YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

30 JULIE E. CUMMING
per aliam, nunc per unam coniunctionem, nunc per aliam, nunc cum syncopius,
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 concealed.
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 continually
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 sequential
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 element
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 contrapuntal
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.