Synopses & Reviews
Just as our society delights in citations, quotations, and allusions in myriad contexts, not least in popular song, late medieval poets and composers knew well that such references could greatly enrich their own works. In The Art of the Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut, author Yolanda Plumley explores the penchant for borrowing in chansons and lyrics from fourteenth-century France, uncovering a practice integral to the experiments in form, genre, and style that ushered in a new school of lyric.
Working across disciplinary boundaries, Plumley traces creative appropriations in the burgeoning "fixed forms" of this new tradition to build a more intimate understanding of the shared experience of poetry and music in the generations leading up to, and including, Guillaume de Machaut. Exploring familiar and less studied collections of songs as well as lyrics without music, this book sheds valuable light on the poetic and musical knowledge of authors and their audiences, and on how poets and composers devised their works and engaged their readers or listeners. It presents fresh insights into when and in which milieus the classic Ars nova polyphonic chanson took root and flourished, and into the artistic networks of which Machaut formed a part. As Plumley reveals, old songs lingered alongside the new in the collective imagination well beyond what the written sources imply, reminding us of the continued importance of memory and orality in this age of increasing literacy.
The first detailed study of citational practice in the French fourteenth-century song-writing tradition, The Art of Grafted Song will appeal to students and scholars of medieval French music and literature, cultural historians, and others interested in the historical and social context of music and poetry in the late Middle Ages.
Review
"[T]his book is brimming with intertextual discoveries, deepening our knowledge
of the wellspring of lyric material referenced in fourteenth-century song. ... The Art of Grafted Song reveals in greater detail than any account to date the endurance and centrality of grafting and citational procedures between the late thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century repertories. The fascinating musical and poetic landscape Plumley
has uncovered contributes to an emerging body of literature that has challenged earlier
representations of the ars nova as a break from past traditions." --Speculum
About the Author
Yolanda Plumley is Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Exeter. She has published widely on late medieval music and its cultural context and is author of The Grammar of Fourteenth-Century Melody (New York and London, 1996) and (with Anne Stone) of Codex Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly, MS 564 (Turnhout, 2008), and co-editor of three volumes of essays on late medieval and Renaissance culture.
Table of Contents
Preface with Acknowledgements i
Abbreviations vi
Introduction 1
Part One: Citation, Genre, and Experiments in Song in the early Fourteenth Century 23
1. Cantilena entata: Etymologies and the Grafted Song ca. 1300 24
2. Grafting song in Paris: The Lyric Works of Jehannot de Lescurel 60
3. Experimental Song-Writing in the Roman de Fauvel 92
Part Two: Performing Citation in Court and City: The Rise of the Fixed Forms 121
4. Performing Nonsense at Court: Watriquet de Couvin's Fastras 122
5. Citation and Ritual at the Puys of Valenciennes and Paris 154
6. Jehan de le Mote and the Rise of the Ballade 204
7. Citing the Classics: Mythological Ballades by Le Mote, Vitry, and Campion 246
Part Three: Machaut and the Art of Grafted Song 271
8. Machaut's Heritage: Tracing Citations in his Lyrics and Songs 272
9. Self-Citation and Lyric Process in La Loange des dames 317
10. The Dynamics of Duplication: Staging Debate in Machaut's Voir Dit 344
Epilogue 401
Bibliography 420