YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY
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 preceded
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 repetition.
Afamous 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 fifteenth
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 subgenres
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 bipartite
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 repetition,
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, presumably
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 midfifteenth-century-style
imitation: short time interval, contradiction of meter, and concentration
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 appearance
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.
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