Ars Antiqua

ARS ANTIQUA. - This is the name given, in contrast to the Ars nova (v.) of the 14th century, to the sacred composition of the first era of polyphony (9th-13th centuries), which is customarily summarized in the theory of the Franconian school and in the technical genres "organum" or "diaphonia" and then "discantus," comprising other forms such as: "rondellus," "conductus," "copula," "motetus" and "hoquetus." This era, in which music, drawing extensively on the purest sources of the liturgy, was enriched with a vast sacred repertoire in which the vital sap of Gregorian chant dominated unchallenged, can be divided into three phases, each of about a century: the first, opened by Hucbald of St-Amand, a distinguished Benedictine theorist of the 9th century, is closed by the Micrologus (1030) of his famous confrere Guido d'Arezzo (v.); the second is closed by the Magnus Liber organi of Leoninus, and the third culminates in the reforming and innovative work of his successor Perotinus (v.). Of the two kinds of sources, the monuments of practical music and the theoretical treatises, the latter are, in the first phase, the only aid for the study of primitive polyphony; Hucbald, in the 19 chapters of the Musica Euchriadis, suggests various types of diaphonia with harmonic intervals ("symphoniae") of the 4th, 5th and 8th between the "vox principalis" (chant taken from the Gregorian repertoire) and the "vox organalis" (added chant), while Guido, in chapters 18 and 19 of the Micrologus, proposes the major 2nd, the major and minor 3rd, and especially the 4th, discarding the minor 2nd and the 5th. The second phase gives us important treatises, such as the anonymous Ad organum faciendum of Milan (Ambrosian Library, ms. M 17 Supl., ca. 1100), the 12 rules of the Quicunque venit dechanter (11th-12th century; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, f. lat. 15139, formerly St-Victor 813), the Discantus positio vulgaris (attributed to Robert of Sabillon or to J. de Garlandia), of the 12th century, the Epistola ad Fulgentium of J. Cotto (likewise 12th century) and also precious monuments of practical music: let us recall, for example, three pieces of two-voice "organum," among them the trope on the kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus and the alleluia Iustus ut palma from the aforementioned manuscript of the Ambrosiana, the 5 two-voice alleluias added in the 11th century to a Musica Euchriadis of the 9th-10th century (Chartres, Bibliothèque Municipale, 130 [148]) and the Winchester Troper (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 473), to which must be added the "organa" of St. Martial of Limoges contained in 4 manuscripts now in Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale, f. lat. 1139, 3549 and 3719) and in London (British Museum, add. 36681). The primitive two-voice "organum" in parallel motion, which had gradually been transformed into discantus through the prevalence of contrary motion, is now enriched with other voices: from the three-voice discantus (triplum) with intervals of the 5th and 8th proposed by Franco of Cologne, one arrives at forms having superimposed on the tenor (Gregorian chorale) a "duplum," also called "medius cantus" or "motetus" (whence the name of the form), a "triplum" ("tertius cantus" or "discantus") and often also a "quadruplum" and a "quintuplum." The third phase adds to discantus, beyond contrary motion, that mensuralism which, already foreshadowed by the modal rhythm inspired by the metric schemes of verse, is now developed by the theorists of the Franconian school (Petrus de Cruce, J. de Garlandia, Franco of Paris and Franco of Cologne, 13th century) and expressed graphically by the new notation with signs relating to the different duration values of the sounds. In practical music we are at the culminating point of the entire ars antiqua, that is, at the flowering of the school of the cathedral of Paris which, with Leoninus (mid-12th century), had placed itself at the center of the musical world of its time.

The oldest manuscript of the Parisian choir is given by cod. Wolfenbüttel Helmst. 628, but the richest collection is in the Antiphonarium Mediceum (Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, Plut. XXIX, 1), a true jewel of art. In other manuscripts, moreover, are found motets with a text no longer Latin but French, an indication of that process of secularization and of that movement diverging from the pure Gregorian tradition which would see its culmination in the Italian (especially Tuscan) and French Ars nova (v.) of the 14th century.

Luisa Cervelli