1 This definition is based on Ellinwood, Leonard, ‘The Conductus’, Musical Quarterly, 27 (1941), 165–204. Poems that were not rithmi were often not newly composed; a good example is the three-part Pater noster in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteo 29.1, ff. 215–216. See Falck, Robert, The Notre Dame Conductus: A Study of the Repertory, Musicological Studies, 33 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1981), 230. For exceptions to the principle that the conductus is newly composed, see the study of intertextual reference between conductus and clausula in Manfred Bukofzer, ‘Interrelations between Conductus and Clausula’, Annales musicologiques, 1 (1953), 65–103, and the individual commentaries to compositions in Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus, 178–256.Google Scholar

2 See Ellinwood, , ‘The Conductus’, 167, and Janet Knapp, ‘Conductus’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), iv, 651–6 (p. 653).Google Scholar

3 See Gillingham, Bryan, ‘A New Etymology and Etiology for the Conductus’, Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer, ed. Bryan Gillingham and Paul Merkley, Musicological Studies, 53 (Ottawa, 1990), 100–17 (p. 101).Google Scholar

4 Frank LI. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958; 4th edn, Buren, 1980), 124, and idem, ‘Benedicamus, Conductus, Carol’, Acta musicologica, 37 (1965), 35–48. It seems possible, however, that Harrison was not seeking to provide an all-embracing function for the conductus when he wrote: ‘What is suggested here is the probable ritual position of those conductus which are related to the seasons and feasts of the church’ (Music in Medieval Britain, 124, n. 2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Deusen, Nancy van, Theology and Music at the Early University: The Case of Robert Grosseteste and Anonymous IV, Brill Studies in Intellectual History, 57 (Leiden, etc., 1995), 37–53 (p. 44). For a bold attempt to separate cantio from conductus, see Stevens, John, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350, Cambridge Studies in Music (Cambridge, 1986), 56–63.Google Scholar

6 The two works are Fontis in rivulum and Associa tecum in patria. For the latter, see also Thomas B. Payne, ‘Associa tecum in patria: A Newly Identified Organum Trope by Philip the Chancellor’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), 233–54.Google Scholar

7 For a discussion of these two concepts, sec Ernest Sanders, ‘Sine littera and Cum littera in Medieval Polyphony’, Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang, ed. Edmond Strain-champs, Maria Rika Maniates and Christopher Hatch (New York and London, 1984), 215–31. However pragmatic the distinction between ‘music with words’ and ‘music without words’ might be, it does not do justice to the subtle complexity of the two types of music. They are described here as contrasting ‘discursive modes’ in an attempt to emphasize the fact that neither texture, word setting, harmonic procedures nor rhythm can alone account for the differences between them.Google Scholar

8 The juxtaposition of music cum littera and sine littera in a conductus may be investigated by analogy with the presence within the same literary work of, for example, prose and poetry. The literary medieval tradition is long, and stretches back to The Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella and Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy. It received a major new impulse in the twelfth century, just as the new mixed forms of conductus and organum were emerging, from such texts as Hildebert of Lavardin's Querimonia, Adelard of Bath's De eodem et diverse, Bernard Silvestris's Cosmographia and the De planctu naturae of Alan of Lille. Recent studies on the mixed form are Peter Dronke, Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1994) and Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, ed. Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl (Woodbridge, 1997). The best bibliography of the subject is Bernhard Pabst, Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwischen Spätantike und Spätmittelalter, Ordo – Studien zur Literatur und Gesellschaft des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 4 (Cologne, etc., 1994). For a fuller account of the ways in which the conductus cum caudis may be read as a mixed form, and for analogies with the prosimetrum, see Everist, Mark, ‘Drying Rachel's Tears: The Two-Part Conductus as Mixed Form’ (International Musicological Society, London, 14–20 August 1997, and American Musicological Society, Boston, 29 October to 1 November 1998); in this paper and in the current article the approach to the prosimetrum is different from that employed in Anna Maria Busse Berger, ‘Mnemotechnics and Notre Dame Polyphony’, Journal of Musicology, 14 (1996), 263–98 (pp. 281–2). There is a significant difference in intellectual and sonic comparisons between the conductus and the prosimetrum. The difference in sound between music cum littera and music sine littera in the conductus cum caudis is clear; however, it is far from certain that in the late Middle Ages there would have been any difference between the spoken delivery of prose and quantitative verse (carmina) in a prosimetrum that mixed the two. Nevertheless, the difference between carmina and prose was intellectually as clear as that between music sine littera and music cum littera: ‘Equally important was the intellectual challenge of writing a carmen now that the length and brevity of Latin vowels existed in the mind alone’ (Christopher Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm in Medieval France, Royal Musical Association Monographs, 8, London, 1997, 18–19).Google Scholar

9 The four principal manuscript sources for this repertory are Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, 628 Heimst. (W ₁); Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, 1099 Heimst. 1W₂); Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteo 29.1 (F); and Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 20486 (Ma). Facsimiles of all four have been published: James H. Baxter, An Old St Andrews Music Book (Cod. Helmst. 628) Published in Facsimile with an Introduction, St Andrews University Publications, 30 (Oxford and Paris, 1931), and Die mittelalterliche Musik-Handschrift W₁: Vollständige Reproduktion der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel Cod. Guelf. 628 Heimst, ed. Martin Staehelin (Wiesbaden, 1995) (W₁); Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscript Wolfenbüttel 1099 (1206), ed. Luther Dittmer, Publications of Mediaeval Musical Manuscripts, 2 (Brooklyn, NY, 1960) (W ₂); Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscript Firenze, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana Pluteo 29,1, ed. Luther Dittmer, 2 vols., Publications of Mediaeval Musical Manuscripts, 10–11 (Brooklyn, NY, [1966]-7) (F); and Facsimile Reproduction of the Manuscript Madrid 20486, ed. Luther Dittmer, Publications of Mediaeval Musical Manuscripts, 1 (Brooklyn, NY, 1957) (Ma). The most complete list of sources for the conductus is in Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus, 140–52. Although the inventory drawn up in Gordon Anderson, ‘Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: A Catalogue Raisonné’, Miscellanea musicologica, 6 (1972), 153–229, and 7 (1975), 1–81, includes a wider range of material, Anderson's study includes no listing of manuscripts; contents of the sources have to be gleaned from each of the individual critical commentaries to his editions in Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: Opera omnia, ed. Gordon Anderson, 10 vols., Collected Works, 10 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1979–86; vol. vii did not appear). For sources that have appeared since Falck's and Anderson's inventories, see Everist, Mark, ‘A Reconstructed Source for the Thirteenth-Century Conductus’, Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981): In memoriam von seinen Studenten, Freunden und Kollegen, ed. Luther Dittmer, 2 vols., Musicological Studies, 49 (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen, 1984), i, 97–118; Martin Staehelin, ‘Conductus-Fragmente aus einer Notre-Dame-Handschrift in Frankfurt a. M.’, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, i: Philologisch-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1987 (Göttingen, 1987), 179–92; and Mark Everist, ‘A New Source for the Polyphonic Conductus: MS 117∗ in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 3 (1994), 149–68.Google Scholar

10 See below for an account of sources for the polyphonic conductus where only single voices or texts are preserved.Google Scholar

11 See, for the conventional view, Janet Knapp, ‘Polyphony at Notre Dame of Paris’, The Early Middle Ages to 1300, ed. Richard Crocker and David Hiley, The New Oxford History of Music, 2 (Oxford, 1990), 632–5 (p. 632): ‘the conductus did not survive the old [modal] style. The new was to find its most striking example in the motet.’ Knapp's comments are set in the context of a deeply rooted belief in the applicability of modal rhythm to cum littera sections of the conductus. This view, as conventional as the view on the relationship between conductus and motet, has come under challenge (see below).Google Scholar

12 This work, Aurelianis civitas, is monophonic, and therefore stands at some distance from the polyphonic conducti cum caudis discussed in this article. See Thomas B. Payne, ‘Aurelianis civitas. A Conductus and Student Unrest in Medieval France’, forthcoming in Speculum, 75 (2000).Google Scholar

13 In addition, a very few conducti were modified in highly irregular and atypical ways. Perhaps the best examples of this are the two motets in the notated version of the Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 146) whose texts rework those of conducti. See Welker, Lorenz, ‘Polyphonic Reworkings of Notre-Dame Conductus in BN fr. 146: “Mundus a mundicia” and “Quare fremuerunt”’, Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146, ed. Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford, 1998), 615–36.Google Scholar

14 This particular characteristic has been an important point of departure for those who seek to argue, by backward extrapolation, that the cum littera sections of conducti were modal, and this has dominated discussions of the source material. See, for example, Gordon A Anderson, ‘The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections of Polyphonic Conductus in Mensural Sources’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 288–304; idem, ‘The Rhythm of the Monophonic Conductus in the Florence Manuscript as Indicated in Parallel Sources in Mensural Notation’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 31 (1978), 480–9; and E. Fred Flindell, ‘Syllabic Notation in Isolated Voices’, International Musicological Society: Report of the Eleventh Congress, Copenhagen 1972, ed. Henrik Glahn, S⊘ren S⊘rensen and Peter Ryom, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1974), i, 378–84. For a recent assertion of the same view, but argued at substantially shorter length than that of Anderson and others, see David Wulstan's reviews of Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm, in Music and Letters, 79 (1998), 103–5 (p. 104), and in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, 55 (1999), 643–5 (p. 643).Google Scholar

15 These observations do not relate to the monophonic conductus or to polyphonic conducti sine caudis.Google Scholar

16 It is erroneous to regard this style of presentation to be ‘no rhythm at all’, as claimed by Wulstan in the second of the two reviews cited in note 14 above; the mistake is to confuse metre with rhythm. Unstemmed noteheads do not prescribe an unequivocal metrical performance, but they do permit rhythmical ones. The notes may be interpreted as being of equal duration, in a binary or ternary relationship to one another, or – and this is what Wulstan seems so unwilling to comprehend – in a much less rational and less easily quantifiable set of durational relationships that have been espoused by many over a long period of time. For a useful recent summary of these issues from the perspective of a scholar of troubadour song, see Aubrey, Elizabeth, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1996), 240–54 (the quotation that Wulstan imputes to p. 236 of this work (Notes, 55 (1999), 644) is found on p. 260). Significantly, almost all the editions and examples in Aubrey's book are notated in exactly the same way as proposed here for the earliest notated conducti. The only exceptions are late redactions from around 1300 which are notated mensurally in their original sources (again, exactly the same treatment as proposed in this article). For a similar view, but one that starts from a very different set of premisses, see Edward H. Roesner, ‘The Emergence of Musica mensurabilis’, Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue, ed. Eugene K. Wolf and Edward H. Roesner (Madison, WI, 1990), 41–74 (pp. 70–4).Google Scholar

17 Within an isosyilabic context, these notes may be treated as freely as the state of development of the original performer's imagination permitted, or (to read the notation the other way around) it may be argued that such elongation should be treated as reflections of medieval performances (admittedly much mediated by a literate codicological tradition), and that that is the way in which they should be treated today. Accordingly, such elongations are transcribed in the examples in this article in the same manner as in the ongoing edition of the Magnus liber organi, with a horizontal stroke above the unstemmed notehead. See, for the latter, Les organa à deux voix pour la Messe (Noēl jusqu'à la fěte des Saints Pierre et Paul) du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1, ed. Mark Everist, Le magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris, 3 (Monaco, forthcoming), xxviii.Google Scholar

18 The apparent self-evidence of the view that the cum littera sections of conductus should be transcribed in modal rhythm is well demonstrated by the fact that Anderson never felt the need to describe or defend his policy and methodology as part of the editorial project (Anderson, Notre-Dame and Related Conductus). Descriptions of the missing seventh volume of his publication lead one to believe that this was to be more a study of the repertory than the explanation of editorial method.Google Scholar

19 The argument that the prosody of conductus texts (aside from the tiny handful that are not rithmi) can be used to, and indeed did, determine the rhythm of the cum littera sections of conducti has been laid to rest in Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm.Google Scholar

20 Such theoretical statements are vigorously examined in Ernest Sanders, ‘Conductus and Modal Rhythm’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 439–69.Google Scholar

21 See the summary of these phenomena, and the presentation of a new but unique example, in Janet Knapp, ‘Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? Some Reflections on the Relationship between Conductus and Trope’, Essays in Musicology: A Tribute to Alvin Johnson, ed. Lewis Lockwood and Edward Roesner (n.p., 1990), 16–25.Google Scholar

22 The arguments in Anderson's article ('The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections') are reviewed below.Google Scholar

23 A full review of the evidence for and against the imposition of modal rhythm on the cum littera sections of the conductus is outside the scope of this study. The most extreme view is presented by Anderson (Notre-Dame and Related Conductus) but condoned by most of his contemporaries; see, for example, Janet Knapp, ‘Musical Declamation and Poetic Rhythm in an Early Layer of Notre-Dame Conductus’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 32 (1979), 383–407. Ernest Sanders was one of the first to suggest that this mode of thinking was unconvincing; see his ‘Conductus and Modal Rhythm'. Nevertheless, the view that modal rhythm – no matter how loosely applied, nor how loose the argumentation used to support the view – should be used as the basis for performing cum littera sections of the conductus still has its adherents.Google Scholar

24 Ravenel's report was published in Bernard Ravenel and Liliane Ravenel, ‘Un patrimoine méconnu: La musique dans les manuscrits médiévaux conservés à Metz’, Bibliothèque de la Ville de Metz: Cahiers Élie Fleur, 10 (1994), 13–33 (pp. 30–2). This publication includes a number of errors that require clarification. The title of the host volume for the fragment, Metz, Bibliothèque de la Ville, reserve précieux, MS 732bis/20, is given (p. 27) as ‘Registre du Gref de la Chambre des [Experts] (?)'; the final word of the title is, however, ‘sauvetés'. This volume is also incorrectly dated (p. 30) 1667, not 1607; on the same page is the surprising claim that the compositions in the fragment exhibit a ‘rythme homophone’ (hardly true for the music sine littera contained here) and that the fragment contains parts of two (not four) compositions. The claim that Ego reus confiteor is unedited is manifestly incorrect: it is found in Anderson, Notre-Dame Conductus, iii, 130–4 (published in 1981).Google Scholar

25 See ‘Archives Municipales de Metz: Répertoire numérique de la série FF’ (typescript, 1992), unpaginated.Google Scholar

26 See Prost, Auguste, Les institutions judiciaires dans la cité de Metz (Paris and Nancy, 1893), 9 and 33–5.Google Scholar

27 [Jean François and Nicolas Tabouillot], Histoire générale de Metz par des religieux bénédiclins, 6 vols. (Metz, 1769–90), ii, 343 and 344 n. f.Google Scholar

28 The entire series of registers of the Chambre des Sauvetés, from 1574 to 1634, is in Metz, Archives Municipales, FF 47–74.Google Scholar

29 Trying to match the exact notational usage in a single source with the writings of a single theorist is an impossible task. The theoretical sources that form the basis of these comments are the treatises of Johannes de Garlandia (Johannes de Garlandia, De mensumbili musica: Kritische Edition mit Kommentar und Interpretation der Notationslehre, ed. Erich Reimer, 2 vols., Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 10–11, Wiesbaden, 1972); Dietricus (Eine Abhandlung über Mensuralmusik in der Karlsruher Handschrift St. Peter pergamen. 29a, ed. Hans Müller, Mittheilungen aus der Grossherzoglich Badischen Hof- und Landesbibliothek und Münzsammlung, 6, Karlsruhe, 1886); Lambertus (Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series a Gerbertina altera, ed. Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker, 4 vols., Milan and Paris, 1864–76; repr. Hildesheim, 1963, i, 251–81); the St Emmeram Anonymous (De musica mensurata: The Anonymous of St Emmeram, Complete Critical Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. Jeremy Yudkin, Bloomington, IN, 1990); Anonymous VII (Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, ed. Coussemaker, i, 378–83); Anonymous IV (Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4, ed. Reckow); Franco of Cologne (Franconis de Colonia Ars cantus mensurabilis, ed. Gilbert Reaney and André Gilles, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 18, n.p., 1974); and the Discantus positio vulgaris (Janet Knapp, ‘Two XIII Century Treatises on Modal Rhythm and the Discant: Discantus positio vulgaris and De musica libellus (Anonymous VII)’, Journal of Music Theory, 6 (1962), 201–15).Google Scholar

30 For an examination of the use of rests in musical (as opposed to theoretical) sources in an essentially Franconian context, see my ‘Music and Theory in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris: The Manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds lat. 11266’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 17 (1981), 52–64 (p. 59).Google Scholar

31 The date of the appearance of notational systems differentiating between longae and breves in musical rather than theoretical sources appears to coincide with the copying of the corpus ancien of Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, Section Médecine, H 196. This is, however, contested territory. See the cautious view in Mark Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France; Aspects of Sources and Distribution (New York and London, 1989), 110–34; a view contra in Mary Wolinski, ‘The Compilation of the Montpellier Codex’, Early Music History, 11 (1992), 263–301; and my response in ‘The Polyphonic Rondeau c.1300: Repertory and Context’, Early Music History, 15 (1996), 59–96 (p. 89 n. 48).Google Scholar

32 I am grateful to Patricia Stirnemann for giving a reading of the Metz fragments, their decoration and handwriting, on which parts of this paragraph are based (private communication to the author, 2 July 1998).Google Scholar

33 See Hourlier, Jacques, ‘Le domaine de la notation messine’, Revue grégorienne, 30 (1951), 96–113; Solange Corbin, ‘Neumatic Notations, IV, 5: Western Europe – Aquitaine’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, xiii, 137–41 (p. 137) (Lorraine) and the map on p. 138); and David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford, 1993), 347 and 351 (especially the map on p. 350, and p. 349, where Hiley proposes the terminology ‘Laon').Google Scholar

34 See, for F, Rebecca Baltzer, ‘Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Miniatures and the Date of the Florence Manuscript’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 25 (1972), 1–18, glossed in Mark Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France, 58–86; and, for W ₂, ibid., 99–109. The date of W ₁ has perhaps generated the most discussion: see Roesner, Edward, ‘The Origins of W ₁’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 29 (1976), 337–80; Julian Brown, Sonia Patterson and David Hiley, ‘Further Observations on W1’, Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 4 (1981), 53–80; and Mark Everist, ‘From Paris to St. Andrews: The Origins of W₁’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 1–42. For the dating of Ma, and the claim that it was written in Spain by a French copyist, see Pumpe, Jutta, Die Motetten der Madrider Notre-Dame-Handschrifi, Münchener Verωffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte, 48 (Tutzing, 1991), 14, and Michel Huglo's review in Scriptorium, 47 (1993), 169.Google Scholar

35 Dating conductus texts is a contentious matter. For the most sensitive contribution to the subject, see Sanders, Ernest, ‘Style and Technique in Datable Polyphonic Notre-Dame Conductus’, Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981), ii, 505–30.Google Scholar

36 Full collocations for manuscripts not mentioned in note 9 above are: (CaJ) Cambridge, Jesus College, QB 1; (Rawl) Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C 510. A concordance for Sursum corda among the Worcester Fragments (Worcester, Chapter Library, MS 68, fragment xxxv, f. d^v [WF 63] is often cited. Although the poetry begins similarly to the Notre Dame Sursum corda, there is no certainty that it continues in the same way, and the music differs substantially from what is found in the Notre Dame sources. It is therefore omitted from Table 2.Google Scholar

37 There is an etymological inconsistency associated with using the term cauda to describe a passage of music that begins a composition, but its modern use and the sources on which it is based are described and defended in Falck, The Notre Dame Conductus, 9 and 138–40; they are followed here.Google Scholar

38 F, ff. 324–325; W₁, ff. 147^v–48^v (138^v-139^v); Ma, ff. 87–89.Google Scholar

39 The point of reference for the ‘original’ version of the two-part conducti cum caudis in this article is F. Given the current state of knowledge concerning date and centrality/peripherality of the main sources for this repertory, this seems the most logical place to locate such a point of reference. This does, however, entail certain methodological problems in that the readings in other early sources (W₁, W₂ and Ma) are often different in two critical ways: the slight graphic elongation of otherwise unmeasured note-shapes, and the placement of suspirationes, rests and phrase-endings. For an attempt to take these differences into account, see below.Google Scholar

40 The exceptions are on the syllables ‘De-um’ and ‘iu-di-co'. The implications of these changes will be discussed below.Google Scholar

41 This is a clear case in point where the phraseological structure of the version of the work in F is different from those of W₁; and W₂. The poetry of this passage is as follows: ‘Sepe Deum et proximum/In publico me publico/Reum valde me iudico.’ The F version of these slightly less than three poetic lines consists of four phrases: ‘Deum et proximum/In publico/[Me publico]/Reum valde me iudico'; W₁, notwithstanding a slight lexical shift, divides the lines into six phrases: ‘Deum/et proximum/In publico/Reum/Me [sic] valde/iudico'; Ma gives a third version in three phrases: ‘Deum et proximum in publico/[Me publico]/Reum valde me iudico.’Google Scholar

42 Example 3 also shows the use of imperfect ligatures in the notation of the Metz fragments (the shapes are given above the stave). On the syllable ‘Ma-tri’ are ligatures cum proprietate et sine perfectione and on the syllable ‘pi-is’ ligatures sine proprietate et cum perfectione.Google Scholar

43 The commentary here is focused on the declamation of the words however the rhythmic foreground might be described; in other words, there exist two modal layers in play: that of the rhythmic foreground and that on the level of the declamation of the poetry.Google Scholar

44 Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, 2588; Burgos, Monasterio de las Huelgas, MS without shelfmark; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 146. Anderson's inclusion of the textless additions in Fand the fragmentary concordance in Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, 3471, adds little to his argument, and is not relevant to the current discussion (see Anderson, “The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections’, 293).Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 288–92. This sketch hardly doesjustice to the complexity of the Heidelberg transmission of Transgressus legem domini, which falls outside the scope of this study.Google Scholar

46 For the purposes of this discussion, Anderson's distinction (ibid., 289) between longa-syllabic and longa-fractio is not relevant.Google Scholar

47 This is Anderson's Example 3 (ibid., 291).Google Scholar

48 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS f. fr. 146 (Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de Pesstain), ed. Edward Roesner (New York, 1990), 22–4. See also Hans Tischler and Samuel N. Rosenberg, The Monophonic Songs in the Roman de Fauvel (Lincoln, NE, 1991); Gregory Alexander Harrison, ‘The Monophonic Music in the Roman de Fauvel’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1963); Myrta Cereghetti, ‘Le monodie del Roman de Fauvel’ (Tesi di diploma, Università degli Studi di Pavia, 1989); and Joseph Morin, ‘The Genesis of Manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 146, with Particular Emphasis on the Roman de Fauvel’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1992). Morin's paper ‘Thirteenth-Century Conducti in the Hands of a Fourteenth-Century Scribe: Aspects of Rhythm in the Fauvel Conductus Repertoire’ (Fifty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Montréal, 3–7 November 1993) is an important source for the comments in this paragraph.Google Scholar

49 This comes close to the \ie\v expressed by Edward Roesner that ‘by the time of the earliest surviving Notre Dame sources, towards the end of the first half of the thirteenth century, all parts of the Parisian repertory were viewed as “modal” by cantores and theorists alike. But these sources are a half century and more younger than the early stages of the repertory they transmit’ ('The Emergence of Musica mensurabilis’, 43). This view may be too extreme, and a more cautious (and demonstrable) view might be that after the copying of the earliest Notre Dame sources musicians began experimenting with modal interpretations of unmeasured notation found in those sources.Google Scholar

50 Anderson ('The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections’, 293) is typical of this procedure. On the sole basis that there are uncomplicated melodic correspondences between the conducti in the Heidelberg fragment and other Notre Dame sources, Anderson turns a leap of faith into ‘the following conclusion [that] seems inescapable: the mensural transmissions in Heid may be used to give exact rhythms cum littera for at least these six pieces [in their “original versions”]'. Sanders's devastating critique of the imposition of modal rhythm onto the cum littera sections rejects Anderson's view: ‘Moreover, the versions of Notre Dame conducti in … mensural sources … must be viewed with at least the same degree of caution regarding their reliability as, for instance, Czerny's version of The Well-Tempered Clavier. In fact, no mensurally notated source of a Notre Dame conductus can be automatically regarded as dependable evidence for its original rhythms’ (Sanders, ‘Conductus and Modal Rhythm’, 454).Google Scholar

51 See Roesner, ‘The Emergence of Musica mensurabilis’, and the sources cited there for the most up-to-date reading of this particular problem.Google Scholar

52 There are ways in which the modally notated conductus could never sound entirely like the motet: the presentation of a single text and the homorhythm of all voices would always mark out the two genres. Furthermore, there are (admittedly very rare) exceptions where a reasonable case can be made for the fully measured performance of original conducti, especially where their texts are quantitative.Google Scholar

53 The same is true of the musician responsible for the reworkings of the conducti in the Heidelberg fragments; this is the background to Anderson's terms ‘melismatic-text’, ‘longa-syllabic’ and ‘modal syllabic’ ('The Rhythm of Cum littera Sections’, 289). These comments are not meant to imply that the scribe of F did not attempt to present cerain types of modifications to the framework of modal rhythm, since there is abundant evidence of just such attempts.Google Scholar

54 Sanders, ‘Rithmus’, Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. Graeme M. Boone, Isham Library Papers, 4 (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 415–40; Margot E. Fassler, ‘Accent, Meter, and Rhythm in Medieval Treatises De rhythmis’, Journal of Musicology, 5 (1987), 164–90; and Page, Latin Poetry and Conductus Rhythm.Google Scholar

55 Appendix 1 below is a handlist of sources that preserve versions of two-part conducti that give the text only; Appendix 2 lists those that preserve versions in a monophonic form.Google Scholar

56 F. 363^v. It is listed as J46 in Anderson's inventory ('Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: A Catalogue Raisonné’, 172) and no. 35 in Falck (The Notre Dame Conductus, 185).Google Scholar

57 Donaueschingen, Fürstliche Bibliothek, 882, ff. 175^v–177^v; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660, f. 111; Limoges, Bibliothèque Municipale, 17, f. 282^v; and Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, 3517–18, f. 13^v.Google Scholar

58 Mäihingen, Schloss Harburg, Fürstliche Bibliothek, II, 2 8°, ff. 132^v–133; and Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1878, f. 154^v.Google Scholar

59 See above, note 9.Google Scholar

60 For the dating and provenance of the Codex Buranus, see Steer, Georg, ‘“Carmina Burana” in Südtirol: Zur Herkunft des Clm 4660’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 112 (1983), 1–37; Peter Dronke, ‘A Critical Note on Schumann's Dating of the Codex Buranus’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprachen und Literatur, 84 (1962), 173; and John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages, 517–18.Google Scholar

61 Other works that share similarly wide concordance bases with sources in which they are preserved as monodies or texts are Beate virginis (Anderson H15; Falck no. 43); Austro terris influente (Anderson G1; Falck no. 26); and Fraude ceca (Anderson G4; Falck no. 133).Google Scholar

62 See Engelberg Stiftsbibliothek Codex 314, ed. Wulf Arlt and Mathias Stauffacher, Schweizerische Musikdenkmäler, 11 (Winterthur, 1986).Google Scholar

63 Rudolf Flotzinger, ‘Reduzierte Notre-Dame-Conductus im sogennanten Codex Buranus?’, Muzikološki zbomik, 17 (1981), 97–103.Google Scholar

64 In some instances (in the manuscripts Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660, and Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek, HB I Asc. 95, for example), it is difficult to identify which of the voices is preserved, or even whether the monody belonged to the original polyphonic setting at all. In the case of Beate virginis (H15), the monodies that survive preserve two different melodies not found in the polyphonic version (see Anderson, Notre-Dame Conductus, iii, 213).Google Scholar

65 There are two further examples that deserve mention in this context. The Deus in adiutorium found in Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, Section de Médecine, H 196, f. 350, Turin, Biblioteca Reale, van 42, f. D^v, and Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 19606, face, is in three parts in all sources except the Brussels rotulus, where a fourth part has been added; see Ursula Günther, ‘Les versions polyphoniques du Deus in adiutorium’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 31 (1988), 111–22. Given that all the sources for the three-part form of the composition date from c.1300, and that the addition dates from later in the fourteenth century, comparisons with the Metz fragments (made when this article was delivered orally) are strained from a chronological point of view, and are possibly motivated by a mistaken belief that the absence of a Gregorian tenor means that the piece must be a conductus. ‘il s'agit d'un vrai conduit sans cantus firmnus au ténor’ (ibid., 118). Günther's reference to ‘vrai conduit’ is intended to distinguish this composition from the work setting the same text that opens fascicle 1 in the Montpellier manuscript (f. 1, wrongly called the beginning of the old corpus by Günther (ibid., 111); the old corpus begins on f. 23, as Rokseth pointed out 60 years ago (Polyphonies du treizième siècle, 4 vols., Paris, 1935–9, iv, passim, cited throughout by Günther)). Much more germane are a pair of readings of the conductus Mater patris et filia preserved in two parts in Ma, ff. 117^v-118, and in three parts in Hu, ff. 147–150. It seems reasonable to assume that the Hu version represents both a modalization of the Ma model, and that it adds a third part to the two-part original. What sets it apart from the other sources discussed in this article is that both sources are Iberian, raising the possibility that this is an exclusively Spanish tradition that should be considered alongside the Metz tradition, and not subsumed into it. I am grateful to Rebecca Baltzer for drawing this pair of concordances to my attention.Google Scholar

66 It needs to be stressed that the degree to which the mixed nature of the conductus form is blurred in the reworkings around 1300 depends on the attitude taken to the notational profile of the original. Those who adhere to a rigidly modal interpretation of the cum littera notation of F will see relatively little blurring of this sort (the nature of the genre has already been blurred); conversely, those who propose a rigid isochronous or isosyllabic performance will see a very high degree of blurring. It therefore stands to reason that those who favour a flexible isochronous or isosyllabic performance will stand somewhere between these two positions.Google Scholar

67 This regular and unchallenged assumption, articulated first by Wilhelm Meyer, ‘Der Ursprung des Motetts: Vorläufige Bemerkungen’, Nachrichten von der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen: Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1898, 4 vols, paginated consecutively (Göttingen, 1898), ii, 113–45; repr. in Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rhythmik, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1905–36; repr. Hildesheim, 1970), ii, 303–41, and most recently in my French Motets in the Thirteenth Century: Music, Poetry and Genre, Cambridge Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Cambridge, 1994), has resisted such challenges as those mounted on the grounds of a spurious historiography of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a misunderstanding of the refrain in Wolf Frobenius, ‘Zum genetischen Verhältnis zwischen Notre-Dame-Klauseln und ihren Motetten’, Archiv für Musikwissenchaft, 44 (1987), 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 There is a further repertory which bears comparison with the Metz redactions of the two-part conductus cum caudis, and that is the body of conducti in insular manuscripts from around 1300 in which, it has been argued, there is a differentiation between longae and breves, and in which the distinction between the discursive modes of cum littera and sine littera is further blurred. See Losseff, Nicky, The Best Concords: Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century Britain, Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities (New York and London, 1994), 95–188 and passim.Google Scholar

69 See Bergsagel, John, ‘The Transmission of Notre-Dame Organa in Some Newly-Discovered “Magnus liber organi” Fragments in Copenhagen’, Atti del XIV Congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia: Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale, ed. Angelo Pompilio et al.,3 vols. (Turin, 1990), iii, 629–36. A facsimile edition of these fragments does not accompany this article.Google Scholar

70 See, for a fuller account of the context for the production of fonds fr. 846, Everist, Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France, 201–3.Google Scholar

71 See idem, ‘The Polyphonic Rondeau c.1300’, 59, and the sources cited in note 2 above.Google Scholar

72 See Huot, Silvia, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1987), 64–74.Google Scholar

73 There is an interesting parallel here as the conductus at the end of its career began to assimilate characteristics of the motet and other genres in a similar way to that in which the motet, at the beginning of its career, drew on the conductus and other genres.Google Scholar