Some insights into late medieval music notation

In late 2009, Mark Everist published a report on the rediscovery of a set of music fragments in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Among these is a hitherto unknown work, Aÿ, mare, amice mi care. This article provides a new reading and reconstruction of damaged portions of this tiny yet exceptional Latin song. Most significantly, a close reading of the song’s notational devices, including a canon, provides new and unequivocal evidence for the intersection of musical cultures on either side of the Alps. The composer of this song was evidently trained in ‘Italian’ Trecento music theory, but used ‘French’ Ars Nova notation. As such, Aÿ, mare can be situated as an early example of breve-equivalent notation. These findings contribute to music history’s understanding of how composers on the Italian peninsula received and cultivated the Ars Subtilior style in the decades either side of 1400. They also contribute to (or complicate) an ongoing dialogue concerning the origin(s) of the Paris fragments.

Keywords: Ars Subtilior; Ars Nova; Trecento; canon; mensuration signs; breve equivalence

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Note: The responsibility for the grammatical blunder in the first sentence on the second page of the article rests solely with the author. Mea culpa!