Composed Successively, Planned Simultaneously: Two Machaut Chansons and their Additional Voices

Abstract

In this thesis, recent understanding of contrapuntal rules, cadences and music-text relationships in medieval music has for the first time been applied to analyse the role of additional voices in late medieval music. Two chansons by Guillaume de Machaut served as case studies. These songs, 'De petit peu' (B18) and 'Se vous n'estes' (R7), are transmitted in a large number of sources. Some of the manuscripts contain additional voices that were added shortly after and some 70 years after the songs were composed. Until now, musicologists have called these voices 'problematic,' but this study shows that they are actually sophisticated contributions to the pre-existing structure, often reinforcing the distinctive features of each song. Dissonances, for instance, often seem not to be the result of ignorance but of intentional 'word painting.' For B18, the thesis provides a new interpretation of the text and the first thorough analysis of the contratenor. For R7, the study offers the first detailed analysis of the entire composition and a solution for its peculiar threefold ending. Also, the study examines the possible two- or three-part performances of the two chansons, and argues that modern editions should not combine the various versions of these and other songs into one 'Urtext' edition but rather present each version separately.