Robert Mortones Songs: A Study of Styles in the Mid-Fifteenth Century By David Nicholas Fallows A.B. (University of Cambridge) 1967 M. Mus. (University of London) 1968 DISSERTATION Submitted in nartial satisfaction of the re~uirements for the degree of DOCTor OF PHILOSOPHY in MUsic in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. BERKELEY Apnroveri: Committee in Char~e D£GRrECONFERREDJUNe t~ ~tri •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 11 ••••• CONTENTS Preface ii List of manuscript abbreviations vii Note on the editions xi Part I: The Authentic Works lLe souvenir: the Words and the Music 1 2 N'aray je jamais: the Counterpoint 42 3 C\j-J.Si:le: Rhythm and Meter 86 4 Que pourroit: Ch~omaticism 117 5 Paracheve ton entreprise: Thought and Afterthought 143 6 Mon bien ma joyeux: Finding a Satisfactory Verbal Text 170 7 11 sera pour vous: Homage and Expansion 202 R Plus ,j'a,y Ie monde: TrC'.ces of Horton's Style 245 Part II: Biographical 9 Robert Horton's Life 270 10 Chgxles the Bold as a Patron of Music 299 Part III: The Doubtful Works 11 Vien avante: Adrien Basin, Pierre Basin and the Court Circle 325 12 Pues serri9io: Enrrique and Spanish Song 350 13 Elend: German Song and the Contrafact Tradition 383 14 C'est temps: Caron and the Question of Ascriptions 432 Part IV: Conclusion 15 Morton's Legacy 463 Appendix: Description of the Main Sources 482 Bibliography 499 ii Preface This dissertation started life as an attempt to clear the ground on two English composers of songs in the mid-fifteenth century, Robert Morton and John Bedyngham. The twelve songs ascribed to Morton, which initially seemed~ offer fewer problems, were to be studied first to present an outline of a method and a termi.nology for discussing fifteenth-century song, end also because they belong firmly in the "Burgundian" tradition whose style was evidently known throughout the continent and regarded as classic during the years in which Bedyngham, for instance, wrote in a more identifiably provincial style. With Morton's songs described and explained, it would then have been easier to approach the more intriguing problems of Bedyngham's songs with a clearer view of their context. But Morton soon became so large a subject in itself that Bedyngham had to be lopped off: the results of my work on Bedyngham have gone into an articlp. on that composer for The New Grove and into various spoken and written presentations. The dissertation, then, is centered on the song~aditionat the court of Burgundy during the years of Charles the Bold. 1457 is not only the year in which Morton is first recorded~ere, but also the year which began with a terrible disagreement between Charlee, then count of Charolais, and his ailing father, Philip the Good and ended with Philip formally handing over most of the executive power to his son at a meeting of the Estates General in Ghent. Morton disappears from the records in 1476, a few months before Charles; and though it is unlikely that the composer came to the same u."lpleasant end as his Duke, it seems that his surviving songs p~obably all come fro~ these years 1457 to 1476. iii Any study of Morton obviously owes much to previous publications. The first biographical study by Alexandre Pinchart (1861) laid the basis of all that has followed. Jeanne Marix (1939) expanded it slightly, having two years earlier completed the publication of the ,nine works known at the time to have ascriptions to Morton. Two more works were identified by Dragan Plamenac who has done so much to further studies of fifteenth-century song. The fullest publishp.d summary of Morton's work and position remains Peter GUlke's article "Morton" in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1961). \o/ith all but two of Morton's works published in some form or other, it seemed important to try and draw conclusions from the wide range of conflicting sources and to use that information in an effort to understand the music better, to put it in its context, and to examine further directions in which a study of fifteenth-century song could proceed. I have therefore started straight in with the music. Part one of the dissertation discusses the songs that seem to be securely attributed to Morton: each song forms the basis of a brief essay on some aspect of the song tradition. Only then,in Part two, is Morton's life discussed, partly hecause the life is important only in the context of his music, partly because biographical conclusions can be drawn more easily when the music has been examined, and partly because it provides a suitable springboard for Part three. A further springboard to Part three comes from a chapter on Morton's patron, Duke Charles the Bold. Part three deals primarily with ascription problems and in so doing attempts to identify the style of the Burgundian court tradition as against that of the other cultural centers in Europe. Four of the songs ascribed to Morton are thereby shown to be most unlikely to have been composed by him; and it is hoped tnat the detailed argument and extended textual discussions that lead to this relatively insignificant conclusion may be considered worthwhile in themselves. Since I have been so long writing this dissertation I have incurred an enormous number of debts. My supervisor, Professor Philip Brett has helped me far beyond the call of duty, from the day re first showed me I wanted to be a musicologist twelve years ago, through many perverse difficulties, including an extraordinary careful reading of most of this material when he was supposed to be on sabbatical leave, ana down to the moment when he persuaded me to put everything else aside and finish the project. My two other readers, ProfessorsEdgar H. Sparks and Alan H. Nelson have also contributed far more than the mere reading of my drafts. Of the many libraries that have helped my work I am particularly grateful to the staff of the University of r.alifomia at Berkeley music library, the University of London library, the British Library Reference Division, the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris, the Bibliotheque royale and the Archives du Royaume in Brussels, the Archives departementales du Nord in Lille, the Bayerische Staats bibliothek in Munich and the Kongelige ~iblictek in Copenhagen. For help with the French texts I am most grateful to Dr Brian Jeffery, and for help with the Spanish to Professor Mark Accornero. v ,. '" Many others have helped by reading sections, giving advice, or merely by listening patiently. Among them I would particularly like to mention, Professors Ian and Margaret Bent, Thomas Binkley, Professor Howard Mayer Brown, Professor Richard L. Crocker, Dr Pierre Cockshaw, Dr Warwick A. Edwards, Professor Daniel Heartz, Patricia McKann, Professor Rodney Merrill, O.W. Neighbour, Sarah Newman, Dr Lily Segerman-Peck, Professor Dragan Plamenac, Brad Robinson, Dr John Stevens, Andrea von Ramm and my wife Polly. To all of these, many of whom may not be aware how much they helped, my deepest thanks. But two particularly important debts should be recorded separately, if only because of their more unusual nature. First, two scholars also working on Morton have been most generous with their material: Professor Brian Trowell was kind enough to let me see the typescript of his forthcoming article on the composer for The New Grove and to let me see his personal copy of his astonishing Cambridge dissertation, with many manuscript aJUlotations; Professor Allan Atla~, whose edition of Morton's complete works is also now in proof, was e~ually extremely generous with his material and ideas. It was parti~ularly generous of All~n Atlas to send me a xerox of the entire commentary to his edition while it was still in typescript; and though there is very little in the oecond half of this dissertation with which he will agree (and, indeed, relatively little in the first part), he will surely understand how much of it is indebted to his own penetrating and exhaustive work. Moreover, it is probably true to say that this kind of a study of so little material would be psychologically impossible without the vi kind of interchange he afforded me at a crucial moment and which has driven me further and further towards the roots of questions. That my final opinions differ sharply from those of my two seniors, both questions of authorship and in terms of my estimation of the sources, should not in any way imply lack of admiration for their work: rather the contrary. Second, the opportunity of performing the majority of Morton's songs in many concerts of fifteenth-century music with the group Musica Mundana (Judith Nelson, Steven Hart, Thomas Buckner, Penny Hanna and Pamela Crane) was a rare privilege. Many ideas have slipped in here whic~ rightly belong to my colleagues in that group; and several others would never have happened without their cooperation~ My deepest thanks to them and to the many appreciative audiences who received Morton when they really deserved Dufay. David Fallows Gospel Oak, August 1916; Old Trafford, September 1911. vii LIST OF MANUSCRIPT ABBREVIATION~ Fuller references for all the main manuscripts used appear in the Appendix. The list appended here is merely a key to a system that has been used in most studies of the fifteenth-century song repertories over the past twenty years, and has a history going back to Ludwig and Besseler. For most other purposes this would perhaps be the correct moment to discard all the old sigla and replace them with the far more consistent system used by the Repertoire international des soux'ces musicales; but the very universality of the latter system tends to make its use cumbersome when the subject under discussion is so sharply limited and particularly when -ther~ is a widely accepted and understood series of references already available. BerK Berlin-Dahlem, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 C 28 Bux Munich, Bayerische Staatsbib1iothek, Handschriften- Abteilung, Cim. 352b (formerly Mus.Ms. 3725) (Buxheimer Orge1buch) CantiE Canti B numero cinguanta. Venice: O. Petrucci, 2 1501 (Old Style) - RISM 1502 CantiC Canti C no. cento cinguanta. Venice: O. Petrucci, 3 1503 (Old Style) - RISM 1504 Chasse Octavien de Sainct Ge1ais and Blaise d'Autio1, S'ensuit La chasse et le depart d'amours. Paris: Veuve Trepere1 and Jehan Jehannot,[150~ viii Cas Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 2856 CG Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, C.G. XIII" 27 CMC Seville, Biblioteca Colombina, 7-1-28 CMP Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio, 1335 (formerly 2-1-5) (Cancionero de Palacio) Col Seville, Biblioteca Colombina, 5-1-43, part of which is now Paris, Biblio'~hequeNationale, f~fr.nouv.acq.4379,f 1-42 vO CopI Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliothek, Thott 291 8 CopII Copenhagen, Kongelige BibliClthek, Ny kgl. Samling 1848 20 Cord Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Rothschild 2973 (Chansonnier Cordiforme) Dijon Dijon, Bibliotheque Publique, 517 EscB El Escorial, Biblioteca del Monasterio, IV.a.24 F176 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechini XIX, 176 F229 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 229 (formerly Magliabechini XIX, 59) Fabri Pierre Fabri, Le p:rant et vray art de pleine rhetorigue. Rouen: Symon Gruel, 17 Jan 15~1 (Old Style) Glogau Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Mus.~s. 40,098 (Glogauer Liederbuch) 1% Grey Cape Town, South African Public Library, Grey Collection 3.b.12 Jardin Le jardin de plaisance et f1eur de rethorigue. Paris: [Antoine Vera:cd. 150JJ Laborde Washington, Library of Congress, M2.1 L 25 (Laborde Chansonnier) Lansdowne London, British Library Reference Division, MS. Lansdowne 380 Loch Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbib1iothek, Ms. Mus. 40613 (Lochamer Liederbuch). Mbs 9659 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Ms. 9659 Mellon New Haven, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Ms. 91 (Mellon Chansonnier) ModB Modene, Biblioteca Estense,ol~.l.ll Nivel1e Neuilly-sur-Seine, Former library of the late Madame la comtesse TI. de Chambure, Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussee. Odh Harmonice musices odhecaton A. Venice: O. Petrucci, 1501 - RISM 15C)'L Oporto Oporto, Biblioteca P~blica Municipal, 714 Ox213 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici Misc. 213 Paris Unless otherwise stated, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationa1e, fonds franyais Parma Parma, Bib1ioteca Palatina, Ms. Parm. 1158 Pavia Pavia, Bib1ioteca Universitaria, Ms. A1dini 362 Perugia Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta, Cod. 431 (formerly G 20)