Questions of Authority in Some Songs by Binchois

Abstract

Few extant collections of late-medieval polyphony have been linked definitively to composers whose works they transmit. A dearth of documents that are literally ‘authoritative’ – in the sense that they come directly from the hand of the author – is not surprising in light of the small survival rate of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts and the likelihood that pieces were not written down for the first time in versions for presentation. Most surviving manuscripts appear to be several generations removed from written originals. Nevertheless, presentation manuscripts and other anthologies were not necessarily compiled by scribes in isolation. When composers were nearby they probably were consulted, either directly or through scribal access to authoritative written exemplars. Therefore, despite a paucity of documented relationships, some extant manuscripts may have been compiled in close association with the composers whose music they contain, perhaps even under their guidance.

A new reading of Binchois'sMon seul et souverain desir

“…Dennis Slavin argues convincingly that Binchois's compositions copied by the second scribe in Escorial were done so after, but not from, Canonici; Thomas Brothers's investigation of accidentals in Binchois songs strengthens this view. 42 While the copyist in Escorial does supply the minim missing in Canonici, this reading is dissonant and therefore incorrect, which Slavin believes points to the Canonici reading as the earlier. The two copies seem unlikely either to be directly related to one another or to share a common exemplar.…”