Journal of the Alamire Foundation

The period from 1300 to 1500 witnessed an explosion in the composition and popularity of monophonic Creed melodies. The development of this corpus of about seventy such hymns paralleled a growing religious and cultural interest in the Creed. Specifically, this interest was manifest in three primary areas of late medieval religious life-catechism, devotion, and liturgy. In this article, I focus on the catechetical dimension of the Creed, and argue that the Creed’s role as an object of religious catechesis can help to explain the emergence of the new musical settings, which perhaps aimed to buttress memorization and understanding of the text. I examine the changing role of the Creed as an object of catechesis, specifically noting how it became an important marker of faith in the wake of the development of academic theology in the twelfth century. This emphasis by twelfthcentury theologians led to ecclesial movements in the thirteenth century that promoted lay participation in the faith through the Creed, which in turn resulted in devotional, artistic, literary, and musical productions of the Creed in the fourteenth century. Highlighting these catechetical and artistic creations that focus on the Creed helps to contextualize the flourishing of its musical settings in the late Middle Ages.

In this contribution I focus on the relationship between rhythm, architecture, and music, especially around 1400. Medieval architecture and music are both grounded in the classical theory of proportion. In the sequence of the seven artes liberals, arithmetic and geometry-the arts associated with architecture-are placed just before music, forming the quadrivium along with astronomy. Proportion, order, and harmony play an essential role in both music and architecture. In medieval architecture, rhythm was the consequence of the use of classical theories of proportion with the application of constructive geometry, and is seen most clearly in monumental longitudinal spaces of basilicas where rows of piers or columns and vaulting shafts corresponding to bays form regular rhythm in the interior to which the same rhythm of windows and buttresses or flying buttresses corresponds on the exterior. The paradigm changes only when this regular rhythm is loosened and connected with a less rigid treatment of the existing tradition of cathedral construction as can be seen in St. Vitus’ Lodge in Prague, a project led by Peter Parler. In the article I visually present this moment of radically changed rhythm and order at the end of the fourteenth century in Prague and compare it to musical developments at that time.

Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century chant manuscripts from the collegiate church of St. John the Baptist in Chaumont, France, have a notational anomaly: among the standard features of square notation, graphically elongated forms are used. These signs, often two to three times the length of a standard square, are frequently found at the ends of words and sometimes in combination with other neumes. The use of the signs suggests that their presence is not merely space-filling or ornamental, but rather, that they must have been intended to influence some aspect of how the chant was sung. Using a series of six criteria alongside contemporary music theoretical writings, I investigate the use of the sign by the church’s scribes and propose likely interpretations.