YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY
Example 3. Firminus Caron, Helas/Ave sidus/Der seyden schwantcz, bb. 1–39, Glogauer Liederbuch
(BerlPS 40098, now in Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska), fol. Aiii v , Aiii v , Aiii v .
Material in boxes is the only music not repeated.
tratenor part in the first three systems and the material leading up to the cadences are
not repeated.
Johannes Touront’s Compangant omnes/ O generosa/ Je suis seulet (Example
4) is another song motet found in several different forms. It is found in five different
sources with two different Latin texts, no text at all, and with a French ‘incipit’ in a
chansonnier, BolC Q16. 26 It is in three voices and sometimes uses imitation similar
to that found in the chanson, to begin phrases and articulate the form (see bb. 11–12,
28–30). Nevertheless, Compangant omnes (Example 4) is higher in the subgenre
hierarchy than Caron’s Helas (Example 3), because it looks more like a Mass movement
and less like a chanson. It has the bipartite OC (triple to duple) structure of the
Mass movement and the big four-voice motets. Because Compangant is higher in
the subgenre hierarchy it also uses less repetition, and the repetition is often concealed
in the middle of a phrase, as in Example 2, Flos de spina (repeated passages
in Example 4 are enclosed in boxes; see bb. 17–18, 24–6, and 32–35).
26 See CUMMING, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay, pp. 180, 197, 202–204.
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