Contemplating the Chantilly Codex

Abstract

T HE Chantilly Codex (Chantilly, Musde Conde, Ms.564) is one of the most celebrated manuscripts of the later Middle Ages, and was the focus of 'Nouveaux regards sur le manuscrit 564 de Chantilly', a small, intense and enjoyable conference held at the Centre d'Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance, Tours, 13-15 September 2001. Organized by Yolanda Plumley and Anne Stone (the editors of a colour facsimile that is soon to appear), the conference brought together two generations of scholars whose research defines our understanding of the 14th and early 15th centuries. They spoke on four topics: (1) genre, style, text; (2) perspectives on transmission and provenance; (3) perspectives on the Ars Subtilior; and (4) Chantilly and the Ars Nova tradition. Several delegates were unable to travel to Tours in the wake of the events of 11 September, but they e-mailed their papers, which were read aloud by the organizers. A great help to all present were the digitalized colour images of the Chantilly manuscript from the DIAMM project archives,' ably projected by Margaret Bent by permission of the librarian of the Musee Conde. A book of essays with versions of some of the papers presented at the conference is in preparation. Was there an overarching plan to the Chantilly Codex, or is it a haphazard collection? Virginia Newes identified several rondeau-pairs with similar musical or textual features, but found no plan for their position in the codex. She pointed out that they shared topics with the adjoining ballades, and decided that the rondeaux would have been included for their musical and textual sophistication. In the discussion afterwards, David Fallows noted that small clusters of songs were typical in 15th-century chansonniers. Commenting on the manuscript as a whole, Karl Kuegle (echoing Elizabeth Randall Upton's recent dissertation)2 saw it as a de luxe assembly of a pile of music: ballades and other pieces plus motets. Anne Stone reminded us that the scribe of the index grouped the three and four-voice ballades there. However, an absence of close planning may not mean that there is no plan whatsoever. Margaret Bent thought that the missing first fascicle and placing of unusual rondeaux at the beginning might reflect a changing plan (suppression rather than 'loss' of the beginning); and Leeman Perkins reminded us that plans often work in the beginning, but then break down.