The Motet in the Age of Du Fay by Julie E. Cumming (review)

340 letters in canada 1999 medieval music, scholars, listeners, and performers alike. He has initiated many future debates by attempting to make sense of the non-technical and unspecific language of these writings, by attempting to render verbal understanding from verbal descriptions of non-verbal phenomena. (JAMES GRIER) Julie E. Cumming. The Motet in the Age of Du Fay Cambridge University Press. xvi, 418. US $69.95 The motet has always been a difficult genre to define. Originating in the thirteenth century, it was a major musical form for over five hundred years, passing through a number of fundamental changes in construction, format, and function. The fifteenth century was one of its most intensive and profound periods of change, and the author has chosen as a frame for her study the lifetime of Guillaume Du Fay, c. 1400B1474, one of the most creative and influential composers of the century. Because of difficulties of classification and definition, Cumming has chosen to approach her subject by using tools drawn from a number of unusual areas including cognitive psychology, linguistics, Darwinian evolution, and literary criticism, as well as the more familiar musicological approaches such as treatises, musical analysis, archival documents, and manuscript studies. What results is a comprehensive picture not only of the motet, its many faces and its evolution during the fifteenth-century, but also an understanding of the complex interrelationships of the various regional compositional styles during the time of Du Fay. One of Cumming's major theses is that by assimilating so many different kinds of polyphony during the fifteenth century, the motet lost its identity as a specific genre. In place of a single easily identifiable type, the motet adopted, adapted, and abandoned characteristics of a number of sacred and secular forms, transforming itself as the need and occasion arose. The complexity of the situation is presented in tables C.1, subgenres of the motet, C.2, genres that influenced the motet, and C.3, a stemma-like chronological map of the subgenres and their relationships to one another. Her major criteria for determining genre are musical features, textual features, and those that result from the interaction of the other two. To set the stage for this kind of investigation Cumming first presents a discussion of category theory and evolution, delving into types of relationships and ways of understanding them. This is especially useful as a logical tool for the chapters that follow, in which she replaces our previous simplistic view of musical types with one that is more sophisticated and which would otherwise be quite difficult to follow. As Cumming points out in chapter 2 and then proceeds to demonstrate throughout the remaining chapters, understanding the generic rela- humanities 341 tionships of any one motet is valuable for a number of reasons. When the musical heritage of a particular composition is established, not only are its technical ingredients and background understood, but so are the symbolic associations and conventions of that heritage, which in turn provide additional insights into the meaning of the work as a whole; something approaching the level of understanding that would have been available to the people of the fifteenth century who were immersed in those traditions. Once the terms of investigation are set, the largest share of the book is devoted to discussing motets themselves, beginning with a review of relevant late medieval documents, treatises, and manuscripts, and proceeding to a discussion of the surviving motet repertory of the period. The repertory is divided into early- and mid-fifteenth century, and includes highly detailed analyses of significant manuscripts, as well as a large number of individual compositions that demonstrate the variety of types and genre characteristics that make up the corpus of fifteenth-century motet. The musical analysis is necessarily quite technical in order to illustrate the complex subject, and is supplied in sufficient quantity and clarity to convince even the most sceptical reader of both the thesis and the usefulness of the methodology. In summary, the musicological world benefits on several levels from this study. The most immediate gain is that Cumming has given us a far clearer understanding of the fifteenth-century motet, which in itself is no small accomplishment. But...