also fixed by the mensural ligatures.
All three tenors put the “In seculum” melisma through a double cursus. The melisma contains 34 notes,
which when divided into three-note ordines leaves a remainder of one after the eleventh ordo. So in all
three pieces, the twelfth ordo consists of the last note of the first cursus and the first two notes of the
second cursus. As a result, the melody and the rhythmic “foot-unit” seem to go out of phase with one
another in the second cursus, producing a new set of three-note ordines on which to base the polyphonic
texture. In other words, the two aspects or dimensions of the tenor—the melody or pitch-succession, and
the rhythmic ordo—have been conceptually separated.
This method of constructing tenors, in which a predetermined, repeated pitchsuccession borrowed
from a chant was coordinated with a predetermined, repeated succession of durations, opened up vast
new possibilities for intellectual tours de force that were mined intensively during the fourteenth century,
when the motet underwent a spectacular growth. The abstractly conceived pitch-succession was called
the color by fourteenth-century theorists, and the abstractly conceived rhythmic pattern, especially when it
went beyond the simple modal ordines found in these early examples, was called the talea. (This word,
which literally means “measuring rod” in Latin, is obviously related etymologically to the Sanskrit word
tala, by which Indian musicians refer to the fixed, cyclically repeated beat-pattern underlying the complex
improvised surface rhythms in a musical performance.)
“The fiddle-player’s In seculum” jibes well with the passage in Grocheio where the theorist praises
fiddle players (viellatores) as the most versatile instrumentalists of the day. “A good performer on the
vielle,” he writes, “normally uses every kind of song and every musical form.” It seems likely, then, that
this piece was intended as an instrumental trio. The two pieces transcribed in Ex. 7-6 may also be
instrumental trios, or at least performable that way, but there is no reason to rule out vocalized
performance, especially since they are hockets, “cut-up songs,” as Grocheio describes them, “composed
in two or more voices.” He lists hockets among the vocal genres, following organum and conductus, and
comments that “this kind of song is pleasing to the hot-tempered and to young men because of its mobility
and speed.”
The pair of hockets in Ex. 7-6 certainly demonstrate that mobility and speed. They are in fact a single
piece in two versions, longum and breve, of which the second goes exactly in “double time.” Where the
first is written in perfect longs, imperfect longs, and breves, the second has imperfect longs, breves, and
(for the first time among the pieces selected for examination here)semibreves. Assuming that the
“perfection” or beat-unit remains constant when the two pieces are performed in sequence, the second
hocket goes at a really breakneck speed, especially considering the split-second timing that hocket-
exchanges require. This is virtuoso music, demanding a tour de force from performers and composer
alike. One or both of these pieces may be the famous Hoquetus In seculum attributed in Anonymus IV to
“a certain Spaniard.” They are found in a number of sources, and in one of them yet another voice—a
texted quadruplum containing a trouvère-style love poem—is superimposed on the whole complex for a
real combinatorial orgy.
THE ART OF MÉLANGE
Another motet with semibreves (in all parts this time, even the tenor) is given in Fig. 7-7 (facsimile) and
Ex. 7-7 (transcription). Here the element of virtuoso composing (“fitting together”) is most apparent in the
motetus part, which is none other than Robins m’aime, the opening virelai from Adam de la Halle’s Jeu
de Robin et Marion (Ex. 4-9). The little tenor melisma, “Portare,” clipped originally from an Alleluia
verse, was used for many motets, but never, it seems, for a clausula. It goes through a triple cursus here.