[Letter from Charles Turner]Author(s): Charles TurnerSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 156-158Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3128858 .

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156 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

"Ah, could my sorrowful ditty" a favourite song... composed by a Lady ... [in] Sheridan's new play of the Stranger. London: W. Rolfe, 1798. (The British Library, cataloged as Home, later Hunter.)

Listed in the British Union Catalogue of Early Music is also:

Second set of canzonets with an accompaniment for the harp or piano composed by a Lady. London: Preston [ca. 1785].

This work may be hers as well. I have no location for Lady Ann Bothwell's Lament.

I do not know whether any of these songs have texts by Hunter. I have also wondered why she published her poems under her name but apparently published all her music as "a Lady." Was it considered less respectable for a woman to compose music than to write poetry?

BARBARA GARVEY JACKSON

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

To the Editor of the JOURNAL:

I hesitate to criticize Craig Wright's superb article "Dufay's Nuper rosarum

flores, King Solomon's Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin" (this JOURNAL 47 [1994]: 395-44') but I must mention an error with respect to a remarkable and extremely complex motet contemporary with Dufay's. The proportions of Romanorum rex (variously attributed to either Johannes Brassart or Johannes de

Sarto) are cited incorrectly in note 5 (p. 397) as 4:3:2:i:I:2:3:4:I:I:I:I. Each of the first two tenor statements is set forth in four unequal taleae, manipulated proportionally; those of the third statement are constant. The proportions given by Wright do not, however, accurately reflect the temporal dimensions of the tenor's twelve taleae. In the second cantus finnus statement (taleae 5-8), the

composer employs the Pythagorean series 4:3:2:1 in simultaneous retrograde and

diminution, such that the first and second tenor statements must be represented as follows: 4:3:2:I:1/2:I:I1:1:2, or, in terms of whole numbers, 8:6:4:2:I:2:3:4. Likewise, the last four taleae (constituting the third cantus firmus statement and

represented by Wright as i:I:i: i), while indeed equal to each other, are equal in duration also to taleae 4 and 6 and must be represented by the same number, 2.

The following pattern gives the true relationships of all twelve taleae: 8:6:4:2:I:2:3:4:2:2:2:2. It should be noted that these proportions pertain to

the. tenor only, for the other voices have a different configuration.' The proportions in Romanorum rex are derived quite differently from those

of Nuper rosarum, however. While Dufay apparently calculates the implicit consequences of mensural change, the composer of Romanorum rex (Brassart or Sarto?) uses an elaborate verbal canon to subject the tenor notes to different proportions, relative to integer valor. Here is the remarkable canon

' For similar reasons, the proportions of Dufay's Ecclesie militantis / Sanctorm arbitrio /Bella canunt should not be represented as I have sometimes seen them as 2:1:2:1:2:I, but rather ' 21 or,

better, 6:3:4:2:6:3.

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COMMUNICATIONS 157

to Romanorum rex (with acknowledgment of the virtuoso transcription of the Latin and the exemplary musical edition of Keith Mixter):'

Tenor iste qui dicitur: primo modo, prima tallea in subdupla superbipartiente proportione; secunda tallea in subdupla proportione; tertia in subsesquitertia; quarto vero in sesquialtera. Secundo modo, prima tallea dicitur in tripla propor- tione; secunda in emiola; tercia sicut iacet; quarta in subdiatessaron. Tertio modo dicitur in dyapenthe. Et est notandum quod secunda et tercia vice capitur in dyapenthe. [punctuation added for clarity]

This is the tenor, which is sung as follows: the first time--first talea in subdupla superbipartiente proportion; the second talea in inverted duple proportion; the third talea in inverted sesquitertia proportion; the fourth talea in sesquialtera. The second time--first talea in triple proportion; the second talea in hemiola; the third talea in the values that are written; the fourth talea in inverted diatessaron. The third time it is sung at the diapenthe. And it is notated such that the second and third times it is transposed down a fifth. [author's translation]

The terms emiola, sesquialtera, and dyapenthe are all used for 3:2 proportion. The last of these, dyapenthe, is used in two senses, for a 3:2 temporal proportion and for the interval of the perfect fifth. The second and third tenor statements are transposed a fifth lower than notated. Thus we have a tenor whose melody is sung at actual pitch during only one of three statements and whose notated values are at integer valor in only one of twelve taleae. The Latin proportion names are resolved as follows:

talea proportion

I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I1 12 3: 3: 3: 3 3: 3 3: 3: 3: 3: 3: 3: 8 6 4 2 I 2 3 4 2 2 2 2

If we eliminate the common numerator (the number three, representing integer valor, i.e., the actual notation rather than the sounding values), we retain a set of numbers that represents the relative dimensions of the taleae: 8:6:4:2:1:2:3:4:2:2:2:2.

Recalling that the first proportion to which the values are subjected is subdupla superbipartiente proportione (3:8), it is remarkable that the sum of these numbers is 38 (8+6+4+2+I+2+3+4+2+2+2+2= 38!). For reasons I cannot put forth here, I believe these proportions also to be of symbolic import.

Professor Wright aptly draws attention in the same note to Grenon's motet Ave virtus virtutum /Prophetarumfulti sufragio in which the tenor proportions are 8:6:2:2:1:1. These proportions, like those of Romanorum rex and again unlike those of Nuper rosarum, are achieved not by mensural change but by augmen- tation of note values relative to integer valor. Finally, although, as Wright states, no other motet by Dufay uses the proportions 6:4:2:3, it should perhaps be mentioned that Magnanime gentis /Nexus amicitie musa is laid out quite similarly. Unlike Nuper rosarum, it begins with a nonisorhythmic introitus, but, like Nuper rosarum, its tenor contains no internal taleae and it has four statements of the

2Johannes Brassart: Opera Omnia, vol. 2, ed. Keith E. Mixter, Corpus mensurabilis musicae 35 (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, i97i), 44-47-

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158 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

cantus firmus employing proportional diminution and augmentation by means of mensural change rather than verbal canon. The proportions of Magnanime are 12:4:2:3, differing from the actual 6:4:2:3 of Nuper rosarum only because of the canon's direction to double the note lengths during the first tenor statement ("primo crescit in duplo").

CHARLES TURNER The Hartt School

University of Hartford

CRAIG WRIGHT replies:

Let me respond first to what is, I believe, the more important of the two issues raised by Professor Turner: the degree to which Dufay's isorhythmic plan for

Nuper rosarum flores (6:4:2:3) is unique. Here, it seems to me, similarity is

meaningless: Magnanime gentis / Nexus amicitie musa may be similar in structure to Nuper rosarum flores but it is not identical to it. Any attempt to equate Nuper rosarum flores with another composition having a comparable but not identical structure not only diminishes the singularity of Dufay's great commemorative motet but also misconstrues the working of medieval number symbolism. Drawing on the literature of the ancient world and from certain number-specific passages in the Holy Scriptures, medieval theologians and artists rejoiced in a

pervasive use of ciphers as symbols. Number was employed everywhere in the

religious poetry, architecture, and music of the Middle Ages as a subliminal

signifier, but always with a specific, rather than a general, intent. The number

forty, for example, signified trial and privation as experienced by Mary during the

forty days of her purification and by the faithful during the quarantine of Lent; eight and 888 were associated with Jesus Christ and the hope of salvation

through His merciful agency; and 666 was the number of the beast as explicitly stated in the Book of Revelation (I 3:I8). While the number 566 may be close to or similar to 666 (just as 12:4:2:3 is close to or similar to 6:4:2:3), it had no

symbolic, in this case satanic, import. In light of this medieval tradition of

conveying a specific meaning by means of a precise number, it would seem unwise to suggest an affinity between Nuper rosarumflores and Magnanime gentis/ Nexus amicitie musa or other similar pieces within some general cohort of works

commonly possessing four sections and moving to a sesquialtera relationship in the last of the four. On the contrary, I view Dufay's Nuper rosarum flares as a

unique composition. It remains the only isorhythmic motet by him or any other

composer to employ the ratios 6:4:2:3. These proportions, I contend, were

carefully chosen to convey a specific symbolic message-to connect this motet to the traditional image of the Temple of Solomon.

As to Professor Turner's first point regarding the isorhythmic structure of the motet Romanorum rex: his reading is correct and mine is wrong. Credit for solving the meaning of the difficult canon, as Professor Turner graciously acknowledges, should go to Keith Mixter who published the first transcrip- tion of the piece in 1960. Once one has figured out how the voices fit together as music, then the meaning of the recondite canon, which holds the key to the

isorhythmic structure, can be readily understood. I simply misread Mixter's

transcription. May 888 save my soul from 666! Yale University

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