1270 – 1315 Ars Antiqua

 

1270         Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Acquinas

1295         Marco Polo returned

1265-1321     Dante

1305         Papacy at Avignon

1315         Breakdown of French government

 
This is the last generation of the troubadours and trouvères, and the last generation of the Notre Dame school/Ars Antiqua style of motet. The first polyphonic ordinary was composed. In England was the Worcester Motet.


 

Monophony

Sequence

 
Lauda Sion Salvatorem, sequence for Corpus Christi, by St. Thomas Aquinas; Stabat Mater dolorosa, sequence for Good Friday, by Jacopone da Todi (c.1228-1306), was banned in 1563 and reauthorized in 1727.


 

Last troubadour

 
Guiraut Riquier (d. 1294) was the last troubadour.


 

Last trouvère

 
Adam de la Hale (c. 1240-87) wrote a pastourelle, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, which included songs, a few of them polyphonic.


 

Polyphony

Petronian Motet

 

Petronian motet	|French -- fast (crowded semibreves)—Triplum
	|French -- modal—Motetus
	|---------- slow—Tenor

 
Still French secular pieces in triple meter, there was greater contrast among the three voices: the tenor was still slower and the triplum faster. More and more semibreves were crowded into the space of a breve, up to as many as nine. Petrus de Cruce or Pierre de la Croix (fl. 1270-1300) was the outstanding composer.

Hocket

 
Meaning "hiccup," hocket was a device of the 13^th and 14^th centuries where two voices rapidly alternated notes and rests; also a piece that used hocket.


 

Mass

 
The first polyphonic ordinary was the Messe de Tournai (c. 1300), a composite collection of unrelated sections.


 

Worcester motet

 
A school centered at Worcester Cathedral in England c. 1300 composed tropes of the ordinary, proper settings and Latin motets in a distinctive, conductus-like style which made extensive use of voice exchange and included passages of parallel sixth chords, anticipating fauxbourdon of the Burgundian period. (The English had earlier improvised parallel organum at the third, called gymel "twin", instead of the fourths preferred on the continent.) The tenor melodies were from the Sarum rite.


 

Theory

 
Anonymous IV (c. 1275), English theorist, described the Notre Dame School. De Speculatione Musicae (c. 1300) by Walter Odington discussed English music.