4 | 2021 – Varia

ARTICLES

A Descort and a Latin Song to the Virgin Mary: La douce acordance and Iam mundus ornatur in the Chansonniers M and T
By Luca Gatti and Christelle Cazaux
The late additions to the Chansonnier du Roi (Paris, BnF, fr. 844, M) include a Latin composition in honour of the Virgin, Iam mundus ornatur (f. 77v-78v). The melody associated with it is identical to that of a French chanson, a heterostrophic descort attributed to Adam de Givenci, La douce acordance (f. 158v-159r). This descort can be found in the Chansonnier de Noailles (Paris, BnF, fr. 12615, T) too, but with a different melody. The article examines the tradition of the pieces in the chansonniers M and T. It focuses on the process of re-composition and adaptation, both textual and musical, from one language to another and from one composition to another. The analysis shows that Iam mundus ornatur/La douce acordance are an atypical example of contrafactum consisting primarily of a vernacular text adapted into Latin; both texts were then associated to a new melody, mensural and durchkomponiert, unrelated to the supposedly original melody of the descort notated in T. This new melody was probably composed for the Latin piece and then adapted to the descort in M, whose text had been first copied without any melody. The results of this study open up other perspectives of research that have to be explored more in depth: the place of Iam mundus ornatur/La douce acordance in the compilation process of M, the chronology and the authorship of the pieces, the context of their creation and transmission, their possible links with the trouvères milieu of Arras. Finally, the study invites us to question further the links between the vernacular chanson and the contemporary Latin genres of the conduit and the motet.

NOTES

Virelais, Rondeaux and a Credo: Five Previously Unknown Polyphonic Compositions in a Fragment of Codex Held at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia
By Federico Saviotti and Antonio Calvia
A parchment bifolio that had been reused as a cover for an early 17th-century printed volume was recently recovered in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia. It contains five anonymous polyphonic compositions: four French monostrophic so-far unattested poems (two virelais and two rondeaux) and two voices of a 4-voice Credo. This paper reports the circumstances of the fragment’s discovery, detachment and interdisciplinary analysis, retraces the path of the host volume until its acquisition by the Biblioteca Universitaria, provides a codicological and palaeographical description of the bifolio, a list of its contents (with particular focus on the notational features) and a diplomatic transcription of the texts and the musical incipits.