(or, to put it in less anachronistic terms, their parallel-imperfect-consonance) style. Where Flos regalis
featured parallel motion at the third and fifth, producing strings of chords in what we would call the (or
“close-spaced”) root position, a Marian conductus with a text that parodies the communion Beata viscera
(“O blessed womb”) shadows its tenor more rigorously with imperfect consonances. Doubling at the third
and sixth produces what we would call strings of “six-three” (or “first-inversion”) triads (Ex. 11-9). For
reasons that will soon become apparent, Beata viscera has become the most famous individual item from
the Worcester fragments. Its style exemplifies what is often called “English descant.”
EX. 11-9 Beata viscera (conductus/motet), mm. 1–13When English descant was based on a plainsong, the cantus firmus was usually carried in the middle
voice, following an English practice of “improvising” counterpoints above or below, and sometimes
simultaneously, by the use of prescribed intervals. (Actually, this sort of “improvisation”—though it was
known, oddly enough, as using “sights”—is exactly what we would call “harmonizing by ear.”) When
such settings were composed in writing, the cantus firmus often “migrated” between the middle and lower
voices, so that the voices themselves did not have to cross. This seems to indicate an interest in chordal
harmony as such: when the cantus firms is allowed to migrate to the lowest part instead of crossing it, the
various parts are kept distinct in range. More significantly, the part written lowest in score can always
maintain its function as “bass,” making it easier for the composer to keep track of the harmony. In Ex. 11-
10 , a setting of a votive antiphon to the Virgin Mary that was often performed after Compline in Britain
before the present selection of “Marian antiphons” became canonical, the voices cross once only and only
for the duration of a single note (on “ge nu isti,” near the end). The harmony is more mixed, between
chords containing only perfect consonances and those admitting imperfect ones, than in the more popular
“parallel” style, though there are local progressions that still bear traces of the English “oral” habit of
extemporizing long sequences of full triads. But the general level of consonance is pervasive—far higher
than in contemporary continental music.
EX. 11-10 Sancta Maria virgo, intercede (Marian antiphon)