Machaut's Notations and Ars nova Theory

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Music

First Advisor

Zayaruznaya, A.

Abstract

Fourteenth-century French poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut is usually situated as an inheritor of an established notation system, called today the ars nova. However, recent scholarship on the chronology of notational developments in the fourteenth century, initiated by Karen Desmond and A. Zayaruznaya, and new hypotheses surrounding the dating and creation of Machaut's mid-century manuscript (MS C) have laid the foundations to reconsider Machaut's notation. This dissertation returns to the notation of Machaut's music in order to 1) reevaluate the composer's position in the history of music theory, in light of our changing understanding of fourteenth-century notational developments; and 2) resituate the scribes of Machaut's music, who are often obscured behind the image of the composer, as active contributors and creators of ars nova notation. Framework for this dissertation is guided by the New Philology, heralded in the field of medieval studies in a 1990 issue of Speculum, which dispelled the myth of the Urtext, making room for textual variance to be taken seriously. This dissertation also draws on previous studies of musical inscription that apply Actor Network Theory to entertain the various actors and relationships at play in musical notation. Scribes of polyphonic music were highly specialized - to effectively copy music with multiple parts, they had to understand how mensural notation worked. Chapter 1 considers the properties and affordances of rests, as defined by mensural theorists and as reflected in Machaut's manuscripts. The second half of this chapter focuses on initial and sectional rests, used to notate anacruses in Machaut's virelais. While previous editions and studies of the virelais have found these anacruses to be undernotated, this dissertation argues that initial rests and final figures consistently work together to clarify mensural ambiguities. Chapter 2 examines a subtype of ars nova imperfection referred to by scholars today as "mutatio qualitatis." This chapter argues that Machaut did not take a consistent approach to this practice and draws a connection between ars nova imperfections and an ars vetus figure, the plica. The second section of the dissertation centers on songs in the Remede de Fortune. Chapter 3 examines the recently discovered fragment de Hamel 777, a bifolio that contains portions of the fourth and fifth Remede songs. Although the layout and text of de Hamel 777 have strong connections with one group of manuscripts, its musical readings have more in common with another. This chapter contributes to scholarship on Machaut reception and circulation in the second half of the fourteenth century in the context of the Valois courts, and from Northern France and Flanders into Italy. Finally, Chapter 4 places notational variants in the Remede de Fortune in dialogue with mid-century ars nova theory, with an eye to extensions of ars vetus notation and the presence of ars nova techniques. This chapter contributes to our understanding of MS C, finding that the earliest Machaut source utilizes notation differently than later sources. This dissertation finds that Machaut did not just refine an established system; he and his scribes also contributed to its development. From the vantage point of the "early ars nova" hypothesis, we would not expect Machaut's notation to break new ground. But from the "late ars nova" hypothesis, Machaut's notation assumes a new aspect, and interrogation of Machaut's musical notation evidences ties between the old ars and the new.

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