FIG. 6-7B Veste nuptiali (monophonic conductus), beginning with the ornamental V; from Flo, f. 450 v.
Whatever the case, one thing is certain. The singer of Vesten uptiali would not have been able to
guess its rhythm from the notation in Fig. 6-7b, but (unless, quite fortuitously, he recognized the cauda of
Dic, Christi veritas as notated elsewhere) he would have had to know the song already from the oral
tradition (as reconstructed, hypothetically, in Ex. 6-8) in order to sing it correctly in its written guise. A
singer who did not know the song in advance would thus have been keenly aware of the notation’s limits.
Such a singer would have felt a lack and would have wished for a more explicit way of notating the
rhythm of measured music. In other words, the problem of musica cum littera, more and more acutely felt
as texted genres (including some new ones) became more and more prevalent, created the necessity that
mothered the invention of an explicit rhythmic notation, in which individual notes carried rhythmic
information. First described in full around 1260, it sustained three centuries of development and
continues, in a more remote way, to underlie the rhythmic notation we use today. Those genres, and that
notation, will be the subject of the next chapter.
EX. 6-8 Transcription of Veste nuptiali (Fig. 6-7b) in rhythm of Fig. 6-7a