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A chanson about love, Belle, bonne, sage, by Baude Cordier, is in a heart shape, with red notes indicating rhythmic alterations.

Ars subtilior (more subtle art) is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century.^[1] The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory.^[2] Often the term is used in contrast with ars nova, which applies to the musical style of the preceding period from about 1310 to about 1370; though some scholars prefer to consider the ars subtilior a subcategory of the earlier style. Primary sources for the ars subtilior are the Chantilly Codex and the Modena Codex. Musical genres are categories which contain music which share a certain style or which have certain elements in common. ... For other uses, see Rhythm (disambiguation). ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... This article is about the capital of France. ... For the Municipality in Quebec, see Avignon Regional County Municipality, Quebec. ... This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ... Ars nova was a stylistic period in music of the Late Middle Ages, centered in France, which encompassed the period from the publication of the Roman de Fauvel (1310 and 1314) until the death of Machaut (1377). ... Events Beginning of the rule of Poland by Capet-Anjou family. ... The Chantilly Codex (Chantilly, Musee Conde MS 564) is a manuscript of medieval music containing pieces from the style known as the Ars Subtilior. ...

Overview and history

Musically the productions of the ars subtilior are highly refined, complex, difficult to sing, and probably were produced, sung and enjoyed by a small audience of specialists and connoisseurs. Hoppin suggests the superlative ars subtilissima, saying, "not until the twentieth century did music again reach the most subtle refinements and rhythmic complexities of the manneristic style."^[1] They are almost exclusively secular songs, and have as their subject matter love, war, chivalry, and stories from classical antiquity; there are even some songs written in praise of public figures (for example Pope Clement VII). Daniel Albright ^[3] compares avant-garde and modernist music of the 20th century's "emphasis on generating music through technical experiment" to the precedent set by the ars subtilior movement's "autonomous delight in extending the kingdom of sound." He cites Baude Cordier's perpetual canon Tout par compas (All by compass am I composed), notated on a circular staff. This page may meet Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... This article is about the musical composition. ... For the antipope (1378-1394) see Antipope Clement VII. Pope Clement VII Clement VII, né Giulio di Giuliano de Medici (1478 – September 25, 1534) was pope from 1523 to 1534. ... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with tradition or common practice. ... 20th century classical music, the classical music of the 20th century, was extremely diverse, beginning with the late Romantic style of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Impressionism of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and continuing through the Neoclassicism of middle-period Igor Stravinsky, and ranging to such distant sound-worlds as the complete... This article is about the musical use of the word canon. For other uses, see canon (disambiguation). ...

Albright contrasts this motivation with "expressive urgency" and "obedience to rules of craft" and, indeed, ars subtilior was coined by musicologist Ursula Günther in 1960 to avoid the negative connotations of the terms manneristic style and mannered notation.^[4] (Günther's coinage was based on references in Tractatus de diversis figuris, attributed to Philippus de Caserta, to composers moving to a style "post modum subtiliorem comparantes" and developing an "artem magis subtiliter".^[5]) However, many of the devices first used by the ars subtilior composers became standard compositional techniques in the Renaissance, indicating that some of their music must have been widely known and distributed, i.e., it was not merely a dead-end artistic movement, even though subsequent music sounds nothing like it.^{[citation needed]} Musical composition has three meanings in music: an original piece of music the musical structure of a musical piece the process of creating a new piece of music // A musical composition A piece of music exists in the form of a written composition in musical notation or as a single... Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 to 1600. ...

The center of activity of the style was Avignon at the end of the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy and during the Great Schism (1378–1417), the time during which the Western Church had a pope both in Rome and in Avignon. The town on the Rhône had developed into an active cultural center, and produced the most significant surviving body of secular song of the late fourteenth century. From Avignon the style spread into northern Spain and as far as Cyprus (which was a French cultural outpost at the time); in addition, a handful of Italian composers such as Zacara da Teramo composed in a manneristic style related to the ars subtilior.^{[citation needed]} The Papal palace in Avignon In the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the Avignon Papacy was the period from 1309 to 1377 during which seven popes, all French, resided in Avignon: Pope Clement V: 1305–1314 Pope John XXII: 1316–1334 Pope Benedict XII: 1334–1342 Pope Clement VI... Historical map of the Western Schism: red is support for Avignon, blue for Rome The Western Schism or Papal Schism (also known as the Great Schism of Western Christianity) was a split within the Catholic Church (1378 - 1417). ... Events March - John Wyclif tried to gain public favour by laying his theses before parliament, and then made them public in a tract. ... Events Antipope Benedict XIII is deposed, and Pope Martin V is elected. ... For other uses, see Rome (disambiguation). ... The Rhône River, or the Rhône (French Rhône, Arpitan Rôno, Occitan Ròse, standard German Rhone, Valais German Rotten), is one of the major rivers of Europe, running through Switzerland and France. ...

Notational characteristics

One of the techniques of the ars subtilior involved using red notes, or "coloration", where the red notes indicate an alteration of note values by one third. Menstrual notation is the musical notation system which was used from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. ...

Manuscripts of works in the ars subtilior occasionally were themselves in unusual and expressive shapes, as a form of eye music. As well as Baude Cordier's circular canon and the heart-shaped score shown above, Jacob Senleches's La Harpe de melodie is written in the shape of a harp. A French composer from Rheims. ... (Jacob Senlechos; Jacopinus Selesses) French composer, fl. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

Composers in ars subtilior style

• Matteo da Perugia
• Jacob Senleches
• Anthonello de Caserta
• Philippus da Caserta
• Johannes Ciconia in at least one work
• Baude Cordier
• Solage
• Paolo da Firenze
• Martinus Fabri
• Antonio Zacara da Teramo
• Anonymous composers at the Nicosia court of King Janus of Cyprus
• Jehan Simon de Haspre

Matteo da Perugia (fl. ... (Jacob Senlechos; Jacopinus Selesses) French composer, fl. ... Johannes Ciconia (c. ... A French composer from Rheims. ... Solage (fl. ... Paolo da Firenze (Paolo Tenorista, Magister Dominus Paulas Abbas de Florentia) (c. ... Martinus Fabri was a composer, probably either from Flanders or the Netherlands, of the very late Middle Ages and earliest Renaissance. ... Janus of Cyprus (1375-1432) ruled Cyprus from 1398 to 1432. ...

Examples

• Senleches: Fuions de ci (help·info)
• Solage: Fumeux fume par fumee (help·info)

Tous par compas suy composé

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Legacy

Many musicologists^{[weasel words]} today relate the avant-garde styles of the 20th and 21st century to these early composers; for instance, Baude Cordier's perpetual canon, Tout par Compas, notated in a circle, is comparable to George Crumb's Star Child.^[6] In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e. ... George Crumb (born October 24, 1929) is an American composer of modern and avant garde music. ... Mothership Connection (Star Child) is a funk song by Parliament. ...

References

Sources

• Albright, Daniel. 2004. Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-01267-0.
• Günther, Ursula. 1960. "Die Anwendung der Diminution in der Handschrift Chantilly 1047". Arkiv für Musikwissenschaft 17:1–21.
• Hoppin, Richard H. 1978. Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0-393-09090-6.
• Josephson, Nors S. 2001. "Ars Subtilior". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.

Further reading

• ^{[citation needed]}. "Ars subtilior," "Ars nova" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2.
• Berger, Anna Maria Busse. 2002. "The Evolution of Rhythmic Notation". In The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, edited by Thomas Street Christensen, 628-656. The Cambridge History of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521623715
• Gleason, Harold, and Warren Becker, Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Music Literature Outlines Series I. Bloomington, Indiana. Frangipani Press, 1986. ISBN 0-89917-034-X.
• Günther, Ursula. 1963. "Das Ende der Ars Nova". Die Musikforschung 16:105–120.
• Günther, Ursula. 1964. "Zur Biographie einiger Komponisten der Ars Subtilior". Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 21:172–99.
• Günther, Ursula. 1991. "Die Ars subtilior". Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 11: 277–88.
• Hentschel, Frank. 2001. "Der Streit um die Ars Nova: Nur ein Scherz?" Arkiv für Musikwissenschaft 58:110–30.
• Köhler, Laurie. 1990. Pythagoreisch-platonische Proportionen in Werken der ars nova und ars subtilior. 2 vols. Göttinger musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten 12. Kassel and New York: Bärenreiter. ISBN 3761810148
• Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. 1990. "Ars Antiqua—Ars Nova—Ars Subtilior". In Antiquity and the Middle Ages: From Ancient Greece to the Fifteenth Century, edited by James McKinnon, 218–40. Man & Music. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0333510402 (cased) ISBN 0333530047 (pbk)
• Newes, Virginia Ervin. 1977. "Imitation in the Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior". Revue belge de musicologie/Belgisch tijdschrift voor muziekwetenschap. 31:38–59.
• Pirrotta, Nino. 1966. "Ars Nova e stil novo". Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 1:3–19
• Plumley, Yolanda M. 1991. "Style and Structure in the Late 14th-Century Chanson". Ph.D. diss., University of Exeter.
• Plumley, Yolanda M. 1996. The Grammar of Fourteenth Century Melody: Tonal Organization and Compositional Process in the Chansons of Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars Subtilior. Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities. New York: Garland. ISBN 0815320655
• Plumley, Yolanda M. 1999. "Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars Nova: The Case of 'Esperance' and the 'En attendant' songs". Early Music History 18:287–363.
• Smith, F. Joseph. 1964. "Ars Nova: A Re-Definition? (Observations in the Light of Speculum Musicae I by Jacques de Liège" Part 1. Musica Disciplina 18:19–35.
• Smith, F. Joseph. 1965. "Ars Nova: A Re-Definition?" Part 2. Musica Disciplina 19:83–97.
• Smith, F. Joseph. 1983. "Jacques de Liège's Criticism of the Notational Innovations of the Ars nova". The Journal of Musicological Research 4: 267–313
• Stone, Anne. 1996. "Che cosa c'è di più sottile riguardo l'ars subtilior?" Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 31:3–31.
• Tanay, Dorit. 1999. Noting Music, Making Culture: The Intellectual Context of Rhythmic Notation, 1250–1400. Musicological Studies and Documents 46. Holzgerlingen: American Institute of Musicology and Hänssler-Verlag. ISBN 3775131957