AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts Friday afternoon 87
This discovery carries a number of far-reaching implications, three of which I shall discuss
here. (1) The loss of a portion of the Tenor alone, not only in Philippon’s L’homme armé mass
but also in Tinctoris’, unique to the same manuscript, implies that the transmission of polyphonic
music in separate parts may have been much more common in the fifteenth century
than hitherto imagined. I propose that this may have informed composers’ decisions about
the design of mass tenors. (2) Basiron’s mass was extremely closely modeled on Du Faÿ’s
L’homme armé mass. I propose that Busnoys’ L’homme armé was not uniquely authoritative in
the fifteenth century, but shared authority with several other L’homme armé masses. (3) Philippon’s
mass appears to have been the earliest setting of the Ordinary of the Mass in which the
number of voices is increased in the final Agnus Dei, a practice that eventually became ubiquitous
(if not quite universal). The notation of Basiron’s newly discovered retrograde canon
sheds light on the well-known one in the final Agnus Dei of Josquin’s mass L’homme armé
“sexti toni.”
ArgeNtUM et AUrUM: HENRICUS ISAAC
AND THE DIVINE ALCHEMY
Adam Knight Gilbert
University of Southern California
In 1536, the humanist Othmar Luscinius cited a remarkable passage of dotted notes derived
from a single motive in Isaac’s officio, Argentum et aurum. As Martin Staehelin has noted,
Luscinius undoubtedly refers to the Kyrie I of Missa Argentum et aurum, constructed on an
antiphon from the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. In a circular triadic pattern derived from
its chant model, four voices create a pseudo-mensuration canon in rhythmic proportions of
1:2:4:8 between the voices. This paper argues that the conceptual origins of this passage lie in
combined traditions of theological, alchemical, and astrological symbolism.
The chant text of the mass quotes St. Peter (Acts 3:6), as he cures a lame beggar outside the
temple gate. Just as Peter and the beggar enter the temple rejoicing, medieval and Renaissance
popes ritually recreated this scene as part of the coronation ceremony, repeating Peter’s words,
“argentum et aurum non est mihi,” while tossing coins in three directions, alluding to a complex
rhetorical opposition of worldly and sacred wealth.
Although the Kyrie is in imperfect tempus, ubiquitous dots create visible but inaudible
perfect tempus and prolation. The musical sign for imperfect tempus closely resembles the
alchemical and astrological crescent-shaped sigil for silver and luna, the moon, while the
circle-dot sign for perfect tempus and prolation corresponds precisely to the ancient sigil for
gold and sol, the sun. Remarkably, the Kyrie of the mass sets only the two words of the chant
“argentum et aurum.” Isaac thus creates a musical representation of the chant text “silver
and gold,” mimicking the monetary sleight of hand of Sigismond of Tyrol’s Silver gulden,
in which the weight of a silver coin equals a “gulden” of gold. Whether by coincidence or
intention, he reenacts the wedding of the Sun and Moon, which in Hermetic tradition are
conjoined by Mercury, in whose the sign the cross is prominent.
The theological implications of Isaac’s curious musical emblem are illuminated in Choralis
Constantinus iii, specifically in his polyphonic paraphrase of the chant “Tu es Petrus,” which
sets the text “et super hanc petrum” to a fugal circle in imperfect tempus with dots of addition.
This chant text (Matthew 16:18–19) refers to the moment when Christ builds his Church on
the rock Peter, handing him keys to the kingdom of Heaven, a passage whose allusive qualities