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SINGING THE HICCUP – ON TEXTING THE HOCKET

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Thomas Schmidt-Beste
Thomas Schmidt-Beste*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

As one of the more striking contrapuntal devices of late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century polyphony, the hocket has been studied at great length. Until recently, however, little attention has been paid to the question how this texture accommodates the verbal text with which it often appears: as it breaks up a musical phrase into small segments separated by rests, it often necessitates a breaking up of the words themselves. Already some contemporaries had condemned this as one of the principal defects of the hocket, and most modern editors (implicitly or explictly agreeing with these comments) have sidestepped the issue by moving the text as much as possible to non-hocketed sections of the music. This article attempts to take a positive view of the ways in which words were matched to notes in the hocket. It distinguishes between ‘unbroken hockets’ – where the words and the notes are devised and deployed in such a fashion that word breaks and rests coincide – and ‘broken hockets’. In the latter, it is argued that the way in which words are split up is by design and not happenstance; taking the etymological meaning of ‘hocket’=‘hiccup’ as a point of departure, it is shown that the most logical way to bridge the rests is not between syllables, but in the middle of syllables. This solution is corroborated not only by etymology, but also by the underlay in the sources, by the compositions themselves (in which by virtue of this ‘hiccup underlay’ musical phrases and text phrase match seamlessly, as elsewhere in the repertory) and by some theoretical evidence as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 32 , 2013 , pp. 225 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 See principally Dalglish, W. E., ‘The Hocket in Medieval Polyphony’, Musical Quarterly, 55 (1969), pp. 344–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanders, E. H., ‘The Medieval Hocket in Practice and Theory’, Musical Quarterly, 60 (1974), pp. 246–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in French and English Polyphony of the 13th and 14th Centuries: Style and Notation (Aldershot, 1998).

2 Exceptions are Leach, E. E., Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 2007)Google Scholar; and, even more recently, A. A. Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet’ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2010), pp. 33–44 and passim. On issues regarding specific questions and repertories (on which more below), see also Reichert, G., ‘Das Verhältnis zwischen musikalischer und textlicher Struktur in den Motetten Machauts’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 13 (1956), pp. 197–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bent, M., ‘Words and Music in Machaut's Motet 9’, Early Music, 31 (2003), pp. 363–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See Frobenius, W., ‘Hoquetus’, Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie (Stuttgart, 1988)Google Scholar.

4 It has been argued that the technique as such originated in improvised (monophonic or polyphonic) singing and playing, and may thus have pre-dated the possibility to notate its exact rhythms; see Dalglish, W. E., ‘The Origin of the Hocket’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 31 (1978), pp. 3–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This theory receives support from the observation that hocketed singing is practised in a number of non-Western musical traditions which are likewise non-written; see Schneider, M., ‘Der Hochetus’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 11 (1928–9), pp. 390–6Google Scholar; Kwabena Nketia, J. H., ‘The Hocket-Technique in African Music’, Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 14 (1962), pp. 44–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Allgayer-Kaufmann, R., ‘Die Hoquetus-Technik in der Musik Afrikas: Ineinandergreifende Spielpartien in Flöten- und Trompetenensembles’, Jahrbuch für musikalische Volks- und Völkerkunde, 16 (1997), pp. 39–57Google Scholar.

5 E. H. Sanders, ‘Hocket’, Grove Music Online, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com>, acc. 2 May 2011.

6 Edition as The Montpellier Codex, ed. H. Tischler (Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 2–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8; Madison, Wis., 1978–85); a full digital facsmile is now found at <http://manuscrits.biu-montpellier.fr/>. See also Harbinson, D. H., ‘The Hocket Motets in the Old Corpus of the Montpellier Motet Manuscript’, Musica Disciplina, 25 (1971), pp. 99–112Google Scholar. On the dating and compilation of the manuscript, see Wolinski, M. E., ‘The Compilation of the Montpellier Codex’, Early Music History, 11 (1992), pp. 263–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Edition and commentary as Compositions of the Bamberg Manuscript: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Lit. 115 (olim Ed. IV.6), ed. Anderson, G. A. (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 75; Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 136–41Google Scholar. A late specimen of the self-contained hocket is Machaut's Hoquetus David; see Robertson, A. W., Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in his Musical Works (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 224–56Google Scholar.

8 ‘Cantus autem iste cholericis et iuvenibus appetibilis est propter sui mobilitatem et velocitatem. Simile enim sibi simile quaerit et in suo simili delectatur.’ Johannes de Grocheo, De musica (c. 1300); ed. in Rohloff, E., Der Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheo nach den Quellen neu herausgegeben (Media latinitas musica, 2; Leipzig, 1943), p. 57Google Scholar; quoted from the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum online database (henceforth referred to as TML): <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/GRODEM_TEXT.html>. See also Sanders, ‘The Medieval Hocket’, p. 255. In a similar fashion, the hocket has made a reappearance in music of the latter half of the twentieth century; see Delaere, M., ‘Cantus autem iste cholericis et iuvenibus appetibilis est propter sui mobilitatem et velocitatem: Zur Hoquetus-Technik in der jüngsten Musik’, in Schneider, H. (ed.), Mittelalter und Mittelalterrezeption: Festschrift für Wolf Frobenius (Musikwissenschaftliche Publikationen, 24; Hildesheim, 2005), pp. 407–33Google Scholar.

9 Dalglish, ‘The Origin of the Hocket’, p. 4.

10 ‘Alia vero discantus species est cum littera vel sine littera in qua dum unus cantat alter tacet et e contrario, et huiusmodi cantus truncatus dicitur a rei convenientia, qui et Hoquetus dicitur.’ Odington, Walter, Summa de speculatione musicae, ed. Hammond, F. F. (Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 14; American Institute of Musicology, 1970)Google Scholar; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/ODISUM_TEXT.html>. Traditionally, Walter has been known as ‘Walter Odington’, but as Elina Hamilton has demonstrated in her unpublished paper ‘A Tale of Two Walters’ presented at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference in Barcelona, 7 July 2011, Odington is a later conflation of two scholars, Walter of Evesham (the author of the music treatise) and Walter of Eynsham alias Odington (the author of a treatise on alchemy).

11 ‘Scias igitur quod illa hoquetatio fit aut per resecationem vocum aut sine resecatione. Si sit sine resecatione, hoc erit dupliciter, quoniam aut cum littera vel sine.’ De musica mensurata: The Anonymous of St. Emmeram, ed. and trans Yudkin, J. (Music: Scholarship and Performance; Bloomington, 1990), p. 224Google Scholar. Translation ibid., p. 225 (with my revisions).

12 A useful overview of the (frequently hocketing) ‘mimetic virelais’ of the fourteenth century is Newes, V., ‘The Cuckoo and the Nightingale: Patterns of Mimesis and Imitation in French Songs of the Late Middle Ages’, in Kügle, K. and Welker, L. (eds.), Borderline Areas in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Music/Grenzbereiche in der Musik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts (Musicological Studies and Documents, 55; Münster and Middleton, Wis., 2009), pp. 131–55Google Scholar. See also Leach, Sung Birds, pp. 108 ff. (‘Birds sung’) with Appendix 3 (pp. 302–6).

13 Edited in Ballades, ed. Greene, G. K. (Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 20; Monaco, 1982), pp. 224–32Google Scholar.

14 See Wessely, O., ‘Über den Hoquetus in der Musik zu Madrigalen des Trecento’, in Antonicek, T., Flotzinger, R. and Wessely, O. (eds.), De ratione in musica: Festschrift Erich Schenk zum 5. Mai 1972 (Kassel, 1975), pp. 10–28Google Scholar.

15 See Hoffmann-Erbrecht, L., ‘Probitate eminentem/Ploditando exarare, eine Scherzkomposition in der Glogauer Handschrift (um 1480)’, in Beer, A. and Lütteken, L. (eds.), Festschrift Klaus Hortschansky zum 60. Geburtstag (Tutzing, 1995), pp. 1–8Google Scholar; also Horyna, M., ‘Die Kompositionen von Peter Wilhelmi von Graudenz als Teil der spätmittelalterlichen Polyfonie-Tradition in Mitteleuropa und insbesondere im Böhmen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts’, Hudební věda, 40 (2003), pp. 291–328, at 300Google Scholar.

16 Leach, Sung Birds, pp. 36–54.

17 ‘De distinctione vocum. Notandum est quod vocum alia articulata et litterata, alia inarticulata illiterata, alia articulata illiterata, et alia inarticulata et litterata dicitur. Vox articulata et litterata est que intelligi et scribi potest, ut Petrus et Martinus. Inarticulata illiterata vox est que nec intelligi nec scribi potest, ut rugitus leonis et mugitus bovis. Articulata illiterata vox est que intelligi potest et scribi non valet, ut sibili hominum et gemitus infirmorum…. Inarticulata litterata vox est que intelligi non potest et tamen scribi, ut per voces avium proferentium cra cra, cuius prolationis effectum, licet scribi possit, penitus ignoramus.’ (‘On Distinguishing types of voice. One type of voice is articulate and literate, another nonarticulate and nonliterate, another articulate and nonliterate, and another nonarticulate and literate. Articulate and literate voice is that which can be understood written down, like the names “Petrus” and “Martinus.” Nonarticulate and nonliterate voice is that which can neither be understood nor written down, like the roar of the lion or the lowing of the ox. Articulate and nonliterate voice is that which can be understood but not written down, like men's whistling and the groaning of the sick…. Nonarticulate and literate voice is that which cannot be understood and yet can be written down, like the “caw, caw” produced by birds. We are totally ignorant of the meaning of this utterance, even though we can write it down’). The Lucidarium of Marchetto of Padua: A Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary, ed. and trans. Herlinger, Jan W. (Chicago and London, 1985), pp. 68–106, at 94–7Google Scholar.

18 Leach, Sung Birds, pp. 38–40, 180.

19 Ibid., p. 183.

20 Sanders, ‘The Medieval Hocket’, pp. 246–50, with examples on pp. 247–8.

21 Kügle, ‘Hoquetus’, pp. 359–60. Kügle provides instances from the Cypriot-French Codex I-Tn J.II.9 (c. 1414–20), but other examples can be found in compositions by Ciconia – such as the virelai Aler m'en veu (Ciconia, Johannes, Works, ed. Bent, M. and Hallmark, A. (Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 24; Monaco, 1985), pp. 167–9Google Scholar) – where it is more often than not the result of imitation between the upper voice parts at a short distance.

22 See Kirkman, A., The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass: Medieval Context to Modern Revival (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 29–34Google Scholar.

23 The number of motets credited to Vitry varies as most of them are not transmitted with a composer ascription and their authorship has to be deduced on stylistic grounds or external evidence (such as contemporary testimony). The table follows the worklist in M. Bent and A. Wathey, ‘Vitry, Philippe de’, Grove Music Online <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com>, acc. 15 Aug. 2011.

24 The Motets of the Manuscripts Chantilly, Musée Condé, 564 (olim 1047) and Modena, Biblioteca Estense, a.M.5,24 (olim lat. 568), ed. Günther, U. (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 39; American Institute of Musicology, 1965)Google Scholar.

25 Cypriot-French Repertory (15th Century): The Polyphony in the Manuscript J.II.9 of the National Library in Turin, ed. Hoppin, R. H., vol. 2: Motets (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 21; American Institute of Musicology, 1961)Google Scholar.

26 Burkard, T. and Huck, O., ‘Voces applicatae verbis: Ein musikologischer und poetologischer Traktat aus dem 14. Jahrhundert’, Acta Musicologica, 74 (2002), p. 1–34, at 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the dating see also Abramov-van Rijk, E., ‘Evidence for a Revised Dating of the Anonymous Fourteenth-Century Italian Treatise Capitulum de vocibus applicatis verbis’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 16 (2007), pp. 19–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See also the overview in Dalglish, ‘The Origin of the Hocket’, pp. 4–12.

28 See Kohlhaas, E., Musik und Sprache im Gregorianischen Gesang (Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 49; Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 66–106Google Scholar.

29 ‘Ea siquidem est ascendendi descendendique facilitas, ea sectio uel geminatio notularum, ea replicatio articulorum singulorumque consolidatio’ (‘Such indeed is the ease of running up or down the scale, such the dividing or doubling of the notes and the repetitions of the phrases and their incorporation one by one’). Ioannis Saresberiensis Policraticus I–IV, ed. Keats-Rohan, K. S. B. (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Medievalis, 118; Turnhout, 1993), p. 49Google Scholar; trans. in Pike, J. B., Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers: Being a Translation of the First, Second, and Third Books and Selections of the Seventh and Eighth Books of the Policraticus of John of Salisbury (Minneapolis and London, 1938), p. 32Google Scholar.

30 ‘Unde vos moneo, dilectissimi, pure semper ac strenue divinis interesse laudibus: … non pigri, non somnolenti, non oscitantes, non parcentes vocibus, non praecidentes verba dimidia, non integra transilientes, non fractis et remissis vocibus muliebre quiddam balba de nare sonantes, sed virili, ut dignum est, et sonitu, et affectu voces sancti Spiritus depromentes’ (‘Hence I admonish you, dear brethren, to participate in the Divine service in a pure and zealous fashion…. you shall not be lazy, sleepy, yawning, not saving your voices, not breaking off in the middle of words or leaving them out altogether, not singing with broken and muffled voices like some woman, stuttering through the nose; but in a properly manful fashion, producing voices filled with the Holy Spirit both in sound and affect’). Bernhard of Clairvaux, Sermon 47 on the Song of Songs (c. 1150), in Sermons sur le cantique, Tome 3 (Sermons 33–50), ed. Leclerq, J., Rochais, H. and Talbot, Ch. H., trans. Verdeyen, P. and Fassetta, R. (Oeuvres Complètes, 12; Paris, 2000), p. 66Google Scholar. A similar sentiment is expressed in the statutes of the Carthusian order from before 1259, which prohibit the ‘the breaking up and melismatic embellishment of the voice, and the splitting of notes in two, and the like’ (‘fractio et inundatio vocis, et geminatio puncti, et similia’); Statuta antiqua of the Carthusian order (1259), in M. Gerbert, De cantu et musica sacra (St. Blasien, 1774), ii, p. 97. See also Dalglish, ‘The Origin of the Hocket’, p. 8; McGee, T., The Sound of Medieval Song. Ornamentation and Vocal Style according to the Treatises (Oxford, 1998), p. 25Google Scholar; Wegman, R. C., The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–1530 (New York and London, 2005), pp. 17–20Google Scholar.

31 ‘Item, ridiculosas novitates superinductas in officio divino nolens sustinere de cetero, Capitulum generale ordinat et diffinit quod antiqua forma cantandi a beato patre nostro Bernardo tradita, sincopationibus notarum et etiam hoquetis interdictis in cantu nostro simpliciter quia talia magis dissolutionem quam devotionem sapiant, firmiter teneatur’ (‘Also, as it no longer wishes to tolerate the ridiculous modernisms which have been introduced into the Divine Office, the General Chapter orders and defines that the old form of singing as passed down by our blessed Father Bernard [of Clairvaux] shall be firmly adhered to, with syncopation of notes and also hockets prohibited, simply because such things taste more of dissolution than of devotion’). Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. Canivez, J.-M., vol. 3 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 11; Leuven, 1935), p. 349Google Scholar. See also Leitmeir, C. T., ‘Arguing with Spirituality against Spirituality: A Cistercian Apologia for Mensural Music by Petrus dictus Palma ociosa (1336)’, Archa Verbi, 4 (2007), pp. 155–99, at 160–1 and 184Google Scholar.

32 ‘Sed nonnulli novellae scholae discipuli, dum temporibus mensurandis invigilant, novis notis intendunt, fingere suas quam antiquas cantare malunt, in semibreves et minimas ecclesiastica cantantur, notulis percutiuntur. Nam melodias hoquetis intersecant, discantibus lubricant, triplis et motetis vulgaribus nonnunquam inculcant’ (‘But some disciples of the new school, concerned with dividing the beat, fabricate new notes which they prefer to sing more than the old ones, and thus ecclesiastical song is sung in semibreves and minims and is battered by small notes. They dismember melodies with hockets and make them slippery with discants, frequently inserting second and third voices in the vernacular’). Corpus iuris canonici, vol. 2: Decretalium collectiones, ed. Richter, E. L. and Friedberg, E. (Leipzig, 1879Google Scholar; repr. Graz, 1959), Extravagantes communes, Lib. 3, Tit. 1: De vita et honestate clericorum, cols. 1255–7. See Hucke, H., ‘Das Dekret “Docta sanctorum patrum” Papst Johannes' XXII.’, Musica Disciplina, 38 (1984), pp. 119–31Google Scholar; Klaper, M., ‘“Verbindliches kirchenmusikalisches Gesetz” oder belanglose Augenblickseingebung? Zur Constitutio Docta sanctorum patrum Papst Johannes' XXII.’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 60 (2003), pp. 69–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Körndle, F., ‘Die Motette vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert’, in Leuchtmann, H. and Mauser, S. (eds.), Messe und Motette (Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen, 9; Laaber, 1998), pp. 91–4Google Scholar, and id., ‘Die Bulle “Docta sanctorum patrum”: Überlieferung, Textgestalt und Wirkung’, Die Musikforschung, 63 (2010), pp. 147–65.

33 Already in 2000, Karen Desmond had proposed the identification of Jacques with Jacobus de Montibus Anonie (=of Mons in the Hainault): Desmond, K., ‘New Light on Jacobus, Author of Speculum musicae’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 9 (2000), pp. 19–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This, however, has now been superseded by Bent's discovery of a will from 1419 which identifies the author of the Speculum as ‘Jacobus de Ispania’; see M. Bent, ‘Jacobus de Ispania? – Ein Zwischenbericht’, in Frank Hentschel (ed.), Nationes, Gentes und die Musik im Mittelalter, forthcoming. I am grateful to the author for sharing this text with me prior to publication.

34 ‘Nimis lascive discantant, voces superflue multiplicant. Horum aliqui nimis hoketant, nimis voces suas in consonantiis frangunt, scandunt et dividunt.’ Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musicae, ed. Bragard, R. (Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 3/7; American Institute of Musicology, 1973)Google Scholar; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/JACSP7_TEXT.html>. See also Klaper, ‘“Verbindliches kirchenmusikalisches Gesetz”’, p. 92; Körndle, ‘Die Bulle “Docta sanctorum patrum”’, p. 150; Leach, Sung Birds, p. 182.

35 See Klaper, ‘“Verbindliches kirchenmusikalisches Gesetz”’, who questions the relevance of Docta sanctorum to contemporary composers; against that, see Körndle, ‘Die Bulle “Docta sanctorum patrum”’.

36 One of these writers was the Spanish theologian Martín de Azpilcueta, who in his Enchiridion sive manuale de oratione et horis canonicis of 1545 condemned as sinful contemporary practices of polyphony since they contravened John XXII's decretal; see Blackburn, B. J., ‘How to Sin in Music: Doctor Navarrus on Sixteenth-Century Singers’, in Joncus, B. and Bucciarelli, M. (eds.), Music as Social and Cultural Practice: Essays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 86–102Google Scholar. For even later reactions to Docta sanctorum see Körndle, F., ‘Was wusste Hoffmann? Neues zur altbekannten Geschichte von der Rettung der Kirchenmusik auf dem Konzil zu Trient’, Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, 83 (1999), pp. 65–90Google Scholar.

37 Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series a Gerbertina altera, ed. E. de Coussemaker (Paris, 1864–76, repr. Hildesheim, 1963), iv, p. 296; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/QUAPRIB4_TEXT.html>.

38 ‘Exempla quidem per hoquetos varios atque cantus tam sine littera quam cum littera sunt quaerenda, quia si exemplorum copia hic modo publice traderetur, confusionem induceret et gravamen. Tamen si quis altius hoc perpendat, in exemplis hoquetorum fere singula poterit reperire, nam in eis tota virtus musicae mensurabilis et natura districte traditur et efficaci studio compilatur.’ (‘Examples should be sought by means of various hockets and melodies both without text and with text, because if an abundance of examples were given publicly here now, it would induce confusion and inconvenience. But if anyone reckons this more deeply, he will be able to find almost every single thing in examples of hockets, for in them the whole quality and nature of measurable music is concisely handed down and brought together by effective labour’). De musica mensurata: The Anonymous of St. Emmeram, pp. 222–3. See also Leach, Sung Birds, p. 184.

39 The Anonymous of St. Emmeram, p. 224. Translation ibid., p. 225 (with my revisions).

40 Frobenius, ‘Hoquetus’, pp. 9–10; Wolinski, M. and Haggh, B., ‘Two 13th-Century Hockets on Manere Explained’, Early Music, 38 (2010), pp. 43–58, at 43–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ernest Sanders and others after him supplied a different interpretation of the hocket cum resecatione and sine resecatione, explaining the latter as similar to the thirteenth-century Stimmtausch textures, with brief passages interrupted by rests alternating between two voices, the former as the more thoroughly segmented hocket (Sanders, ‘The Medieval Hocket’, pp. 247–51; Dalglish, ‘The Origin of the Hocket’, pp. 14–20); but this interpretation is now widely discredited.

41 The Montpellier Codex, ii, pp. 11–13; Compositions of the Bamberg Manuscript, pp. 44–5.

42 See Reichert, ‘Das Verhältnis zwischen musikalischer und textlicher Struktur in den Motetten Machauts’ and id., ‘Wechselbeziehungen zwischen musikalischer und textlicher Struktur in der Motette des 13. Jahrhunderts’, in Anglés, H.et al. (eds.), In memoriam Jacques Handschin (Strasbourg, 1962), pp. 151–69Google Scholar; Günther, U., ‘Das Wort-Ton-Problem bei Motetten des späten 14. Jahrhunderts’, in Festschrift Heinrich Besseler (Leipzig, 1961), pp. 163–78Google Scholar; von Fischer, K., ‘Zum Wort-Ton-Problem in der Musik des italienischen Trecento’, in Ravizza, V. (ed.), Festschrift Arnold Geering zum 70. Geburtstag (Bern and Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 53–62Google Scholar; the essay collection Günther, U. and Finscher, L. (eds.), Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts (Göttinger Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 10; Kassel, 1984)Google Scholar, herein especially M. Bent, ‘Text Setting in Sacred Music of the Early 15th Century: Evidence and Implications’, pp. 291–326; Stevens, J., Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Page, C., Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Oxford, 2nd edn. 1997), pp. 43–64Google Scholar.

43 See v. Fischer, K., ‘A Study on Text Declamation in Francesco Landini's Two Part Madrigals’, in Gordon Athol Anderson in Memoriam (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1984), pp. 119–30Google Scholar; Earp, L., ‘Texting in 15th-Century French Chansons: A Look Ahead from the 14th Century’, Early Music, 19 (1991), pp. 195–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baltzer, R. A., Cable, T. and Wimsatt, J. I. (eds.), The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry (Austin, Tex., 1991)Google Scholar; S. A. Kidwell, ‘The Integration of Music and Text in the Early Latin Motet’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1993); Page, C., Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm in Medieval France (Royal Musical Association Monographs, 8; London, 1997)Google Scholar; Göllner, Marie Louise, Essays on Music and Poetry in the Late Middle Ages (Münchner Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte, 61; Tutzing, 2003)Google Scholar; Maw, D., ‘Meter and Word Setting: Revising Machaut's Monophonic Virelais’, Current Musicology, 74 (2002), pp. 69–102Google Scholar; id., ‘Accent and Metre in Later Old-French Verse: The Case of the Polyphonic Rondel’, Medium Aevum, 75 (2006), pp. 46–83; id., ‘Machaut and the “Critical” Phase of Medieval Polyphony’, Music & Letters, 87 (2006), pp. 262–94. Similar questions are addressed by W. Edwards for fifteenth-century polyphony: ‘Phrasing in Medieval Song: Perspectives from Traditional Music’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 5 (1996), pp. 1–22; ‘Burgundian Verse Sung’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 78 (2000), pp. 339–58; ‘Alexander Agricola and Intuitive Syllable Deployment’, Early Music, 34 (2006), pp. 409–26; ‘Word Setting in a Perfect World: The Case of Obrecht's Motets’, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 3 (2011), pp. 52–75; ‘Text Treatment in Motets around 1500: The Humanistic Fallacy’, in Schmidt-Beste, Thomas (ed.), On the Relationship of Imitation and Text Treatment? – The Motet around 1500 (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 91–116Google Scholar.

44 A comprehensive account of these instructions, their authors and sources is given in Harrán, D., Word-Tone Relations in Musical Thought from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (Musicological Studies and Documents, 40; Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1986)Google Scholar; a survey is found in Schmidt-Beste, T., ‘Textunterlegung’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn., ed. Finscher, L., Sachteil, vol. 9 (Kassel and Stuttgart, 1997), cols. 478–93Google Scholar.

45 Perkins, L. L., ‘Toward a Rational Approach to Text Placement in the Secular Music of Dufay's Time’, in Atlas, A. W. (ed.), Papers Read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference (Brooklyn, 1976), pp. 102–14Google Scholar; id., ‘Towards a Theory of Text–Music Relations in the Music of the Renaissance’, in Kirkman, A. und Slavin, D. (eds.), Binchois Studies (Oxford, 2000), pp. 313–29Google Scholar; Fallows, D., ‘Texting in the Chansonnier of Jean de Montchenu’, Songs and Musicians in the Fifteenth Century (Variorum Collected Studies, 519; Aldershot, 1996), no. XGoogle Scholar; J. King, ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1996); id., ‘Texting Practices in Manuscript Sources of Early Fifteenth-Century Polyphony’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 124 (1999), pp. 1–25; Schmidt-Beste, T., Textdeklamation in der Motette des 15. Jahrhunderts (Collection “Épitome musical”; Turnhout, 2003)Google Scholar.

46 The Montpellier Codex, iii, pp. 109–10.

47 This is sufficiently extraordinary within the context of this repertory to wonder whether there is an error in the source here. Not only the integrity of text, but also that of the hocket itself would be better preserved if there were no rest between the c and the f.

48 This is not to imply that the upper voices are completely free and through-composed; Georg Reichert and Mark Everist, amongst others, have shown that there can be a substantial degree of (often very subtle) repetition and recurrence in this repertory; see Reichert, ‘Wechselbeziehungen zwischen musikalischer und textlicher Struktur in der Motette des 13. Jahrhunderts’, and Everist, M., French Motets in the Thirteenth Century: Music, Poetry and Genre (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 166–78Google Scholar. But these approaches to structuring the upper voices are characterised by (and attractive precisely through) their lack of systematic application, and they depend a great deal on the nature of the poetic text; in such cases where the latter is in fact strophic the composers could (and did) take the opportunity to align this structure with that of the music.

49 See F. Reckow, Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4 (Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 4–5; Wiesbaden, 1967); TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/ANO4MUS_TEXT.html>. Editions of the entire piece are in The Bamberg Manuscript, 137–8, and The Montpellier Codex, ii, pp. 69–70. See also Hofmann, K., Untersuchungen zur Kompositionstechnik der Motette im 13. Jahrhundert durchgeführt an den Motetten mit dem Tenor In seculum (Tübinger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, 2; Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1972)Google Scholar; Jeffery, P., ‘A Four-Part In seculum Hocket and a Mensural Sequence in an Unknown Fragment’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), pp. 1–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Asencio Palacios, J. C., ‘Aproximación al Hoquetus in seculum’, Anuario musical, 53 (1998), pp. 13–28Google Scholar; Rothenberg, D., ‘The Marian Symbolism of Spring, ca. 1200-ca. 1500: Two Case Studies’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 59 (2006), pp. 319–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Montpellier, the In seculum hocket appears a number of times in various guises, including the four-voice Ja n'amerai (no. 2) with an added texted quadruplum which joins in the hocketing. See The Montpellier Codex, i, pp. 1–4; also Harbinson, ‘The Hocket Motets’, pp. 99–103.

50 Compositions of the Bamberg Manuscript, pp. 137–8.

51 I will use the term ‘isorhythm’ in its commonly accepted meaning established by Heinrich Besseler, signifying a piece of music based on a rhythmic tenor pattern (talea) which recurs several times either in identical form or in accelerating proportional transformation. Margaret Bent has pointed out that ‘isorhythm’ is in fact something of a misnomer for this structural device as true and pervasive rhythmical identity (‘iso-’) of the tenor segments is rare and not in fact what appropriately defines the repertory: Bent, M., ‘What is isorhythm’, in Cannata, D. B., Currie, G. I., Mueller, R. C. and Nádas, J. L. (eds.), Quomodo cantabimus canticum? Studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner (Middleton, Wis., 2008), pp. 121–43Google Scholar. However, as Bent herself points out, it is precisely the hocket sections which could often be called ‘isorhythmic’ in a real sense as they replicate the exact rhythms in all voices from one talea section to the next.

52 Reichert, ‘Das Verhältnis zwischen musikalischer und textlicher Struktur in den Motetten Machauts’, p. 211: ‘Darüber hinaus ist es aber nicht zu verkennen, daß gerade die Hoquetustakte in ihrer auffälligen Struktur den Prototyp einer trotz wechselnder Klangsubstanz leicht wiederzuerkennenden rhythmischen Gestalt darstellen, so daß ihre Wiederkehr an genau korrespondierender Stelle der einzelnen Taleae durchaus geeignet scheint, auch dem Hörer die periodische Natur des Werks wahrnehmbar zu machen, ins Bewußtsein zu heben.’ See also Sanders, E. H., ‘The Medieval Motet’, in Arlt, W., Lichtenhahn, E. and Oesch, H. (eds.), Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade (Bern and Munich, 1973), pp. 497–573, at 563Google Scholar: ‘motets of the 14th century are in the truest sense strophic variations’; furthermore Ziino, A., ‘Isoritmia musicale e tradizione metrica mediolatina nei motetti di Guillaume de Machaut’, Medioevo Romanzo, 5 (1978), pp. 438–65Google Scholar; Clark, A. V., ‘Listening to Machaut's Motets’, Journal of Musicology, 21 (2004), pp. 487–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmidt-Beste, Textdeklamation, pp. 198 ff.

53 See especially Ziino, ‘Isoritmia musicale’.

54 Reichert, ‘Das Verhältnis zwischen musikalischer und textlicher Struktur in den Motetten Machauts’, pp. 211–12; M. Bent, ‘Words and Music in Machaut's Motet 9’, pp. 380–1.

55 Robertson, Guillaume de Machaut and Reims, pp. 53–68.

56 Bent, ‘Words and Music in Machaut's Motet 9’, p. 380.

57 Bent, ‘Text Setting in Sacred Music of the Early 15th Century’, pp. 311–26.

58 These are Brussels, Archives de la Ville, Fonds Sint-Goedele 5170 (olim Archives Ecclesiastiques 758; triplum and incomplete motetus only); Cambrai, Médiathèque musicale 1328; Durham, Cathedral Church, Dean and Chapter Library C.I.20, I–IV 115; and the ‘Trémoille’ MS (fragments extant as Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France n. a. fr. 23190, but folios containing Vos qui admiramini are lost).

59 Bent, ‘Words and Music in Machaut's Motet 9’, pp. 378–9: ‘Machaut has here set himself the additional discipline of not breaking any word with rests, even in the hockets. This must mean that the text was composed with the extra restriction of placing monosyllables and disyllables at specific points where the hockets were intended. These are words tailored for music, and music for words’ (p. 378).

60 ‘Posset tamen prima longa imperfici a parte ante per brevem praecedentem vel per valorem, nisi punctus immediate eam sequatur, ut patet in tenore de Gratissima quem idem Philippus edidit.’ Scriptorum de musica, ed. Coussemaker, iv, p. 268; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/QUAPRIB4_TEXT.html>.

61 ‘Dabei wird nur ein einziges Mal … ein Wort … sinnwidrig zerrissen’; ‘In den folgenden Perioden ist die originale Textunterlegung … weniger überzeugend, weil die Zeilen, ja sogar die Worte, zum Teil sinnlos durch Pausen zerrissen werden.’ Günther, ‘Das Wort-Ton-Problem’, pp. 168 and 176. See also more recently Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet’, p. 43: ‘In the example of Apta/Flos discussed above, the solution offered by Modena is most convincing … because words stay intact …’.

62 Frank Ll. Harrison limits himself to stating that words sometimes needed to be broken up (Motets of French Provenance, pp. xii–xiii), Günther (The Motets) to remarks indicating problems of underlay in the critical commentary to individual compositions.

63 See Schneider, ‘Der Hochetus’, and the opposing viewpoint in Frobenius, ‘Hoquetus’, pp. 1–2.

64 Frobenius, ‘Hoquetus’, pp. 2–3. See also M. E. Wolinski, ‘The Medieval Hocket’, in The ORB: On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies <http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/music/hocket.html>, last accessed 26 Apr. 2011.

65 ‘cut-off music, which is itself hocketation’. Pseudo-Aristotle (Magister Lambertus), Tractatus de musica; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/ARITRA_TEXT.html>.

66 ‘truncation, or hocket which is the same thing’. Franconis de Colonia Ars cantus mensurabilis, ed. Reaney, G. and Gilles, A. (Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 18; American Institute of Musicology, 1974)Google Scholar; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/FRAACM_TEXT.html>.

67 ‘the truncations or those which are called hockets’. John of Tewkesbury, Quatuor principalia; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/QUAPRIB4_TEXT.html>.

68 ‘it is called “truncated song” because that accords with the matter; this is also called “hocket”’. Walter of Evesham, De speculatione musicae; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/ODISUM_TEXT.html>.

69 ‘motets, organum, and cut-off chant, which they call hockets’. Johannes de Grocheo, De musica; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/GRODEM_TEXT.html>.

70 Ibid.; my emphasis.

71 Reckow, Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/ANO4MUS_TEXT.html>.

72 The Montpellier Codex, iii, pp. 74–6, and iv, pp. 83–4 (text).

73 Atchison, M. A., The Chansonnier of Oxford Bodleian MS Douce 308 (Aldershot, 2005), p. 231Google Scholar.

74 The Works of Jehan de Lescurel, ed. Wilkins, N. (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 30; American Institute of Musicology, 1966), p. 28Google Scholar.

75 G. du Bus, Le Roman de Fauvel, ed. A. Långfors (Sociéte des anciens textes français; Paris, 1914–19), p. 53.

76 G. de Machaut, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, ed. E. Hoepffner (Sociéte des anciens textes français; Paris, 1908), p. 6.

77 de la Buigne, Gace, Le Roman des deduis. Édition critique d'après tous les manuscrits, ed. Blomqvist, Åke (Studia romanica Holmiensia, 3; Stockholm and Paris, 1951), pp. 375, 461 and 464Google Scholar. See also Leach, Sung Birds, pp. 181–2 and 212–19.

78 R. A. Baltzer, ‘Lambertus, Magister’, Grove Music Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com>, acc. 27 Apr. 2011.

79 Städtler, T., art. ‘hochier’, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français, ed. Baldinger, K. and Möhren, F., fasc. H3 (Tübingen and Québec, 1999), pp. 512–20Google Scholar.

80 Art. ‘hok-’ in von Wartburg, W., Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, vol. 4 (Basel, 1952), pp. 450–2Google Scholar.

81 Ibid., pp. 451–2.

82 Art. ‘singultus’, ibid., vol. 11 (1961), pp. 646–7; also art. ‘sanglot’, ‘sangloter’, ‘sanglotir’, in Tobler-Lommatzsch, , Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, vol. 9 (Wiesbaden, 1975), pp. 150–1Google Scholar.

83 Fontes liturgicae Carmelitanae, ed. Kallenberg, P. (Rome, 1962), p. 32Google Scholar.

84 Wegman, The Crisis of Music, p. 197, n. 16; Leitmeir, ‘Arguing with Spirituality against Spirituality’, p. 184.

85 Frobenius, W., Johannes Boens Musica und seine Konsonanzlehre (Freiburger Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft, 2; Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 77–8Google Scholar; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/14th/BOENMUS_TEXT.html>. See also Leach, Sung Birds, p. 185.

86 See Wessely, ‘Über den Hoquetus’, pp. 15–23. A particularly telling example cited by Wessely is Jacopo da Bologna's Prima virtute, where a text passage on ‘constrained speech’ (‘constringer la lingua’) is accompanied by the cantus abscisus of the hocket (p. 19).

87 M. Bent and A. Wathey, ‘Vitry, Philippe de. Works’, Grove Music Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com>, acc. 2 May 2011.

88 Kügle, K., The Manuscript Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare 115: Studies in the Transmission and Composition of Ars Nova Polyphony (Musicological Studies, 69; Ottawa, Ont., 1997), pp. 18–9Google Scholar and passim.

89 In the past, this placing of rests over syllables has been noted with consternation by scholars, as a defective underlay born out of lack of space: ‘Then, notes are added in an arrangement as close as possible to the desired texting, but this still often means placing rests over syllables.’ (Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet’, p. 42).

90 The Motets of the Manuscripts Chantilly … and Modena, pp. 17–22; Motets of French Provenance, pp. 141–8.

91 For the order of copying and spacing of text and music in the Chantilly codex, see Upton, E. R., ‘Aligning Words and Music: Scribal Procedures for the Placement of Text and Notes in the Chantilly Codex’, in Plumley, Y. and Stone, A. (eds.), A Late Medieval Songbook and its Context: New Perspectives on the Chantilly Codex (Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly, Ms. 564) (Collection “Épitome Musical”; Turnhout, 2009), pp. 115–32Google Scholar.

92 Motets of French Provenance, ed. Harrison, pp. 1–6.

93 ‘Item intelligendum est quod in omnibus modis utendum est semper concordantiis in principio perfectionis, licet sit longa, brevis vel semibrevis’. Franconis de Colonia Ars cantus mensurabilis; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/FRAACM_TEXT.html>.

94 King, ‘Texting in Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’, pp. 194–9; Boone, G. M., ‘Marking Mensural Time’, Music Theory Spectrum, 22 (2000), pp. 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Schmidt-Beste, Textdeklamation, pp. 16–20.

95 E.g., in Bent, M., ‘Polyphony of Texts and Music in the Fourteenth-Century Motet: Tribum que non abhorruit/Quoniam secta latronum/Merito hec patimur and its “Quotations”’, in Pesce, D. (ed.), Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (New York and Oxford, 1997), pp. 82–103Google Scholar; also Bent, ‘Words and Music in Machaut's Motet 9’, and elsewhere.

96 See Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet’, pp. 39–42.

97 Ibid., pp. 43–5.

98 Perkins, ‘Toward a Rational Approach’, pp. 104–5; Schmidt-Beste, Textdeklamation, pp. 49–50. See also Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet’, p. 44: ‘More broadly, it is my impression that there are few loosely texted hockets in this repertory. Very often, and especially in the work of Vitry, hockets either have words, or they don't.’ An expanded version of this argument is forthcoming in Zayaruznaya, Anna, ‘Hockets as Compositional and Scribal Practice in the Ars nova Motet – A Letter from Lady Music’, Journal of Musicology, 30 (2013), in pressCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 See for a transcription, a (slightly differing) translation and discussion of the two passages Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea’, pp. 240–3. See also Harrison in his preface to Motets of French Provenance, p. xiii: ‘In the poem of the duplum of number 33 Rhetoric is made to complain that many composers chop up vowels with short rests (suspiria) and in the triplum Music admonishes a number of composers, who are named, to refrain from violating the rules of Rhetoric by dividing indivisible syllables. The composer of this motet evaded rather than observed this admonition, however, by the expedient of placing the words so that all seven hocket passages are vocalized after a complete word has been pronounced.’

100 Husmann, H., ‘Der Hoketus “A l'entrade d'avril”’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 11 (1954), pp. 296–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Ameri Practica Artis Musicae [1271], ed. Ruini, C. (Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 25; Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 9–16Google Scholar; also Huglo, M., ‘Le Traité de cantus mensurabilis du manuscrit de Bamberg’, in Jacobsson, Ritva (ed.), Pax et sapientia: Studies in Text and Music of Liturgical Tropes and Sequences in Memory of Gordon Anderson (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis: Studia Latina Stockholmensia, 29; Stockholm, 1986), pp. 91–6Google Scholar. Blackburn, B. J., ‘Properchant: English Theory at Home and Abroad, with an Excursus on Amerus/Aluredus and his Tradition’, in Cannata, D. B., Currie, G. I., Mueller, R. C. and Nádas, J. L. (eds.), Quomodo cantabimus canticum? Studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner (Middleton, Wis., 2008), pp. 81–98, esp. 88–92Google Scholar. I am grateful to Lorenz Welker (Munich) for first pointing me towards this text and its potential relevance to my work.

102 Ameri Practica Artis Musicae, pp. 33–4; TML <http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/AMEPRA_TEXT.html>.