Signature-systems and tonal types in the fourteenth-century French chanson

Abstract

Beyond the standard and familiar theoretical instruction materials on notation and mensuration, on mode and hexachord, and on the rules of two-part counterpoint, information and insight about the techniques of musical composition in the later Middle Ages are hard to come by. From a modern vantage point, medieval music theory leaves many of the questions most interesting to us unanswered. And for our part, too, analysts of chansons and motets have yet to agree on many basic notions about how this music works, and therefore what is most necessary to talk about. It is symptomatic of this state of affairs that articles discussing analytical approaches to early music, even those addressed to specialists, do not start out in medias res but rather must begin with first principles, and that current textbooks ignore or skimp on all but the most superficial aspects of musical style. We need to establish for all genres the paradigms or fundamental givens, the constraints understood at the outset, the range of choices available to the composer.

Reading and Theorizing Medieval Music Theory: Interpretation and Its Contexts

“…23). 2 See Berger (1992) and Fuller (1998a); Lefferts (1995) and Fuller (1998b). 3 Two emails were exchanged in the late 1990s when Leach invited Fuller to contribute to Leach (2003), and Fuller declined.…”

Cristle Collins Judd (ed.), Tonal Structures in Early Music

“…To exemplify a system-based approach she chooses a recent study by Peter Lefferts which assigns tonal types on the basis of cantus final and signature types (of lower voices, usually). 1 Firstly, Fuller questions the nature of Lefferts's statistical results, since`half of the tonal types postulated on systematic grounds account for only five percent of the repertory' (p. 63). Her more trenchant objection to Lefferts's taxonomy is that he`privileges external signs that bear the appearance of objective markers' (p. 63).…”