Ribard, Jacques. Un ménestrel du XIVe siècle: Jean de Condé. Geneva: Droz, 1969.
CONDUCTUS
. A Latin poem relying on syllable count and rhyme that was set to either monophonic or
polyphonic music, the conductus (pl. conductus) was one of the predominant musical
genres of the 12th and early 13th centuries. Its main function was to substitute or
supplement parts of liturgical services, often in processions. Many polyphonic conductus
served as replacements for the Benedicamus Domino, with which all Offices end, because
they conclude or rhyme with those words. These probably were for Vespers or Matins of
important feasts. Directions in some liturgical dramas refer to the music sung during
stage processions as conductus. Surviving Marian, political, and admonitory texts suggest
that conductus also served for private devotion, commemoration of significant events,
and learned editorial commentary. The largest extant source is the Florence codex
(Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, Pluteo 29, 1) of Parisian origin ca. 1250.
It is controversial whether the music composed for conductus was sung in equal units
of time for each syllable (“isochronous”) or rhythmically modal, with the syllables
rendered in patterns of long and short notes. The music theorist Anonymous 4 describes
the declamatory, hymnlike, and usually strophic polyphonic conductus (e.g., the three-
part Deus in adiutorium) appropriate for less accomplished clerics to sing, and through-
composed ones with large, untexted (i.e., melismatic) sections known as caudae (e.g.,
Pérotin’s Salvatoris hodie) for well-trained singers.
A number of troubadour and trouvère chansons have been identified as tenors of
conductus, such as A l’entrada del tens clar in the three-part Veris ad imperia. A few
conductus quote music and words of sequences, but perhaps the outstanding interrelation
between conductus and other genres is that among their caudae, the untexted clausulae of
the Notre-Dame School, and the motet, which originated by texting clausulae and became
the preeminent genre in the 13th century. A famous instance is the final cauda of Dic
Christi veritas, which was texted by Philip the Chancellor as Bulla fulminante.
Sandra Pinegar
[See also: ANONYMOUS 4; CLAUSULA; FRANCO OF COLOGNE; MOTET
(13TH CENTURY); PÉROTIN; PHILIP THE CHANCELLOR; RHYTHMIC MODE;
VERSUS]
Anderson, Gordon A. Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: Opera omnia. 9 vols. Henryville:
Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1981–86.
Falck, Robert. The Notre Dame Conductus: A Study of the Repertory. Henryville: Institute of
Mediaeval Music, 1981.
Reckow, Fritz. “Conductus.” In Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, ed. Hans
Heinrich Eggebrecht. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1971–. 11 pp. (1973).
Schrade, Leo. “Political Compositions in French Music of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries:
The Coronation of French Kings.” Annales musicologiques 1(1953):9–53.
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