In order to answer the question which is the title of this essay, two smaller questions must be answered: 'What was the Ars Nova and how did it differ to the Ars Antiqua?' and 'How intertwined were religion – specifically Catholicism – and music during this period?'
The Ars Antiqua is generally understood to have started in the mid-to-late twelfth century, and come to an end some 150 years later.[1] Its 'successor', the Ars Nova, is dated as having begun as soon as the Ars Antiqua ended, but like essentially all musical styles (even those as modern as New Complexity), nailing down a start or end date is completely impossible as there was no particular point in time that all composers of one style suddenly died or moved on.
Certainly one distinguishing feature of the Ars Antiqua is the use of rhythmic modes. These were originally an innovation in themselves, ‘replacing the even, unmeasured flow of earlier polyphony (and plainchant) with recurrent patterns of long and short notes’[2], as Richard Hoppin puts it. These combinations of longs and breves built up the same feet we see in poetry: iambs, trochees, anapaests, etc. In this way, note duration came to be viewed through the relationships between notes:[3] ‘a system of proportional measurement’.[4] While longs and breves both had durations[5] assigned to them, their durations were thought of as the ratio of one to the other, as opposed to us today thinking of a minim as consisting of two beats.
I have mentioned this particular feature of the Ars Antiqua as a set-up for your understanding of how it was broken down. The whole understanding of rhythm in the thirteenth century was really subject to what one could call ‘note-value inflation’. Richard Hoppin writes:
'Music of the thirteenth century […] moved almost entirely in triple groups of longs and breves – in perfect mood, in other words. With the increasing use of shorter notes, the breve naturally became a longer value, and music of the fourteenth century moves primarily in breves, semibreves, and minims […] Many pieces restrict themselves to one of these[6] combinations, and make no use of mood'.[7]
The introduction of smaller subdivisions is what we can identify as the conception of what we today call time signatures. When the breve was split into two semibreves (the jargon for this is 'imperfect time'), a half circle was drawn as a mensuration sign. Change the breve to a semibreve, and you have what we now refer to as 'common time'.[8] German musicologist Ursula Günther also defines these mensuration signs (others include a circle for perfect time and a dot, used to denote perfect prolation) as time signatures, arising in 1320.[9]
The fundamental differences between the Ars Nova and Ars Antiqua are not just theoretical, but also aesthetic: we see an increase in secular composition. Of all thirty-four extant works of Jehan de Lescurel (a prominent composer from the Ars Nova), one hundred per cent are secular and all minus two are settings of the ‘Formes Fixes’ poetic forms. From all of the output of Guillaume de Machaut, probably the most well-known composer of music in the Ars Nova style, almost everything is secular. Every surviving composition from Grimace, Pierre des Molins, Jehan Vaillant and Magister Franciscus is either a ballade, virelai, or rondeau. Compare this to the oeuvre of composers from the Ars Antiqua.[10] Of the few surviving works of Léonin and Pérotin, all are religious. Of course, secular music did exist in the time of the Ars Antiqua, but this is fundamentally different to it being written in the style of the Ars Antiqua. An example that springs to mind is the troubadours of southern France: their (much better preserved) music was secular, and written concurrently with works of the Ars Antiqua (and all the way into the 14th century), yet its style is such that it is considered separate.
The music of the troubadours was monophonic in texture.[11] Even if it was at the time accompanied by a musical instrument,[12] what was preserved for us to read today (and what is the essence of the music) is just a melody.[13] Other music which was being written pre-Ars Nova: music of the Ars Antiqua (the texts of which, as we have discussed, were religious), was largely polyphonic. The point I am making here is that during the period of the Ars Antiqua, polyphony was only really found in religious music, whereas during the Ars Nova it was more evenly spread: what we will discuss later is whether or not this is something to pick up on.
One part of the title which is necessary for consideration is the use of the word 'catalyst'. This defines the transition from the Ars Antiqua to the Ars Nova as having a specific turning point, rather than being gradual. These are, to put it simply, the two understandings of how the Ars Nova began. The former relies on sheer theoretical difference between the two styles, notably being propagated by Richard Hoppin:
'Fourteenth-century Frenchmen implied their scorn of the outmoded and old-fashioned music of the previous century when they called their own music an ars nova, a new art. […] The same spirit that produced the Ars Nova animated the Italian creators of the Nuove Musiche in the early seventeenth century and the more obviously ‘new music’ of the twentieth century.'[14]
I will now remind you of the question that remains to be answered: 'Was increased secularism the catalyst for musical innovation in the Ars Nova?' How exactly can one answer this, without identifying correlations which prove no point at all? The answer is to firstly look at the context of the music: the societal circumstances in which it was written. Then, one should understand the provenance of the music itself, why it was written, and why it was performed. Finally, you can string the context of the music together with the substance of the music itself, and determine whether it tends towards a 'yes' or 'no' answer.
One example I used in the previous section was Jehan de Lescurel (fl. early 14th century[15]), a prominent composer of the Ars Nova. It is likely that he received his musical education in Notre Dame Cathedral.[16] His surviving music, which is – as I have already mentioned – entirely secular, might be seen to not be matching up with the connection I made earlier, that music of the Ars Nova gained the polyphony it lacked in days gone by. Every piece of de Lescurel's surviving oeuvre is monophonic, except one, written in three-part polyphony. The passing of time, one could argue, justifies this inconsistency. This would also explain why de Lescurel's works are found in earlier mensural notation, rather than the 'fully developed system of the Ars Nova' – as Hoppin puts it.[17] The music of Jehan de Lescurel is considered of a style transitional between that of the trouvères and the Ars Nova. Transition is certainly more noticeable than nothing at all, and so I believe there is still a connection to be made.
The troubadours ought to be viewed not just as having set secular texts to music, but actually as a tradition which had little connection to organised religion at all. The concept of fin’amor (Occitan for what we would call in English 'courtly love'), which was a central topic to troubadour/trouvère poetry, was viewed as sinful by Christians of the day, making use of terminology usually reserved for God when describing a love interest.[18] Geordie Lynch writes on the philosophy behind this poetry:
'Their lyrics demonstrate a significant connection to Catholic theology, [but] they hint at questioning the Church as an authority'[19]
Fin’amor developed into its own philosophy, which viewed romantic love as one of the central merits of being human. As this was in direct contrast with the Catholic Church’s teaching on love and sexuality (as well as on orthodoxy versus heresy), the relationship between the troubadours and the Church was naturally strained. While there are cases in history of people named as both troubadours and clergymen, it is unsurprising that they renounced their life as a troubadour during their conversion.[20] In fact, one who became a crusader did not do it for religious purposes, but instead to meet a woman.[21]
Many modern-day historians consider one particular action of the Church a more-or-less final nail in the troubadour’s coffin: the Albigensian Crusade. The brutality of this campaign[22] is best reflected in the words (as documented by Caesarius of Heisterbach) of Cistercian abbot Arnaud Amalric, when confronted with the problem of deciding which residents of a city captured should be killed for heresy:
‘Kill them all; for the Lord will know His own.’[23]
After the Albigensian Crusade, with few Occitan courts – originally the workplace of many troubadours – still in existence, and with the Church not exactly being fin'amor’s greatest ambassador, the disappearance of the troubadours over the next century was an obvious development. Composers writing in the Ars Nova style were still often employed by aristocracy, but instead of as a sort of low-status court musician, they tended to serve as personal secretaries to a particular royal (for Guillaume de Machaut, this was John of Luxembourg),[24] or as found in the Ivrea Codex, 'Master of the Royal Motets'. Despite not having been a 'trouvère trouvère', the music of Jehan de Lescurel, as well as of many others whose names have been lost to time, appears to have had a great impact on to-come musical innovation, due to its transitional nature. The writing of secular monophonic song in a style so melismatic and ornamented it could not have been written by a troubadour,[25] the use of mensural notation, as well as the arrangement of one of these – A vous, douce debbonaire – in three-part polyphony, could indicate validation of polyphony's – as well as much other innovation identified during this period's – moving into secular music being as a result of these composers. Think of it this way: theory, developed by the likes of Pierre de la Croix, is utilised by a composer, who applies it to music it was not intended for (settings of the formes fixes). With polyphony and further notational innovation introduced, it is not hard to see how secular music's acquisition of polyphony traces back to transitional composers such as Jehan de Lescurel.
During this time the Papacy moved from Rome to Avignon, which is widely regarded to have weakened the Catholic Church's influence in Europe, due the Church politicising and serving certain – royal – interests. For the mere fact that the Holy See had 'political foes',[26] some lost respect for the Church. The papacy moving to France would not have been inconsequential for music. As the Ars Nova style was primarily a French – though it did appear in other countries, notably Italy – development, if we acknowledge the connection many composers had to the Church, it is not difficult to see. The Ivrea Codex, one of the larger collections of music in the Ars Nova style, is said – by some – to have originated in the papal court in Avignon.[27] Therefore, this example would lean towards disagreement with the title of this essay as the codex (also including twenty-five settings of parts of the Ordinary of the Mass) contains thirty-seven – mostly isorhythmic – motets, despite having arisen from the most unsecular of places, and at such a time.[28] What changes this is recent research that suggests a different origin to the Ivrea Codex. Ursula Günther writes:
'The three occurrences of the Kyrie Sol iusticie and the prominent placing of the two motets on Gaston Fébus suggest, in my opinion, that the manuscript IV comes from the court of the prince of Foix and Béarn. The motet on Pope Clemens VI (1342-1352) appears only as the fifty-first item in the contents and offers no more support for Avignon as provenance than the concordances with the manuscript Apt.'[29]
Considering that the 1380 plot to overthrow Count Gaston of Foix was led by a Bishop of Lescar, and that Fébus was known to have donated little to the Church, one might say that the Ivrea Codex’s contents were born out of opposition to the Church’s authority. Additionally, the Chantilly Codex – which is an example of the rhythmically complex Ars Subtilior style – contains motets in praise of Fébus.
Five of the eighty-six compositions in the Ivrea Codex are attributed to Guillaume de Machaut, but only one of these five is a setting of one of the formes fixes: in this case, a rondeau. One with access to an inventory of the Ivrea Codex, as well as a vague knowledge of who de Machaut was, might assume there is a trend here: that Guillaume de Machaut was primarily a writer of religious music, notably Messe de Nostre Dame, the first known setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by one composer. While this is not the case (most of the music that de Machaut wrote was secular[30]), the images of Guillaume de Machaut as a clergyman whose settings of religious texts are of primary importance and of him as a composer whose links to the Church were to be expected due to the times he lived in both – on the surface, anyway – have some merit. It would be easy enough to say that the innovation in de Machaut’s music traces its roots back to others' work (which, as with any other music, it largely did) and leave it at that, however understanding the true nature of his canonry at Notre-Dame de Reims gives us an alternative theory to explore.
De Machaut held the position of canon at various cathedrals throughout his life, with his final appointment being in Reims in 1338 (and solely Reims from 1340). This position is better viewed as merely a title, however, as he was just one of Notre-Dame de Reims' seventy-four canons and – according to Roger Bowers – had the status of a 'transient visitor'.[31] With this, as well as the fact that throughout his career Guillaume de Machaut only ever wrote one piece of music for use in the liturgy, in mind, would it be sensible to say that de Machaut's non-secular motets developed from his own faith, rather than as a result of his canonry at Reims?
His application of fin’amor in motets and settings of the formes fixes might give us an answer. In contrast to the troubadours’ new way of thinking (complete with a combination of religious and sexual language), de Machaut attempted to synthesise fin’amor and Christian social teaching. Justin Lavacek writes:
'Because the amorous pair is in textual counterpoint with scripture, some mediaeval audiences may have received the secular lover as allegorical of a spiritual supplicant who also seeks salvific union with his respective saviour. This correlation is fitting in how Machaut's polyphony often embodies the chief virtue extolled by the amant and supplicant in mediaeval devotion, that of submission to a venerated entity. The composer-poet thus executed his job both as court clerk and canon of the church, modelling proper chivalric courtship and spiritual deference in his motets.'[32]
If we accept that de Machaut's motets' using of religious texts is down to his personal faith, and that the Messe de Nostre Dame was written specifically for the liturgy, does this line up with the spread of isorhythm? Otto Gombosi lists the Messe’s isorhythmic movements as follows: Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, the Credo’s Amen (not the Gloria’s Amen, as Armand Machabey suggests), and the Ite missa est.[33] Therefore, if we count the sections of the work as eight (six movements plus two Amens), sixty-three per cent is isorhythmic. Compared to this, of twenty-four motets written by de Machaut, eighty-eight per cent are isorhythmic.[34] Where this theory may meet opposition is de Machaut’s settings of the formes fixes, notably ballades, where just one of forty-two is in 'the iron grip of isorhythm'.[35] The assertion that the poetry being set determines the form the music is written in, I believe, keeps it upright: what causes this specific happening is not whether the poetry is secular or not, but rather its structure.
Foreshadowing Richard Hoppin’s comparison of the 'Ars Nova aesthetic' to the 'new music' of Schönberg, Babbit, Stockhausen, etc. – always writing music decisively modern and original – Guillaume de Machaut 'stressed the importance of newness as an aesthetic ideal'. Jaques Boogaart writes:
'It is my assumption that his 'newness' can be found especially in the detail of the compositions, as in the chanson-genres of which he fixed the forms, yet endowed each work with an individual and special character.'
Nowhere in fourteenth-century France could be described as secular. The state was intrinsically linked to the Church, and this has led to the misconception that all music was as well. However, if we view music's secularism as 'secularism of purpose', a clear link between innovative compositional techniques, new forms of notation and nonreligious philosophies underpinning the music can be seen.
With this in mind, the methodology of this essay[36] should make more sense. The societal circumstances and provenance of a piece of music, which I mentioned, are summarised for the Ars Nova, but here is a more precise example.
If this were a study of Messe de Nostre Dame, I might have written of stylistic similarities to the Tournai Mass, and thus its development from Franconian notation. What particularly interests me about this piece is its use of isorhythm; the way I could 'string this together' with the piece’s context is by comparing it to the aforementioned Tournai Mass, which despite being of the same genre and purpose, does not use isorhythm or newer notation systems (that, of course, is explained by the movement of time). This is a correlation between the use of such techniques in liturgical music and time, but one can only verify whether or not the music's provenance affects its composition through specific reading up on the histories of such pieces, techniques, and their composers. Here, we might look at the origins of isorhythm in music,[37] and the personal circumstances of Guillaume de Machaut.
For the particular question which I set out to answer in this essay, each point which was made in the discussion tends towards agreeing or disagreeing. For example, my point about transitional composers such as Jehan de Lescurel points in agreement with the title statement, as during the Ars Nova (in contrast to the Ars Antiqua), the torch of musical innovation was – predominantly – carried forward by composers of secular music.
The Ivrea Codex’s provenance supports the idea that increased secularism wasn’t not the catalyst for musical innovation in the Ars Nova, as the likelihood of its coming from the court of Count Gaston III of Foix solves the 'problem' of a manuscript containing so many isorhythmic motets coming from a Papal court. The information I have provided about the Ivrea Codex could be expanded upon, in the realm of composer background:
Though the codex cites works from fourteen composers, somewhere around half its contents are anonymous.[38] Of the fourteen who are named, we are unsure on the identities of five. Two, Depansis and Sortes, are reckoned by Gilbert Reaney to not be actual composers, but rather forms of designation ‘to distinguish the work from other settings of the same text’.[39] Musicologist Karl Kügle writes: 'there are sufficient grounds to doubt whether designations such as 'sortes' […] should be considered composer attributions at all […] 'sortes' may refer not to a composer but to an as yet undetermined feature of the compositions in question'.[40] There is another, 'Master of the Royal Motets', who clearly existed, but whose identity is not known. For somebody of his relation to royalty, it may seem anomalous that his only contribution to the Ivrea Codex is the same Ite, missa est found in the Tournai Mass. It is important to note, however, that such a title was (much like today’s 'Master of the King’s Music'), not a full-time position one held, and that composers such as Matheus de Sancto Johanne worked in both the courts of Robert of Geneva (at the time Archbishop of Cambrai) and Louis I of Anjou (at different times), and became chaplain of Avignon's Papal Chapel during the 1380s. Again, thinking about 'secularism of purpose': his motet 'Are post libamina odas atque carmina / Nunc surgunt in populo viri mercatores' (found in the British Library's Old Hall Manuscript) is unusual among others of the same time, despite being a setting of religious texts. Motets were considered 'too subtle' for the average listener, and so were for the most part confined to musical circles during this period.[41] As such, their development was not bound by liturgy, in much the same way that de Sancto Johanne’s ballades and rondeaux were not (some ventured into the Ars Subtilior).
These five are for obvious reasons not at all useful for studying the Ivrea Codex' relation to the Church, but of the eight composers whose works appear in the Ivrea Codex, whose backgrounds are known (plus this 'Master of the Royal Motets'), six were either not members of the clergy or only held minor offices. Two (Denis Le Grant and Philippe de Vitry) were the Bishops of Senlin and Meaux respectively. Unfortunately, only one composition by Le Grant survives, and no secular music of de Vitry is still extant. This renders almost any comparison ('stringing together') either impossible or pointless.
From what I have discussed in this essay of the Ivrea Codex' contents and contributors, the transition from the Ars Antiqua style to the Ars Nova and how troubadours and trouvères partially facilitated this, and the nature of liturgical music in the fourteenth century, I think the answer to the question 'was increased secularism the catalyst for musical innovation in the Ars Nova?' is not such a simple one. This 'secularism of purpose' certainly prompts composers to not have to worry as much about how they express their musical ideas. This has always been the case, as evidenced when Olivier Messiaen wrote:
'When I was deputising at the Trinité, I know that I sometimes exhibited tendencies which were too modern, and I regret that now. […] My current view is that music should always search for the new, but in works for chamber ensembles or orchestra, where the imagination can run free. For the organ, especially the organ in church, what matters above all is the liturgy. […] it is important not to disturb the piety of the faithful by using chords which are too anarchic.'[42]
A similar view was held centuries before the composers mentioned in this essay. According to Saint Aelred of Rievaulx:
'What are we doing with the thunder of organ music, the clash of cymbals and elaborate part-settings for different voices? […] the mere sound of singing is preferred to the meaning of the words that are sung. Sense and sound together are meant to stir us to devotion […] and not trespass on the words so that our minds are distracted from their meaning.'[43]
Whether or not a piece of music is meant to stir a congregation to devotion won't necessarily change its composition, however. This is proven by the decently sized catalogue of pieces where the methodology detailed above leads to a resounding 'no'. In a chemical reaction, a catalyst – though this is quite the simplification – separates what you had before from something new being made. Thus, I'd argue that secularism was not really a catalyst by which isorhythm and mensural notation would suddenly appear during the Ars Nova, but rather a factor.
1. Assigning dates to people, events, and periods eight or nine hundred years ago often is a game of making educated guesses. For this reason many dates are either approximations or just 'fl.'.
2. Hoppin, 1978, p. 221
3. This is referring to music written utilising the theory put forward by Franco of Cologne. Pre-Franconians regarded longs and breves as being opposites of one another. See Tanay, D., 1992. The Transition from the Ars Antiqua to the Ars Nova: Evolution or Revolution?. Musica Disciplina, Volume XLVI, pp. 79-104.
4. Treitler, 1979
5. Johannes de Garlandia, in his treatise De Musica Mensurabili (in English, 'On Measured Music'), writes of the lengths of longs and breves being in either a ratio of 2:1 (dubbed 'imperfect') or 3:2 ('perfect').
6. Table here.
7. Hoppin, 1978, p. 355
8. Hence the letter 'C'.
9. Günther, 1962
10. One difficulty that arises here is the lack of documentation of most composers from this period, leaving a measly couple of composers that are worth mentioning.
11. van der Werf, 1984, p. 23
12. Something interesting to note here is the etymology of the word 'troubadour'. One theory about this is that the Occitan word 'trobador originally comes from the Arabic word 'ضرب', meaning 'to strike' (as in, to strike the string of a musical instrument).
13. The music’s texture is best evidenced by various troubadour melodies being arranged as songs for voice and piano. See Dickinson, C. & Dickinson, H. A., c.1920. Troubadour Songs. New York: H. W. Gray.
14. Hoppin, 1978, p. 353
15. Arlt, 2001
16. Recent research indicates there is no proof for this. Richard Hoppin assumes he was, as he identifies the composer Jehan de Lescurel with another Jehan de Lescurel, belonging to a family 'connected to Notre Dame Cathedral', who had been hung for debauchery, based on a tale originating with Charles-Victor Langlois in 1927. He writes: '[He was] apparently connected with Notre Dame Cathedral, where we may assume he received his musical training.' I’d argue that despite this, de Lescurel was probably connected to the Church as few composers of the Ars Nova style were not in one way or another. See: Rouse, M. & Rouse, R., 1998. Jehannot de Lescurel. In: M. Bent & A. Wathey, eds. Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Français 146. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 525-527.
17. Hoppin, 1978, p. 368
18. Gay-Crosier, 1971, p. 16
19. Lynch, 2022, p. 38
20. For example, Folquet de Marseille – a troubadour until c.1195 – was appointed Bishop of Toulouse in 1205.
21. Blackburn, 2017, p. 67
22. Often described as a genocide.
23. Lynch, 2022, p. 71
24. Wimsatt & Kibler, 1988, p. 3
25. Hoppin, 1978, p. 368
26. Izbicki, 1995
27. Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (https://www.diamm.ac.uk)’s website says: 'Its liturgical connections and central French repertoire, together with direct references to Pope Clement VI, suggest an origin in Avignon shortly after 1360, whence it may have been brought to Ivrea by one of the three French priests mentioned in the records there between 1361 and 1384.'
28. Hoppin, 1978, p. 370
29. Günther, 2016
30. Bowers, 2004
31. It is in fact quite a misconception that composers of this period stayed in one place for a long period of time. For de Machaut, being John of Luxembourg's composer-secretary was not a sedentary lifestyle.
32. Lavacek, 2014-2015
33. Gombosi, 1950
34. See Jaques Boogaart, DIAMM: https://www.diamm.ac.uk/documents/678/Boogaart_EngSummary.pdf
35. Reaney, 1955
36. Laid out at the beginning of section 2.
37. Probably in the Roman de Fauvel and the Montpellier Codex. The former can be viewed online at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8454675g/f1.item and the latter – probably of more interest in this field – is available for DIAMM members.
38. Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, most recently updated on 17th August 2023
39. Reaney, 2001
40. Kügle, 2001
41. de Grocheio, 2011, p. 85
42. Hill & Simeone, 2005, p. 35
43. Diemer, 1997, p. 19