Conductus, Sequence, Refrain

Abstract

Latin conducti do not typically come to mind when considering the medieval practice of French refrain citation; intertextual refrains were conventionally interpolated into French songs, narratives, and the upper voices of motets. Yet three conducti copied in late thirteenth-century northern French manuscripts intervene in this traditional narrative by engaging compositionally with French refrains: Veni sancte spiritus spes in GB-Lbl Egerton 274 (known as LoB or Trouvère F), and Marie preconio and Superne matris gaudia in F-Pn lat. 15131 (the St. Victor Miscellany). Previously identified as contrafacts of French refrain songs, Veni sancte spiritus spes shares its melody with a widely cited French refrain, while Marie preconio and Superne matris gaudia are rubricated with French refrains and scribal cues that suggest a musical relationship with French refrains. However, the poems of these conducti exhibit significant relationships not with French refrains but with homonymous and widely sung liturgical sequences. These conducti are not simply contrafacts but reflect a compositional negotiation between variously borrowed and new elements, resulting in Latin songs implicated within citational networks of liturgical chant and French refrains. Significantly, the repeated refrain serves in each song as the site for intertextual and intermusical processes, with borrowed material from French refrains and Latin sequences shaping the music and poetry of the new refrain-form conducti. Considered together, these conducti shed light on understudied Latin contexts for practices of multilingual intertextuality and intermusicality in late thirteenth-century France.