Showing posts with label Philippe de Vitry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philippe de Vitry. Show all posts

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Clement's Preferences

Clement VI (1291 - 1352) was a different pope from some of his predecessors. One of his first acts was to promise gifts to every cleric who came to Avignon to present himself to the pope in the first two months of his papacy. This attempt, apparently, to buy loyalty, along with Clement's move to reserve appointing abbots so that he could use the appointments as favors, was justified by saying "Our predecessors did not know how to be pope." (Incidentally, so many clerics appeared in Avignon that the estimate was made that the number of clerics in all the parishes of the world was around 100,000.)

His favoritism did not stop there. A mere four months after his election, he created several new cardinals, three of whom were his nephews. During his reign, he created cardinals of nine relatives. This practice of promoting a pope's relatives gave rise to the term "cardinal nephew." It was fairly standard practice, although his predecessor only created one and his successor only three.

Unlike Benedict before him, Clement had no intention of leaving France for Rome, and set about on a building campaign to expand the Avignon papal complex. Benedict had built a palace—the Palais de Papes—that suited his tastes as a Cistercian. Clement, however, was accustomed to more grand living, and added extensively and opulently to it. A new chapel dedicated to Saint-Martial was attached to the Palais and filled with hunting and fishing scenes—more suited to a king's decor than a pope's—and he had large tapestries installed.

Fortunately for him, Benedict's organizational skills and less-extravagant lifestyle left Clement with a large treasury with which to carry out his plans of elegance. He hired composers and musicians of the Ars Nova style to always be around, including Philippe de Vitry.

Clement died on 6 December 1352, aged about 60. He had suffered from kidney stones for many years. At the end, a tumor broke out into an abscess and fever, and he died within a week. His elaborate tomb (see above) was surrounded by 44 statues of his relatives; he had planned it himself and commissioned the sculptor; it was ready prior to his death. (In 1562, Huguenots destroyed the 44 statues.) Historians agree that Clement may have been a good pope in many ways, but he was not a holy person.

The artist who decorated Clement's new chapel was Matteo Giovannetti. He did quite a lot of work for Clement, and stuck around after that. I'll tell you more about him and his papal projects tomorrow.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Ars Nova: Jean de Muris

Treatise on Musical Intervals, by Jean de Muris
Jean de Muris was mentioned in the post on Ars Nova as the author of Ars novæ musicæ [New technique of music]. He did more than that, however: he was also a mathematician and philosopher, an astronomer, a colleague of Philippe de Vitry, a lecturer at the Sorbonne.

Born near Lisieux about 1300 (he died c. 1351), he studied at the University of Paris and spent a lot of his time there as well as at Evreux, Fontevrault and Mezières-en-Brenne. He wrote a few books—perhaps as many as five (we are not sure whether some were written by him, but similar style is a reason for ascribing some works to him).

There are over 150 manuscripts of copies of works attributed to Muris. At one point, a work that criticized the Ars Nova was considered to have been written by him, but later it was determined that someone else wrote it. Muris certainly approved of the new style in his works. One of these, the Quæstiones super partes musicæ ["Questions on the parts of music"], can be read (in Latin) here.

Here's a section in English:
What is music? Music is the mistress art of the arts, containing in herself the beginnings of all methods [...], confirmed in the nature of all things, remarkably internalized proportionally, delightful to the intellect, loved by the ear. Music gladdens the downcast, rewards the eager, thwarts the envious, comforts the weak, keeps awake the vigilant, awakens the sleepers, nourishes love, honors its possessor, if music, which was established at last for the praise of God, has pursued its just goal. [link, p.239]
This embodies the Ars nova, which brought formal music out of the Church and made it complex, expressive, and secular. 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Ars nova

from Italian manuscript J. IV.115,
an example of Ars Nova notation
Beginning in the early 1300s there was a change in musical style, an evolution from monophony (a single melody) to polyphony, in which two or more lines of melody intermingled. The result was to give music a richer, more expressive sound.

The Church didn't like it.

Pope John XXII rejected it (as he tried to reject elections of which he did not approve). The sacred monophonic chant of the Church was being mixed with secular tunes. Music was becoming "fancy" and "frivolous" in ways that did not suit the pope.

The new style caught on, however, and there was no turning back. Two books describing the new technique helped to spread the new ideas. They were Ars novæ musicæ [New technique of music] by Jean de Muris c. 1320, and Ars nova notandi [New technique of musical notation] by Philippe de Vitry in about 1322. Because of these titles, 20th century historians refer to this style and period of time in music (the 14th century) as the Ars Nova. This new style developed at the same time in France and Italy. In France, one of its greatest exemplars was the poet Guillaume de Machaut. A sample of his musical composition is found in this post.

Among the new forms of non-sacred music given to us by the Ars Nova are the Madrigal, usually a song of love for two voices, and the Ballad, a story with a non-religious theme which was meant to be sung in public. The music in the manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel is an example of Ars nova.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

More than a Musician

We so often study famous people in isolation, forgetting that their lives and successes probably overlapped other well-known people. Imagine the possibilities when people of vision and ingenuity met with and influence each other?

Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) is not a well-known name today, but in his lifetime he was acknowledged as the greatest musician of the age, and his own works and his connections with others are worth knowing. In his lifetime, he was a diplomat, a soldier, a poet, a composer and music theorist. Like most university-educated men of the Middle Ages, de Vitry was in Holy Orders and held several clerical positions, finally being appointed Bishop of Meaux by Pope Clement VI.

Some of the motets he composed have survived. His chief contribution to music, however, was in the evolving system of notation. In Ars nova notandi (Art of the new notation), de Vitry improved on Franconian musical notation that had been set out in Franco of Cologne's Ars Cantus Mensurabilis (The Art of Measurement of Songs); de Vitry recognized the existence and importance of duple and triple meter. For connoisseurs of music:
In the treatise Vitry recognizes the existence of five note values (duplex longa, longa, brevis, semibrevis, and minima), codifies a system of binary as well as ternary mensuration at four levels (maximodus, modus, tempus, prolatio), and introduces four time signatures. He also discusses the use of red notes to signal both changes of mensural meaning and deviations from an original cantus firmus. (source)
And of course he knew other accomplished figures of his age, such as Petrarch, Nicholas Oresme, and Gersonides. In fact, de Vitry's musical approach to mathematics (the two subjects were closely linked in medieval education) prompted him to request of Gersonides a work to prove a theory. This 1342 work, De harmonicis numeris (On the harmony of numbers), maintained that, "except for the pairs 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, and 8-9, it is impossible for two numbers that follow each other to be composed of the factors 2 and 3." (source) The result is known today as the Theorem of Gersonides.