“FRANCONIAN” NOTATION
As one can see at a glance, the manuscript from which Fig. 7-3 has been reproduced uses a different kind
of notation from the one that had been devised at and for Notre Dame. It is a notation specially tailored to
the requirements of motets, that is musica cum litter a. (It would have served nicely for conductus, too;
but by mid-century the conductus was moribund.) It supplies the very thing that Notre Dame notation
lacked, namely a means of specifying the rhythmic significance of individual “graphemes,” or written
shapes. Notation that does this is called “mensural” notation, from mensura, Latin for measurement. Its
invention was a watershed, not only in the history of notation but in the wider history of musical style. The
new resources of mensural notation greatly lessened the dependency of “literate” music (here, literally,
the music of the literati) on oral supplements. From now on, literate genres could pursue a relatively
autonomous line of development. We will never finish discussing the consequences of this turning point—
some foreseen, others not; some indubitably “progressive,” others more equivocal. Their repercussions
continue to affect musical composition, musical practice, musical attitudes, and musical controversies
right up to the present day.
EX. 7-1 Double motet on Ex semine (transcription of Fig. 7–3)