Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Flower's Children

2003; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/714040828

1547-7304

Alejandro Enrique Planchart,

Medieval Literature and History

The three-voice Responsory organum Stirps Iesse is part of a small number of very formulaic three-voice organa that could well be the product of the generation before Perotin. As it is copied in F, it shows a number of unusual traits, including two alternate discant clausulae copied within the body of the organum. The work was provided later with two further clausulae, one on Eius and another on Flos filius eius. This last one was based on a melisma that was also abstracted from the responsory and widely used as a Benedicamus domino. A family of motets for three, four, and two voices with Latin and with French texts—pieces that retained some currency for over a century—was derived from the clausula: The four-voice motets resulted from the addition of a quadruplum, the two-voice motets from the removal of the triplum. This study elucidates some of the notational problems in the clausula and uses them as a means of explaining the derivation of the resultant motets. In the process, two lost versions can be identified, one of which was used by Nicholas Merques in the early fifteenth century as the text source for one of his works.