’s conductus Dic, Christi veritas (Speak Christian Truth) is longer, more serious, and even vindictive in tone. In it Philip delivers a blistering sermon railing against those, including the pope, who seek to curtail his authority at the University. His is a highly learned text that makes frequent illusion to ancient and biblical history. The music is periodically punctuated by caudae, passages of florid, melismatic singing.

Motet The motet first appeared in Paris around Originally the term (diminutive of the French mot meaning “word”) signaled a discant clausula to which sacred and eventually vernacular words had been added. (By the fifteenth century the motet had come to connote almost any vocal work setting a sacred Latin text.) The purpose of the added words (mots) was to expand upon the religious theme presented in the tenor voice (a Gregorian chant). Sometimes the vernacular texts of the upper voices were very worldly, but even the most profane text could be interpreted as a spiritual message by means of an allegorical reading.

Examples 9-2A, 9-2B and 9-2C demonstrate how first Latin and then French texts were added successively to the upper voices of what was originally a two-voice discant clausula.

Parisian Motet Eventually the motet spread beyond the cathedral, close, and university to the streets of Paris. Even the sacred tenor, which up to now had been a portion of a Gregorian chant, might be replaced by a secular tune. The three voice motet On parole de batre/A Paris/Frese nouvele extols the pleasures of urban living in medieval Paris. Here the tenor is a street cry of the sort a fruit vendor used to advertise his produce. The late thirteenth-century Parisian motet On parole de batre/A Paris/Frese nouvele in which all voices are in French.