1 See the contributions on Machaut songs by Plumley, Yolanda, Bain, Jennifer, Leach, Elizabeth Eva et al. in Machaut's Music: New Interpretations, ed. Leach, Elizabeth Eva (Woodbridge, 2003)Google Scholar . An important stimulus for debate on analytical methodology in the field of medieval song was Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's ‘Machaut's Rose, lis and the Problem of Early Music Analysis’, Music Analysis, 3 (1984), 9–28.

2 On this issue, see my ‘Geschichtsbild und Analyse. Überlegungen zur Musik des späten Trecento’, in Kontinuität und Transformation in der italienischen Vokalmusik zwischen Due- und Quattrocento. Bericht über die Tagung in Jena vom 1.–3. Juli 2005, ed. Sandra Dieckmann et al., Musica mensurabilis 3 (Hildesheim, 2007), 197–211, and ‘Analysis and Historiography: Questions of Methodology Concerning Polyphonic Songs from the Late Trecento’, in Beyond 50 Years of Ars Nova Studies at Certaldo, 1959–2009, ed. Francesco Zimei, L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento 8, forthcoming.

3 Fischer, Kurt von, ‘On the Technique, Origin, and Evolution of Italian Trecento Music’, The Musical Quarterly, 47 (1961), 41–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; idem, ‘Das Madrigal Si com’ al canto della bella Iguana von Magister Piero und Jacopo da Bologna’, in Analysen. Beiträge zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens. Festschrift Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, ed. Werner Breig et al. (Stuttgart, 1984), 46–56; Baumann, Dorothea, Die dreistimmige italienische Lied-Satztechnik im Trecento, Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 64 (Baden-Baden, 1979)Google Scholar . Recent citations: e.g. Sabaino, Daniele, ‘Per un’analisi delle strutture compositive nella musica di Francesco Landini: Il caso della ballata Contemplar le gran cose', in ‘Col dolce suon che da te piove’: studi su Francesco Landini e la musica del suo tempo in memoria di Nino Pirrotta, ed. Barezzani, Maria Teresa Rosa and Delfino, Antonio (Florence, 1999), 259–315Google Scholar .

4 Documented for example in the volumes ‘Col dolce suon’, ed. Rosa Barezzani and Delfino, and Alessandra Fiori, Francesco Landini, Constellatio musica 11 (Palermo, 2004).

5 For example, see the article ‘Ballata’ by von Fischer, Kurt and d'Agostino, Gianluca in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley and Tyrell, John, 29 vols., 2nd edn (London, 2001), 2: 563–565Google Scholar .

6 Pirrotta, Nino, ‘New Glimpses of an Unwritten Tradition’, in his Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque: A Collection of Essays (Cambridge, MA and London, 1984), 51–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 See the facsimiles of major Trecento sources published in the Ars nova series of the Libreria musicale italiana and the editions in the Diverse voci series of Edizioni ETS; Huck, Oliver and Dieckmann, Sandra, eds, Die mehrfach überlieferten Kompositionen des frühen Trecento. Anonyme Madrigale und Cacce sowie Kompositionen von Piero, Giovanni da Firenze und Jacopo da Bologna, 2 vols., Musica mensurabilis 2 (Hildesheim, 2007)Google Scholar ; Huck, Oliver, Die Musik des frühen Trecento, Musica mensurabilis 1 (Hildesheim, 2005)Google Scholar .

8 Especially by Gianluca d'Agostino, for example in ‘Le ballate di Zacara’, in Antonio Zacara da Teramo e il suo tempo, ed. Francesco Zimei, Documenti di storia musicale abruzzese 2 (Lucca, 2004), 247–77. See also Carsaniga, Giovanni, ‘I testi di Paolo Tenorista (Nuove proposte di letteratura)’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale, 40 (1990), 5–22Google Scholar , and Ziino, Agostino, ‘Rime per musica e danza’, in Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 2, Il Trecento, ed. Malato, Enrico (Rome, 1995), 455–529Google Scholar .

9 See for example Zimei, ed., Antonio Zacara; Nádas, John, ‘Song Collections in Late-Medieval Florence’, in Atti del XIV congresso della società internazionale di musicologia: Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale, ed. Pompilio, Angelo et al. (Turin, 1990), 1: 126–137Google Scholar ; and Zimei, Francesco, ed., Dolce e nuove note, L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento 7 (Lucca, 2009)Google Scholar .

10 Bent, Margaret, ‘The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis’, in Tonal Structures in Early Music, ed. Judd, Christle Collins (New York, 1998), 15–59Google Scholar , and eadem, ‘Ciconia, Prosdocimus, and the Workings of Musical Grammar as Exemplified in O felix templum and O Padua’, in Johannes Ciconia. Musicien de la transition, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Turnhout, 2003), 65–106. See also Leach, Elizabeth Eva, ‘Counterpoint and Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Song’, Journal of Music Theory, 44 (2000), 45–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar , and Moll, Kevin N., ‘Voice Function, Sonority, and Contrapuntal Procedure in Late Medieval Polyphony’, Current Musicology, 64 (2001), 26–72Google Scholar .

11 Huck, Musik des frühen Trecento; Gozzi, Marco, ‘Sul rapporto testo-musica nel Trecento italiano: Il caso del madrigale petrarchesco Non al so amante intonato da Jacopo da Bologna’, Polifonie, IV/3 (2004), 165–196Google Scholar (English translation ‘On the text-music relationship in the Italian Trecento: the case of the Petrarchan madrigal Non al so amante set by Jacopo da Bologna’ in the same volume, 197–222); Memelsdorff, Pedro, ‘Lizadra donna: Ciconia, Matteo da Perugia, and the Late Medieval Ars Contratenoris’, in Johannes Ciconia, ed. Vendrix, , 233–278Google Scholar ; Sucato, Tiziana, ‘Studio introduttivo’, in her Il codice Rossiano 215: Madrigali, ballate, una caccia, un rotondello, Diverse voci 1 (Pisa, 2003), 3–18Google Scholar .

12 The repertoire which forms the background for this study consists of a corpus of about sixty polyphonic songs that are transmitted in three voices in at least one source. Most of them have been more or less tentatively dated to the decades around 1400. They were composed by five musicians active in Italy: twenty-five songs by Paolo da Firenze, twelve by Andrea da Firenze, ten by Bartolino da Padova, seven by Johannes Ciconia, and five by Antonio Zacara da Teramo. These songs are the subject of my Habilitationsschrift Komponieren in Italien um 1400. Studien zu dreistimmig überlieferten Liedsätzen von Paolo und Andrea da Firenze, Bartolino da Padova, Johannes Ciconia und Antonio Zacara da Teramo (forthcoming in the series Musica mensurabilis, Olms Verlag, Hildesheim). Of these songs, more than fifty are in ballata form.

13 From a vast amount of literature, I refer to Wendorff, Rudolf, Zeit und Kultur. Geschichte des Zeitbewußtseins in Europa, 3rd edn (Opladen, 1985)Google Scholar , and Ehlert, Trude, ed., Zeitkonzeptionen, Zeiterfahrung, Zeitmessung. Stationen ihres Wandels vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne (Paderborn, 1997)Google Scholar .

14 LeGoff, Jacques, ‘Temps de l’église et temps du marchand', Annales, 15 (1960), 417–433Google Scholar .

15 Lütteken, Laurenz, ‘Zeitenwende. Zeit und Zeitwahrnehmung in der Musik des Spätmittelalters’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 160 (1999), 16–21, at 19Google Scholar .

16 Borst, Arno, Computus. Zeit und Zahl in der Geschichte Europas, 3rd edn (Berlin, 2004), 103–111Google Scholar .

17 Anne Stone, ‘Writing Rhythm in Late Medieval Italy: Notation and Musical Style in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha M.5.24’, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University (1994), esp. Chapter 6: ‘Philosophical and Practical Constructions of Time in the Fourteenth Century’, 233–91.

18 Ibid., 255–67.

19 Tanay, Dorit, Noting Music, Marking Culture: The Intellectual Context of Rhythmic Notation, 1250–1400, Musicological Studies and Documents 46 (Holzgerlingen, 1999), esp. 67–79Google Scholar ; the quotation is from Murdoch, John E., ‘From Social into Intellectual Factors: An Aspect of the Unitary Character of Medieval Learning’, in The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26, ed. Murdoch, John E. and Sylla, Edith (Dordrecht, 1975), 271–348CrossRefGoogle Scholar , at 341.

20 Walter, Michael, Grundlagen der Musik des Mittelalters. Schrift, Zeit, Raum (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1994), 222–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar , my translation. The term ‘isochrone Einheit’/‘isochrone unit’ is from Julius Thomas Fraser, Time: The Familiar Stranger (Amherst, 1987), and its German translation Die Zeit. Auf den Spuren eines vertrauten und doch fremden Phänomens (Munich, 1991).

21 Lütteken, ‘Zeitenwende’, 19.

22 Huck, Musik des frühen Trecento.

23 von Fischer, Kurt, ‘Sprache und Musik im italienischen Trecento. Zur Frage einer Frührenaissance’, in Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Günther, Ursula and Finscher, Ludwig, Göttinger musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten 10 (Kassel, 1984), 37–54Google Scholar .

24 Corsi, Giuseppe, ed., Poesie musicali del Trecento, Collezione di opere inedite o rare 131 (Bologna, 1970), 302Google Scholar .

25 Kees Boeke and Robert Claire, translation in the CD-booklet O tu cara sciença mie musica, Tetraktys, Olive Music om007 (2005), 36; Giovanni Carsaniga, translation in the Medieval Music Database, www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/MMDB/composer/H0185020.htm (accessed 22 March 2010).

26 It has to be conceded that the only source (I-Fl Mediceo-Palatino 87 (the ‘Squarcialupi codex’), fol. 193v) offers no exact solution for the text underlay at that specific passage concerning the position of the syllables per and E-[nea].

27 The function of syllable repetition in Trecento songs has been examined by Agostino Ziino, ‘Ripetizioni di sillabe e parole nella musica profana italiana del Trecento e primo Quattrocento: Proposte di classificazione e prime riflessioni’, and Dorothea Baumann, ‘Silben- und Wortwiederholungen im italienischen Liedrepertoire des späten Trecento und frühen Quattrocento’, both in Musik und Text, ed. Günther and Finscher, 93–119 and 77–92 respectively.

28 Hammerstein, Reinhold, Die Musik der Engel. Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelalters, 2nd edn (Bern, 1990)Google Scholar , originally published 1962; Huck, Musik des frühen Trecento, 321–7; idem, ‘The Early Canon as imitatio naturae’, in Canons and Canonic Techniques, ed. Katelijne Schiltz, Bonnie J. Blackburn und Ignace Bossuyt (Leuven, 2007), 7–18. On the subject, a dissertation by Janine Droese (Hamburg, Germany) is in preparation.

29 For viable reasons, Pirrotta as a rule avoided giving the Volta and Piedi 2 a definitive text underlay in his edition. There are no fixed rules to follow for the texting of the Volta in the Ripresa section, and a schematic solution (placing the syllables precisely under those of the Ripresa) is by no means historically more valid than a pragmatic one as long as it respects the text's formal and metrical qualities. In this case, it is fully possible to sing the word ‘melodia’ in the Volta again near the extraordinary rhythmic passage in bars 24–8, even this time with text repetition, as realised for example in the recording of Ensemble Tetraktys with Jill Feldman (see note 25).

30 An extensive analytical examination of this corpus is provided in Rotter-Broman, Komponieren in Italien um 1400.

31 Edited by Marrocco, W. Thomas in Italian Secular Music (part 4), Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century IX (Monaco, 1975), 46–50Google Scholar .

32 Edited by Pirrotta, Nino, The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 8 (Rome, 1964), 5: 24–25Google Scholar .