Les Conges d'Arras (Jean Bodel, Baude Fastoul, Adam de la Halle)

This article explores trends and motivations in the selection of plainchant and vernacular song quotations as the foundations of thirteenth-century motets. I argue that particular tenor melodies that received only cursory treatment in the liturgical polyphony of the Magnus liber organi were adopted in motets on account of their brevity and simplicity, characteristics that enabled their combination with upper-voice song forms and refrain quotations. Demonstrating a preference for short and simple tenors within the earliest layers of the motet repertoire, I trace the polyphonic heritage of the tenor omnes, whose simple melody enabled its combination with another more obscure plainchant quotation, aptatur, in a unique double tenor motet. I propose that motet creators—while sensitive to the semantic connotations of tenor texts—exploited the musical ability of tenor quotations to be combined with or stand in for other musical quotations. Newly identifying a plainchant tenor source in a motet by Adam de la Halle, I show that Adam's polyphonic motet quotations of his own three-voice polyphonic rondeaux were achieved by the careful selection of motet tenors to replicate the freely conceived lowest voices of these preexisting rondeaux. The article further reveals profound modal and melodic similarities between the quotations chosen as thirteenth-century motet tenors and the newly composed lowest voices of polyphonic rondeaux and English pes motets. It offers new perspectives on the relationship between the “elite” genre of the motet and types of polyphony that are less well attested in written sources, often considered to inhabit a more “popular” realm of musical practice.

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Jean Dufournet, Adam de la Halle a la recherche de lui-meme ou le Jeu dramatique de la Feuillee

French Studies ◽

10.1093/fs/xxxiii.suppl.562 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol XXXIII (suppl) ◽

pp. 562-563

Author(s):

L. R. Muir

Keyword(s):

Adam De La Halle

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De grant mal amaladis e la pastorella nascosta in Aucassin et Nicolette: una proposta di datazione della chantefable

Revista de Literatura Medieval ◽

10.37536/rpm.2019.31.0.64728 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 ◽

pp. 235-258

Author(s):

Lucilla Spetia

Keyword(s):

Adam De La Halle ◽

Terminus Post Quem

L’anonima chantefable Aucassin et Nicolette, fondata sulla parodia, ha una controversa datazione. Tuttavia la presenza di l’autrier – marca lessicale identificativa del genere pastorella –, e una serie di allusioni erotiche autorizzano a rileggere con maggiore attenzione il cap. XI, e inparticolare il v. 21 che riproduce il v. 12 del prologo, a conferma della centralità della scena rappresentata, in connessione sia con la lirica del gattorosso di Guglielmo IX, sia con la pastorella maggiore di Marcabruno ad essa connessa. Non solo, ma l’analisi lessicale di un altro vocabolo dello stesso capitolo consente di cogliere un ulteriore gioco intertestuale con le Jeu de la Feuillée di Adam de la Halle, che fornisce il 1276 come terminus post quem per la datazione della chantefable e di porre la sua composizione nell’ambiente borghese di Arras, di cui condivide le istanze sociali e culturali declinate attraverso il ricorso alla parodia.

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