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notes from an erasabLe tabLet John Milsom How did sixteenth-century composers go about the task of writing down their extended polyphonic works? This question has been asked before, not least by Jessie Ann Owens in her important book on Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600; and no one could disagree with her broad conclusion that there was probably ‘no single “compositional process” for music of this period’. How a composer worked would have ‘depended on factors such as his skill level, the kind of space he had available for writing, the number of voices, the conventions of genre, and demands of style’, together with the specific musical ideas he wanted to explore in the individual piece.1 Nevertheless, the surviving evidence leads Owens to a narrower conclusion that is both unexpected and startling: that ‘composers of vocal polyphony neither needed nor used scores for composing. (…) Instead of scores, composers worked on short segments in quasi-score format and on longer segments in separate parts (for example, choirbook format)’.2 She reaches this conclusion partly because of the absence of autograph scores that relate to composition, partly from her analysis of other autograph notations that clearly represent the work-in-progress. Cumulatively, the evidence strongly suggests that sixteenthcentury composers did not habitually draft and preserve their polyphonic works in complete scores – which is to say, in a format that allowed them to survey a piece in its full length and breadth, much as we do when we read a score today. It must be said, however, that in an earlier chapter of her book Owens addresses a subject that might call for some qualification of this view – or at least, of its universal applicability. Some sixteenth-century composers are known to have made use of erasable tablets (or ‘cartelle’) when devising new works, and very little is known about these mysterious tablets – about their use, their size, and (above all) about the quantity of music that would fit on to them. Owens herself suggests that ‘cartelle’ could have served a variety of purposes, including ‘sketches, more extended drafts, even fair copies of entire compositions’.3 She 1 Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 (New York and Oxford, 1997), 193. I am grateful to Professor Owens for her generous sharing of ideas and materials over the course of many years, and to Margaret Bent and Bonnie J. Blackburn for making helpful comments on a draft version of the present study. 2 Owens, Composers at Work, 313. In ‘quasi-score’format, the voices are stacked one above the other, but usually not rigorously aligned; see Owens, op. cit., 137. 3 Owens, Composers at Work, 100-101, and Chapter 5 in general for a discussion of ‘cartelle’. John MilsoM 196 also cites epistolary references to at least portions of complete pieces being retained by composers on ‘cartelle’ until the music was reckoned complete, or the tablets needed for another purpose.4 This evidence could certainly challenge the view that sixteenth-century composers did not normally devise and scan their works in score or quasi-score. Indeed, it opens up the possibility that scores and quasi-scores of whole pieces might in fact have existed, albeit only while the work remained in erasable form, before being transferred to parchment or paper. There are various reasons for believing the ‘cartella’, rather than paper, to have beenaprincipallocationfortheactofcomposinglarge-scaleworks–whetherin score,quasi-score,oranotherlayout.5 First,wearefacedwiththeoverwhelming evidence of the repertory itself: almost all sixteenth-century polyphonic works survive only in finished form, lacking any traces of the work-in-progress, and the absence of such traces might encourage us to believe in the widespread use of erasable surfaces. Second, the ‘cartella’ had two obvious advantages over paper: it lent itself to local erasure (and therefore to correction and revision of the work-in-progress); and it cost nothing to use, whereas paper was an expensive commodity to devote to something as ephemeral as a compositional draft. (Significantly, very few of the paper-based drafts discussed by Owens are written on single sheets used wholly for the act of composition. Instead, most of them make opportunistic use of available space in what are otherwise performers’ books.) Third – and this is an issue not systematically explored by Owens – there is the evidence of the autograph partbooks or choirbooks into which sixteenth-century composers transferred their completed works. While a copy of a completed work may communicate little...

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