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MUSICA FICTA 373
Transcription and interpretation of such intervals as are uncertain
in thirteenth-century music must remain, for the present, in a condi
tion which is not entirely satisfactory. It would seem that we must be
content to rely less upon definite rules than upon a general acquain
tance with the music of the period. It is a welcome and healthy sign
that editors of the last decade or two have diminished the number of
the suggested accidentals which they have placed above the staff, with
or without brackets. This means that students are no longer bidden
to follow this or that school of interpretation, but are able to realize
that the decisions are still open, liable to revision as knowledge in
creases; and furthermore that they may sometimes be lawfully made
in different ways according to whether the music is to be sounded by
voices or by instruments, in large or in small buildings.
VERNACULAR TEXTS
At the beginning of this chapter a reference was made to the appear
ance of French texts in the motets. Their first appearance seems to be
in the St. Victor manuscript, 1 where 40 out of 42 Latin motets have
cues or tags for sets of French words written down the margins of the
manuscript. Contemporaneous with the manuscript, though usually
listed after it rather than before, is Wolfenbuttel 1206, which has 98
motets with Latin words and 116 where French replaces the Latin
text, instead of being an alternative, as in the case of the St. Victor
manuscript. Later on (as, for example, very frequently in the Montpellier
manuscript) the Latin is discarded in favour of the vernacular
in one upper voice only, while the other, with no apparent sense of
incongruity, retains the church text in the original Latin. Normally
this Latin text is in the middle voice while the French is in the top
most: and this might suggest that in the banqueting hall a cleric from
the choir sang the motetus part with a boy or a woman sustaining the
triplum. This is, of course, a mere speculation: but some explanation
ought to be offered for the preference given to Latin for the middle
voice and French for the top. That the highest voice may have been
added later in many cases is not denied, but this is a description of
the process of growth, not a complete explanation of the form finally
prevalent. When this practice is attempted in church, however, we are
not surprised to find that the ecclesiastical authorities denounce it as
improper, for the French texts are with a few exceptions frankly
secular and deal for the most part with lovers and their lasses. The
phase of the bilingual motet was a passing one, and it has received a
1 Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat 15139.