RHYTHM
. The question of whether rhythm was essential or even appropriate to the performance of
the songs of the troubadours and trouvères before the graphic means of notating it
developed in the 13th century occupied a large and often contentious part of early 20th-
century scholarship in medieval music. Central to the issue was the Modaltheorie
developed by Friedrich Ludwig and his students Pierre Aubry and Jean Beck. According
to the Modaltheorie, the accentual patterns of poetic texts of trouvère and troubadour
chansons paralleled the six rhythmic modes prevalent in early 13th-century theoretical
works, and thus the musical rhythm of a chanson could be determined from the poetic
accents of its text.
Hendrik van der Werf rejected Modaltheorie in the 1960s, initiating a reassessment of
the question of applying 13th-century modal rhythm, which arose in the context of
untexted liturgical polyphony, to texted monophony in secular and usually courtly
settings. Since that time, many editions of medieval monophony have notated the
melodies with rhythmically undifferentiated notes (note heads without stems) when the
notation of the source is indubitably nonmensural.
Current scholarship is exploring rhythmic distinctions among the genres of secular
monophony. The supposition that the declamatory rhythm of the troubadour and trouvère
grand chant has a different style and origin from that of the dance song, like the estampie
or carole, seems reasonable.
Sandra Pinegar
[See also: RHYTHMIC MODE; TROUBADOUR POETRY; TROUVÈRE POETRY]
Parker, Ian. “The Performance of Troubadour and Trouvère Songs: Some Facts and Conjectures.”
Early Music 5(1977): 184–207.
Stevens, John. Words and Music in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986.
van der Werf, Hendrik. The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères. Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1972.
RHYTHMIC MODE
. Rhythmic patterns governing some music of the Notre-Dame School, which were
probably modeled on poetic metrics of ancient Greek and Latin. A series of rhythmic
modes most likely predated the graphic notation, developed in the early 13th century
within the Notre-Dame School, providing the earliest western musical notation indicating
rhythm. The earliest systematic
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