dimensions of Solomon’s temple (60:40:20:30 cubits:: 6:4:2:3 minims to a breve); and the length and
layout of the chant fragment chosen as color correspond to the days of the dedication feast (7 + 7 = 14).
The relationship of all of this to the dedication feast for the Florence cathedral could hardly be more
evident—or more propitious, in view of the Christian tradition that cast Rome as the new Jerusalem and
the Catholic church as the new temple of God.
And yet there is more. The Florence cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as the motet text
affirms. That text is cast in a rare poetic meter with seven syllables per line. The introitus before the tenor
entrance in each stanza lasts 28 (4 × 7) tempora, and the section following the tenor entrance likewise
lasts 4 × 7. Seven is the number that mystically represented the Virgin in Christian symbolism, through her
sevenfold attributes (her seven sorrows, seven joys, seven acts of mercy, seven virginal companions, and
seven years of exile in Egypt). Four is the number that represented the temple, with its four cornerstones,
four walls, four corners of the altar, and—when translated into Christian cruciform terms—four points on
the cross, the shape of the cathedral floor plan. Four times seven mystically unites the temple with Mary,
who through her womb that bore the son of God was also a symbol of Christian sanctuary.
All of this is mystically expressed in the occult substructure of Du Fay’s motet, while on the sensuous
surface, according to the testimony of the Florentine scholar Giannozzo Manetti, an earwitness,
all the places of the Temple resounded with the sounds of harmonious symphonies as well as the concords of diverse
instruments, so that it seemed not without reason that the angels and the sounds and singing of divine paradise had been
sent from heaven to us on earth to insinuate in our ears a certain incredible divine sweetness; wherefore at that moment I
was so possessed by ecstasy that I seemed to enjoy the life of the Blessed here on earth.^12What could better serve the church, better spiritually nourish its flock, or better assert its temporal
authority?
A FINAL WORD FROM DANTE
That was the net effect, and the net aim, of the discordia concors that the motet so consummately
symbolized. The ultimate verbal expression of the effect at which musicians aimed in the fourteenth
century and its immediate aftermath was given by the greatest literary genius of the age, the poet Dante
Alighieri, in his Divine Comedy. Significantly enough, it is in the third and last section—Il Paradiso, a
description of heaven—that the motet is heard and described. The great poet’s view of the peak musical
genre of his day here coincides with that of the courtier Manetti, quoted above. Dante, who wrote around
the time of Philippe de Vitry and the Roman de Fauvel, used a description of the motet as a metaphor for
a world government of perfect justice, wholly attuned to the divine will, that perfectly harmonized
multifarious humanity in bonds of social concord.
Dante portrays the sixth sphere of heaven as the abode of all the just rulers in the history of the world
(Charlemagne among them, along with his biblical forebears Joshua and Judah Maccabee), who appear to
him as singing stars. They assemble into a constellation in the form of an eagle, symbolizing the Roman
Empire and its successor, Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire, which had given the exiled Dante refuge
after the Florentine wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.
In Canto XIX the eagle sings in the composite voice of “the congregated souls of rulers,” and, says
Dante, “I heard the beak talk and utter with its voice ‘I’ and ‘mine’ when its meaning was ‘we’ and
‘ours.’... Wheeling, then, it sang, then spoke: ‘As are my notes to thee who canst not follow them, such is
the Eternal Judgment to you mortals.”’ In the next canto the Eagle falls silent and the starry lights that