What gave it that stabilizing and articulating (form-defining) power had only partly to do with the
doubled leading tone, however. More fundamentally, the structure of the cadence goes back to the earliest
days of discant, when cadence was synonymous with occursus, the coming together of two parts in
contrary motion. The earliest variation on the occursus (already endorsed by Guido in the eleventh
century) was its inversion, in which the two parts moved out to the octave in contrary motion; and that
basic cadential frame endured until the end of the sixteenth century. In the cadence we are now examining,
at the end of the introitus to Machaut’s motet, the essential two-part motion takes place between the
motetus and the tenor, which move outward from the sixth e/c#’ to the octave d/d’.
No matter what else the other voices may be doing, no progression can be called cadential unless that
“structural pair” is present in two voices (one of them, in keeping with the history of discant, almost
invariably the tenor). The “double leading-tone” cadence, then, is only one of a number of possible ways
of filling out the cadence-defining frame. It had its moment of popularity and was replaced in the mid-
fifteenth century by another standard cadence type, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century by still
another. We will take them up in due course, but it is worth pointing out up front that all of them
incorporated—or, more strongly, were constructed around, or in various ways embellished—the old
discant pair that went all the way back to Guido.
For a final technical point, it is worth observing that it was the structure of the cadence, defined by an
imperfect consonance moving by step in contrary motion to a perfect one, that gave rise to the convention
of subsemitonium modi, the use of cadential leading tones. The idea was to egg on the resolution of the
imperfect consonance to the perfect one by making it larger—that is, closer in size to the perfect one. It
was called, in fact, the “rule of closeness” (or, more fancily, “the rule of propinquity” after the Latin
propinque, “near at hand”).
The reason for raising C to C# before a cadence on D, then, was to make a major sixth with the tenor.
The same effect could be achieved by lowering the tenor to E, making a major sixth with the unaltered
triplum or motetus. There were times when that solution was preferable, but they were in the minority.
The more striking alteration was the one that affected the higher part. As already noted, that type of
alteration lasted into the era of “tonal” harmony in the form of the harmonic minor, which borrows its
dominant function, replete with leading tone, from the major. Here we see the first step in that direction,
and the reason for it.
CICONIA: THE MOTET AS POLITICAL SHOW
As seems altogether fitting, and in retrospect inevitable, by the late fourteenth century the motet had
become preeminently “a vehicle for propaganda and political ceremony,” to quote Peter Lefferts, a
historian of the genre.^9 That crowning period in the history of the Ars Nova motet is best exemplified by
works written not in France but in Italy, albeit by composers who had emigrated there from northern
Europe.
Italy at the end of the fourteenth century was a checkerboard of city-states, many of them ruled by
despots who had seized power violently, and who wished to establish legitimacy by an ostentatious
display of power. Legitimacy was also a major issue for the church, since this was the time of the great
papal schism (1378–1417), when two (and from 1409, three) rival claimants vied for the papacy, and
when all subordinate clergy had to declare their allegiances to one, to another, or (as happened briefly in
France) to none. This period of political and ecclesiastical chaos was a gold mine for the arts, and
especially for music.
That is because one of the chief means of asserting political power has always been lavish patronage