Review of Ruth I. DeFord,Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music(Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Abstract

[1] Though the changing nature of pitch organization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been the subject of significant scholarly debate, few studies address analogous changes in rhythmic organization in this period.(1) Two recent books, Ruth I. DeFord's Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music (2015) and Roger Matthew Grant's Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era (2014) have begun to fill this void. Both studies explore how hierarchy accrues in mensural structures, providing a compelling link to our understanding of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meter (i.e. Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983, Hasty 1997, London 2004). For his part, Grant synthesizes the intellectual foundations of theories of musical time from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and documents technologies (including the tactus, the timepiece, and the metronome) that correspond with changing articulation of musical time. In his discussion of mensural music, Grant draws on an Aristotelian notion of time to argue that tactus articulates a mensural hierarchy.(2) DeFord similarly focuses on tactus and takes a more practical approach, examining in detail the theory and practice of temporal organization in Renaissance music.(3) DeFord provides a compelling account of the nuances of mensuration, illuminating the unique contributions of mensural organization to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music and revealing the vibrant hierarchical patterns that mensural theory and practice encourage.[2] DeFord begins her study by debunking the false binary between meter and mensuration:The term "mensural music" (musica mensurabilis) means simply "measured music." In the period under consideration, it was the opposite of "plainchant" (musica plana). Modern scholars sometimes treat it as the opposite of "metrical music." This is a false dichotomy based on an oversimplified view of the difference between "Renaissance rhythm," in which the system of measurement is sometimes alleged to have no relation to rhythmic structure, and later styles, in which time signatures and barlines are sometimes assumed to prescribe structures in a straightforward manner. This reductive opposition does not do justice to the music of either era. (2)The book demonstrates this point exquisitely, illustrating the analytical potential of mensural structure and emphasizing critical commonalities between so-called mensural and metrical music. DeFord defines rhythm as "a more complex concept than mensuration or tactus. It includes all aspects of the perceptible organization of musical time, especially on the relatively small scales in which durations can be directly compared in memory. Since all musical events take place in time, all of them contribute to rhythm" (3). Her book aims "to shed light on the theory and practice of rhythm in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by examining them in relation to each other" (1). She undertakes this project in two parts: chapters 1-7 consist of close readings of over 100 theoretical sources, and chapters 8-14 provide seven case studies ranging from the early songs of Du Fay through the virtuosic L'homme arme masses of Ockeghem, Busnoys, and Josquin to the popular songs that flourished through the second half of the sixteenth century. DeFord's exploration of disparate sources reveals a rich tapestry of rhythmic practices that affect details ranging from large-scale organization of a mass movement to nuances of text setting at the level of the single word.[3] Building on the groundwork of Berger 1993, DeFord untangles the often contradictory details of theoretical writing on mensuration, ranging from the mid-fourteenth century Ars practica mensurabilis cantus of Johannes de Muris through Michael Praetorius's Syntagma musicum (1618-19). She argues that "the functional mensural structure of a piece depends on regularities in the audible rhythmic structure, not on the notated mensuration" (50). …