1 | 2020 – “Qui dit tradition dit faute ?”. The Error in Medieval and Renaissance Songs

Philology as a Form of Execution for Medieval Works. The Noise of Innovations and the Performer’s Variants
By Claudio Galderisi
The varia lectio of medieval literary works is not only the direct trace of a sequence of modifications that the manuscript has undergone for more or less objective reasons, it bears also witness to the different paths that the auctoritas can follow. To identify among the multitude of variants that sometimes enrich the original text – originating from its different interpretations or executions – the mere errors to be corrected, the gaps to be reduced, the anachronisms to be banished, the lectiones faciliores whose trivialization deserves to be recognized and amended: all this is a philological task that should not be separated from the hermeneutical act that it implies. The necessary quest for the original lesson and even more for the lectio difficilior, which exalts the work of the philologist, thus able to identify the work of anastylosis of yesteryear’s copyists, has sometimes lost sight of all that lectio facilior reveals us about the circulation and the reception of a text, a word, an expression. The present reflection seeks to explore the richness that errors can reveal to the hermeneut. Like Victor Hugo praising great scholars, the philologist could also exclaim: «Ô erreurs erreurs sacrées, mères lentes, aveugles et saintes de la vérité» (‘O sacred errors, slow, blind and blessed mothers of the truth…’).

The Concept of “Error” in Textual Criticism
By Frédéric Duval
Textual criticism has made error central for the method which aims to trace back from the preserved witnesses to a textual state closer to the original. Whether the editor directs his research towards a textual state preserved by a given document or towards the lost original, it is still important to locate the readings that have been transmitted to us by the textual tradition in order to know what is being interpreted. Errors are a fundamental key to the classification of readings, since the alteration of texts during transmission is unavoidable. The contribution takes an open perspective on textual criticism and focuses on the problems posed by the interference between the technical concept of “error” in textual criticism and its less specialized meanings.

Beyond the Quill, the Copyist’s Hand and the Cantor’s Voice. Errors or Diversity of Traditions in Medieval Songs
By Marie-Noël Colette
The chants of the Latin Church were transmitted orally from the beginning until the ninth century. A number of variants, which can be spotted in the manuscripts which were preserved from the Carolingian ages, show the diversity of coexistent traditions in the medieval Europe, even before the invention of musical notations. The study of tonal, modal or ornamental variants, whether they are intentional or unintentional, invite to distinguish between errors and authentic choices made by the copyist, who is a real witness of the local and cultural traditions. The intellectual or musical interpretations of these chants will take advantage of this rich diversity, much more than the tendency to impose a uniformity, which has no roots in History.

Error, Variant and Correction: the Case of Medieval Plainchant
By Océane Boudeau and Elsa De Luca
The main obstacle that has hindered our modern understanding of the transmission and dissemination of medieval plainchant is probably its wide diffusion, both chronologically and geographically. This palaeographical and philological analysis of variant, correction, and error aims to contribute to a better understanding of medieval plainchant and its sources. The graphical variants of the neumatic notation of the León Antiphoner and the melodic variants of Franco-Roman chant reveal how cantors and scribes would interpret certain features differently as understanding of performance practice – and perhaps also taste – evolved.

The Dansas of the Chansonnier du Roi (Paris, BnF, fr. 844): in Search of Errors in a Corpus of Unica
By Federico Saviotti and Christelle Chaillou-Amadieu
The famous ms. Paris, BnF, fr. 844 contains on its margins and blank pages more than forty poems, mostly unica, which were added by different hands after the codex was compiled, between the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th. This paper discusses the possibility of identifying errors in the case of unica: if the comparison of different readings may at least lead to detect some evident errors, both in the text and in the music, how can scholars confront this task when any ground for comparison is missing ? Thanks to the interaction of textual and musical elements but also to the in-depth study of these poems’ receptional milieu, this interdisciplinary research shows a new fruitful approach to this question, together with the first outcomes of a thorough analysis of the five Occitan dansas conserved as added pièces by the Chansonnier du Roi. 

Musical and Textual Errors in the Lyric Lais from the Chansonniers du Roi (M) and de Noailles (T)
By Francesco Carapezza
In this contribution we shall present some anomalies in the musical notation of the anonymous lyric lais transmitted by French chansonniers M and T (i.e. Kievrefoil, Markiol and Nompar), which share the same source, and to which a recently discovered chansonnier fragment (Bo) can be added. The plural attestation of these heterostrophic texts allows to nuance the strict notion of musical error, advocated by John H. Marshall for this very corpus. Finally, we discuss an interesting case (Nompar, str. X) where musical notation can effectively help the reconstruction of a text corrupted in both witnesses.

Whose Error? From a Brevis grammatica to the Other (Venice, 1480 – Basel, 1499)
By Fañch Thoraval
The Brevis grammatica by Francesco Negri has long been noticed for being the first evidence of printed mensural notation adapted to classical scansion. Yet, the many discrepancies that can be observed between the rhythm of the music and the meter of the texts suggest a closer survey of their mutual relationship. In this respect, it is noteworthy that both music and texts were identically reproduced – or slightly altered – in all reprints of the grammar, but in the one edited by Jacob Wolff. Observing first the way printers behaved towards scansion and music, and discussing then the hypotexts of the grammar and its monodies, this paper intends to show that, in this context, the idea of mistake relies on the value given to the music. Though it could be either prescriptive or descriptive, it originally aimed at representing a major quality of poetical meter: its aural dimension.

Wrong Music
By Maria Antonella Balsano and Massimo Privitera
Our paper examines the errors made by composers and book-makers in 16th- and 17th-century Italy. Errors made by composers were denounced by other composers, through the diffusion of written censures, or during public challenges in the presence of judges and witnesses. Errors made during the printing process can be found both in the paratext (forgotten or inverted letters and numbers in the title page) and in the text itself (omission of alterations or mistaken notes and words). Our paper ends with a discussion of errors and misunderstandings made by performers and listeners, including both those contemporary to the music, and others committed in modern performances of early music.

«Contrapunto bestiale»: Errors in the Manuscript C.85 (Bologna, Biblioteca della musica)
By Jérémie Couleau
It is usually accepted that the term ‘error’ doesn’t have a good connotation in music history. The purpose of this paper is to temper this statement by studying medieval and renaissance musical and theoretical sources. The discussion, after adopting a large view, focuses on an unknown source from the very late Renaissance. The manuscript C. 85 from the Biblioteca della Musica of Bologna invites us to redefine the concept of ‘error’ in the beginning of the 17th century, and clearly shows that it may be a path to musical excellence.

«Figure est impropriete / Licenciee et approuvee / Par us ou par auctorite…»: Bitterness and Sweetness in Renaissance Poetry
By Séverine Delahaye-Grélois
Our main error as we read Spanish Golden Age poetry is to assume it was composed on paper, in order to be read silently, whereas all the historical evidence proves that poetry was composed with and for music. Thus it is in Francisco de Salinas’ De musica libri septem that we can find the description of a metrical error – two consecutive stressed syllables – as a dissonance, according to the framework (harshness/sweetness) that is also the paradigm for hermogenian rhetorics. However, this error is used in poetry in the same way as dissonance by madrigal composers, for expressive purposes, and the same is true of enjambement. Thus error becomes a poetic device.