Interaction between polyphonic motets and monophonic songs in the thirteenth century

Interactions between polyphonic motets and monophonic trouvère song in the long thirteenth century have been characterised in a number of different ways. Mark Everist and Gaël Saint-Cricq have focused on motets' use of textual and musical forms usually thought of as typical of song. Judith Peraino, on the other hand, has explored the influence of motets on a range of pieces found in manuscripts that mainly contain monophonic songs. This thesis re-examines motet-song interaction from first principles, taking as its basis the 22 cases in which a voice part of a polyphonic motet is also found as a monophonic song. The thesis's analysis of this corpus has two central themes: chronology and quotation. In addressing the first, it develops a music-analytical framework to address the compositional processes involved in these case studies, arguing that in some of them a monophonic song was converted into a motet voice, while in others a motet voice was extracted from its polyphonic context to make a song. It also emphasises, however, that chronology is often more complicated than these two neatly opposed categories imply, showing that different song and motet versions can relate to each other in ways that are dynamic, complex, and often hard to recover from the extant evidence. The conversion of song material for motets and vice versa is placed within a larger context of musical quotation and re-use in the thirteenth century, showing that many of these case studies play with the pre-existence of their song or motet material: some transfer their voice parts from one medium to another in a way that consciously foregrounds their previous incarnations, whereas others mask the pre-existence of the voice part by absorbing it into new textual and musical structures. The thesis closes with a consideration of the wider implications of the motet-song interaction it analyses. It examines the generic boundary between songs and motets and suggests a model of generic analysis that centres on the complexities of manuscript transmission. Finally, it considers the use of refrains within its corpus of motets and songs, demonstrating that these short passages of music and text are often quoted in ways similar to those analysed in motets and songs earlier in the thesis.