The first part of the Bamberg Codex contains 100 double motets, which are three-voice pieces with two contrapuntal lines above a cantus firmus. Forty-four of the motets have Latin texts, 47 have French texts, and 9 are macaronic. This is followed by a conductus and 7 settings of hockets. The musical notation is similar to that used in the Montpellier Codex, although some advances in notational clarity are evident, for instance in multi-column layouts, each voice observes line breaks at the same place in the piece. These motets were likely composed between 1260 and 1290, and are generally in the style associated with Franco of Cologne.
The second part of the Codex contains two theoretical treatises, one by Amerus and one anonymous, as well as two motets added later.
The Bamberg Codex is bound in ivory pigskin with embroidered gold lettering. It is written on parchment and consists of eighty pages classified into ten groups and Arabic numerals appear in pencil in the top right-hand corner of each page. The codex is mostly associated with Franconian notation, although it does include motets. This points to how popular secular music was becoming towards the end of the 13th century and also how music was becoming more accessible to the common folk, many of whom never learned to speak Latin other than reciting it in church services. This is consistent with the Montpellier Codex containing many secular songs in its collection as well, showing the extent of this phenomenon, not constraining it to just one musical school in the period. Different aspects of the manuscript such as the trimming and coloring of the pages, the format of the text, and the amount of wear and tear points to the notion that the codex was compiled in a manner that allowed people to perform the songs without any prior rehearsal.
Most of these motets are three-voice motets, meaning they have three different voices in the written music. There are more than 100 of these motets contained in the codex. Forty-four of these have Latin texts, forty-seven have French texts, and nine have macaronic texts. Macaronic texts are written in a hybrid between two languages, in this case Latin and the vernacular French. There is only one motet in the Codex with four voice parts, the rest have three parts. All of the motets in the Codex of Bamberg are polyphonic and polytextual. The codex also contains two treatises, one by an anonymous writer, and the other by Amerus. This treatise, Practica artis musice, was intended to explain notation systems while also discussing polyphony. Amerus’ work is believed to be among the first treatises from Italy using rhythmic notation. The techniques used for most of the composition of the motets and songs included basic practices used in the era of medieval motets during the 13th century. This included the use of rhythmic modes and an early developed form of the staff. This provided a basis for exact pitch along with a form of our modern staff.
After the main section of the previously mentioned motets, a conductus and 7 hockets follow. A conductus is a type of sacred, but non-liturgical vocal composition for one or more voices. A hocket is a rhythmic linear technique that utilizes the differentiation of certain rhythmic and scale elements. In the medieval practice of a hocket, a single melody is usually shared between two voices so one voice sounds while the other rests and this act alternates between the voices.
List of pieces from the Codex
Je ne chant pas / Talens m'est pris de chanter / Aptatur / Omnes (4 voices)
The Bamberg Codex is an important collection of thirteenth-century motets; it provides source material of significant historical and musicological significance. As such, it offers a compact and concise database for the music of the time. Not only does this show the advancement of music both in complexity and the notation but also the spread of secular music through the writings of Amerus. The Bamberg Codex and its perception about the origin and provenance of the manuscript continues to be contested, with some pointing to more French motets than Latin motets in the codex, as proof that the codex belongs to French repertory.
Citation
Bamberg, Codex, 2003.
Norwood, Patricia P. “Evidence Concerning the Provenance of the Bamberg Codex.” The Journal of Musicology, vol. 8, no. 4, 1990, pp.491–504. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/763532.
Further reading
Willi Apel. The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600. Rev. 4th Ed. Cambridge, 1953.
Anderson, Gordon A. ed. "Compositions of the Bamberg manuscript: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Lit. 115 (olim Ed. IV.6.)" Series: Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 75. [Rome]: American Institute of Musicology, 1977
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and followed by the Renaissance music; the two eras comprise what musicologists generally term as early music, preceding the common practice period. Following the traditional division of the Middle Ages, medieval music can be divided into Early (500–1000), High (1000–1300), and Late (1300–1400) medieval music.
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond. The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts".
Pérotin was a composer associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony in Paris and the broader ars antiqua musical style of high medieval music. He is credited with developing the polyphonic practices of his predecessor Léonin, with the introduction of three and four-part harmonies.
Organum is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. Depending on the mode and form of the chant, a supporting bass line may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion, or a combination of both of these techniques may be employed. As no real independent second voice exists, this is a form of heterophony. In its earliest stages, organum involved two musical voices: a Gregorian chant melody, and the same melody transposed by a consonant interval, usually a perfect fifth or fourth. In these cases the composition often began and ended on a unison, the added voice keeping to the initial tone until the first part has reached a fifth or fourth, from where both voices proceeded in parallel harmony, with the reverse process at the end. Organum was originally improvised; while one singer performed a notated melody, another singer—singing "by ear"—provided the unnotated second melody. Over time, composers began to write added parts that were not just simple transpositions, thus creating true polyphony.
Jehan le Taintenier or Jean Teinturier was a Renaissance music theorist and composer from the Low Countries. Up to his time, he is perhaps the most significant European writer on music since Guido of Arezzo.
The clausula was a newly composed section of discant inserted into a pre-existing setting of organum. Clausulae flourished in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries and were associated with the Notre Dame school. The origin of the clausula has long been subject of scholarly debate, as the relationship between clausulae and motets is very complicated. Clausulae eventually became used as substitutes for passages of original plainchant. They occur as melismatic figures based on a single word or syllable within an organum.
The conductus was a sacred Latin song in the Middle Ages, one whose poetry and music were newly composed. It is non-liturgical since its Latin lyric borrows little from previous chants. The conductus was northern French equivalent of the versus, which flourished in Aquitaine. It was originally found in the twelfth-century Aquitanian repertories. But major collections of conducti were preserved in Paris. The conductus typically includes one, two, or three voices. A small number of the conducti are for four voices. Stylistically, the conductus is a type of discant. Its form can be strophic or through-composed form. The genre flourished from the early twelfth century to the middle of thirteenth century. It was one of the principal types of vocal composition of the ars antiqua period of medieval music history.
Jean Mouton was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was famous both for his motets, which are among the most refined of the time, and for being the teacher of Adrian Willaert, one of the founders of the Venetian School.
Franco of Cologne was a German music theorist and possibly a composer. He was one of the most influential theorists of the Late Middle Ages, and was the first to propose an idea which was to transform musical notation permanently: that the duration of any note should be determined by its appearance on the page, and not from context alone. The result was Franconian notation, described most famously in his Ars cantus mensurabilis.
In medieval music, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short durations. The value of each note is not determined by the form of the written note, but rather by its position within a group of notes written as a single figure called a ligature, and by the position of the ligature relative to other ligatures. Modal notation was developed by the composers of the Notre Dame school from 1170 to 1250, replacing the even and unmeasured rhythm of early polyphony and plainchant with patterns based on the metric feet of classical poetry, and was the first step towards the development of modern mensural notation. The rhythmic modes of Notre Dame Polyphony were the first coherent system of rhythmic notation developed in Western music since antiquity.
Marchetto da Padova was an Italian music theorist and composer of the late medieval era. His innovations in notation of time-values were fundamental to the music of the Italian ars nova, as was his work on defining the modes and refining tuning. In addition, he was the first music theorist to discuss chromaticism.
The Chigi codex is a music manuscript originating in Flanders. According to Herbert Kellman, it was created sometime between 1498 and 1503, probably at the behest of Philip I of Castile. It is currently housed in the Vatican Library under the call number Chigiana, C. VIII. 234.
Jacopo da Bologna was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the period sometimes known as the Italian ars nova. He was one of the first composers of this group, making him a contemporary of Gherardello da Firenze and Giovanni da Firenze. He concentrated mainly on madrigals, including both canonic (caccia-madrigal) and non-canonic types, but also composed a single example each of a caccia, lauda-ballata, and motet.
France has a rich music history that was already prominent in Europe as far back as the 10th century. French music originated as a unified style in medieval times, focusing around the Notre-Dame school of composers. This group developed the motet, a specific musical composition. Notable in the high Middle Ages were the troubadours and trouvères soon began touring France, composing and performing many original songs. The styles of ars nova and ars subtilior sprung up in the 14th century, both of which focused on secular songs. As Europe moved into the Renaissance age, the music of France evolved in sophistication. The popularity of French music in the rest of Europe declined slightly, yet the popular chanson and the old motet were further developed during this time. The epicenter of French music moved from Paris to Burgundy, as it followed the Burgundian School of composers. During the Baroque period, music was simplified and restricted due to Calvinist influence. The air de cour then became the primary style of French music, as it was secular and preferred by the royal court.
The Trecento was a period of vigorous activity in Italy in the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of the Trecento paralleled the achievements in the other arts in many ways, for example, in pioneering new forms of expression, especially in secular song in the vernacular language, Italian. In these regards, the music of the Trecento may seem more to be a Renaissance phenomenon; however, the predominant musical language was more closely related to that of the late Middle Ages, and musicologists generally classify the Trecento as the end of the medieval era. Trecento means "three hundred" in Italian but is usually used to refer to the 1300s. However, the greatest flowering of music in the Trecento happened late in the century, and the period is usually extended to include music up to around 1420.
The Codex Las Huelgas is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northern Spain. The convent was a wealthy one which had connections with the royal family of Castile.
The Montpellier Codex is an important source of 13th-century French polyphony. The Codex contains 336 polyphonic works probably composed c. 1250–1300, and was likely compiled c. 1300. It is believed to originate from Paris. It was discovered by musicologist Edmond de Coussemaker in c. 1852.
Amerus was a 13th-century English music theorist who lived in Italy.
Sub Arturo plebs – Fons citharizantium – In omnem terram is an isorhythmic motet of the second part of the 14th century, written by an English composer known by the name of Johannes Alanus or John Aleyn. It stands in the tradition of the Ars nova, the fourteenth-century school of polyphonic music based in France. It is notable for the historical information it provides about contemporary music life in England, and for its spectacularly sophisticated use of complex rhythmic devices, which mark it as a prime example of the stylistic outgrowth of the Ars nova known today as Ars subtilior. It has been dated conjecturally to either around 1358, which, within that school of composition, would make its compositional technique exceptionally innovative for its own time, or some time later during the 1370s.
The Trinity Carol Roll is a 15th-century manuscript of thirteen English carols held by the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. It is the earliest surviving example of polyphonic music written in English. Compiled after 1415, it contains the earliest of two manuscript sources for the Agincourt Carol which tells of Henry V's victory at the Battle of Agincourt, as well as several early Christmas carols. The majority of texts are in Middle English with some of the carols alternating between Latin and Middle English, a common form for carols of the period known as macaronic.
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