Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century in Aragon: Reassessing a Panorama of Fragmentary Sources

Abstract

This essay takes a further step in identifying the patterns of provenance of the Aragonese fragments of ars nova polyphony, thus recalibrating the way we think about the connection between the original manuscripts and local institutions and individuals. Most of the manuscripts’ provenances curiously coincide with court itineraries in royal cities such as Barcelona, Gerona and Vilafranca del Penedes, while a number of fragments were recovered from parish archives in small villages within the area between the Royal Monastery of Poblet and city of Cervera. While none of the surviving fragments can be securely identified with the polyphonic books commissioned by kings John I (b. 1350, r. 1387–1396) and Martin I (r. 1396–1410), archival evidence suggests that the royal court was indeed a major force behind the dissemination of ars nova polyphony in late medieval Catalonia.