The Motet in the Age of Du Fay & Tonal Structures in Early Music. (Reviews).

Julie E. Cumming, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xv + 418 pp. $69.95. ISBN: 0-521-47377-2.

(Criticism and Analysis of Early Music Series, 1.) New York: Garland Publishing, 1998. xi + 4O2 pp. $72. ISBN: 0-8153-2388-3.

Cristle Collins Judd, ed., Tonal Structures in Early Music.

Julie E. Cumming's engaging and exhaustive Motets in the Age of Du Fay makes an important contribution to the field of early Renaissance music by drafting a clear classification system for motets, which, it turns out, is as challenging as herding cats. Cumming's taxonomy includes, "virtually the complete surviving repertory of motets copied during the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century, for a total of over four hundred compositions" (3). The pieces are found in early fifteenth-century manuscripts Bologna Q15, Bologna 2216, Modena X.l.11 and the Trent Codices, a group of seven sources dating c. 1420-1475. Cumming collates, critiques, and amplifies on scholarly research to date in one elegant narrative.

Cumming explains the book's two interwoven avenues of approach in Chapter 1. First she borrows Alastair Fowler's literary genre theory from Kinds of Literature to establish a new taxonomy for the motet, and second she adopts Darwin's terminology from The Origin of the Species to investigate the motet's evolution. This broad methodology will appeal to scholars from many disciplines -- especially to start with -- while quickly shifting to technical language and problems sure to engage the most specialized researchers. Overall this book is not, however, interdisciplinary in scope, treading firmly on the hallowed musicological ground of manuscript study, transcription, notation, and dissemination of repertory. At times it reads like an early fourteenth-century scholastic treatise complete with diagrams and tables, helpful historical context, new musical transcriptions, and connective tissue between sections.

In Chapter 2, Cumming argues that texture, "the ways in which the voices are women together, and how they interact," (28) is the most salient determining factor in her motet classification. She divides the repertory into two primary subgenres: "motet-style" motets pieces with "two texted voices in the same range above a slower-moving tenor, or tenor-contratenor part" (68) and "cantilena" motets pieces with "three voices, with a single cantus voice above the tenor and contratenor" (68). She also examines treatises, archival references, and manuscripts for the word "moter." Indeed, the book could benefit from a glossary at the end, not only for motet, which is never defined, but also for the many subgenres and hybrids coined by Gumming.

In the following chapters, Gumming launches into an exhaustive exploration of the repertory in Bologna Q15 and the Trent Codices. The compilers of Bologna Q15 have made her job a little easier by organizing it by genre, one of which is the motet. I found it fascinating to work through Cumming's "Table of subgenres of the motet" (69) in Bologna Q15, where her two major textural subdivisions are further broken down. Under the rubric of "motet-style motets," we find, among others, Italian motets with no isorhythm, double-statement structure, and French isorhythmic, and under "cantilena-style" we find English and cut-circle motets. Cut-circle motets have been a subject of recent heated debate, and Gumming makes a strong argument for their existence as a legitimate subgenre. The English-French dichotomy is central to Gumming's argument, because the cross-fertilization of these styles propelled the motet into its late fifteenth-century glory. In another persuasive table "Representation of Q15 subgenres in other con temporary manuscripts" (149), Gumming lays out "patterns of dissemination," in which we can see that the Italian morets "ceased reproducing," while the English repertory increased rapidly.

Cumming steps into more uncertain territory in her examination of the Trent Codices because the compilers did not place motets into a distinct section. Through a process of elimination, including the omission of music related to the Mass, cantiones and Leisen, Cumming establishes a working group of motets, which she further subdivides in subgenres. After an elaborate process of classification, in which she traces the different subgenres and hybrids, Cumming concludes that the Continent adopted the English style cantilena style motets, "All three of these English genres -- isorhythmic motet, three-voice tenor motet, and cyclic Mass -- would go on to contribute essential features of structure, form and style to the four-voice tenor motet of the second half of the fifteenth century" (227). The influence of English music on the Gontinent has long been called the "countenance angloise" by scholars. Gumming arrives to a familiar conclusion while illuminating the intricacies of the evolutionary process.

The title Tonal Structures in Early Music may shock some scholars. Indeed many of us were taught to never apply the word "tonal" to music prior to 1700 because "tonality" referred strictly to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century functional harmony. "Mode" and "modality" were the preferred terms with which to analyze a repertory with ties to medieval church modes. Tonal Structures in Early Music aims to debunk this convention once and for all by demonstrating that "mode" and its related words do not adequately portray compositional and performance practice as evidenced in musical manuscripts and theoretical treatises. The adoption of the "mode" is merely historicizing. Harry Powers, to whom this nine-essay "unofficial" Festschrift is dedicated, is one of primary proponents in this effort to refine musicological history. Crisde Collins Judd, the collection's editor and contributor notes, "The tonal/modal dichotomy has also been reinforced to a certain extent by disciplinary boundaries: exponents of the tonal view tended to be music theorists, while the modal view was most keenly espoused by historical musicologists" (7). These essays, written by rigorous music theory scholars, span 450 years of music.

The most avid supporter of music for music's sake is Margaret Bent, the collections' first author, who calls the divide between factions the "polarization of two extremes" (17). She advocates for the consideration music on its own terms, or as she puts it, its own grammar. "If we are to develop an ear for music of the period, if we should hear what remains of their voices rather than overwriting them with our own, let it be an ear properly attuned to their musical syntax rather than cobbled ad hoc from ours" (16). Retracing Renaissance music's original sound is like restoring a fresco through extensive restoration and repainting. Bent's and the collection's authors empiricism could be viewed as another layer in the repertory's reception history.

The articles that follow may be grouped according to the genres they examine. Three analyze vocal pieces and seek to illuminate "tonal coherence" through a newly polished tonal lens, focusing on such compositional practices as formal parallels, repetitive units, and cadential formulas. These include Sarah Fuller's "Tonal Structure in French Polyphonic Song of the Fourteenth Century," Gristle Collins Judd's "Josquin's Gospel Morets and Chant-Based Tonality," and Timothy Steele's "Tonal Coherence and the Cycle of Thirds in Josquin's Memor esto verbi tui." Three explore keyboard music, including Jessie Ann Owens' "Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c. 1560-1640," Candace Bailey's "Concepts of Key in Seventeenth-Century English Keyboard Music," and Michael R. Dodds's "Tonal Types and Modal Equivalence in Two Keyboard Cycles by Murschhauser."

Frans Wiering's "Internal and External Views of the Modes" and Harold Powers' "From Psalmody to Tonality," are more historical in approach. Wiering's piece about the treatment of "mode" and "tone" in the sixteenth and seventeenth century argues that "mode" was used more frequently in philosophical exegeses and tone in more practical treatises. Harold Power's monumental essay "From Psalmody to Tonality" traces the path from Banchieri's eight "psalm-tone keys" to the 24 major and minor keys of Mattheson's Das neu-eroffnete Orchestre by way of organists in France and Catholic South Germany. In the end, the essays supply viable arguments for the application of tonality to describe early music and a greater appreciation for the repertory's subtlety and beauty.