ARS ANTIQUA
. An antithesis to the term Ars Nova, Ars Antiqua designates music written before the late
teens of the 14th century, at which time music and its theory began to incorporate
innovations championed as new and modern. In the seventh and last book of his
Speculum musicae (completed ca. 1325) Jacques de Liège looked back upon the
generation of Pseudo-Aristotle (Lambertus) and Franco of Cologne, active in the second
half of the 13th century, as the representatives of an Ars Antiqua or Ars Vetus in music
for which he had greater respect and admiration than the new music of his own day.
There is also attributed to Philippe de Vitry a treatise entitled Ars nova, for which there is
only a fragmentary set of sources, that deals with an Ars Vetus before introducing the
innovations of the Ars Nova. The theoretical principles of the Ars Vetus in this treatise
deal largely with such matters as solfège, intervals, and the monochord.
What is now designated Ars Antiqua has come to include (1) the sacred, Latin-texted
repertory of organa, clausulae, conductus, and motets of the Notre-Dame School, which
may be dated from ca. 1160 to 1250; (2) indigenous English polyphony, which has Latin
and some French texts, extending from the earliest Worcester Fragments to about the
middle of the 14th century, when the impact of the continental Ars Nova becomes
apparent in extant insular sources; (3) the large and predominately vernacular motet
collections of the second half of the 13th century, such as those in the Montpellier and
Bamberg codices; and (4) theoretical writings about temporally measured music (musica
mensurabilis) that do not include notational principles and innovations described in the
treatise entitled Ars nova.
Sandra Pinegar
[See also: ARS NOVA; MUSIC THEORY; NOTRE-DAME SCHOOL; PHILIPPE
DE VITRY]
Anderson, Gordon A. “Ars antiqua.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.
Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980, Vol. 1, pp. 638–39.
Besseler, Heinrich. “Ars antiqua.” In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1949–86, Vol. 1, pp. 679–97.
Gallo, F.Alberto. Music of the Middle Ages II, trans. Karen Eales. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985.
ARS NOVA
. A term taken from notational theory of the early 14th century to describe the musical
style of the 14th century in France. The period after the death of Machaut is now more
frequently labeled Ars Subtilior.
Some sources attach the name Ars Nova to a music-theory treatise apparently
dependent on the teachings of Philippe de Vitry. The term seems further justified by the
elderly Jacques de Liège, who unfavorably contrasts works of a new generation of
composers, representatives of the Ars Nova, with works of the old school (what we call
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 134