The Interpretation of Musica Ficta in English Music c. 1490–c. 1580

Abstract

‘The evidence now accumulating indicates that a true picture of English style has long been delayed by incredulous editorial pens.’ ‘Such evidence as we have … tends to the conclusion that accidentals should be added, in cases of difficulty, rather than subtracted.’ These two remarks, both made during the last decade, indicate the increasing concern over the correct performance of musica ficta. Both writers express degrees of dissatisfaction with the evidence available, although it is the interpretation of the evidence that has so far proved inconclusive, the evidence itself having remained largely unchanged for several years. The immediate question is whether the main body of evidence lies in the contemporary theoretical treatises or in the music as preserved in contemporary manuscripts; if it proves to lie in neither, then the problem must be regarded as insoluble. Yet the surviving treatises are written in (reasonably) plain English which must surely defy more refined interpretation than that to which they have already been subjected, and we are therefore left with the music. By carrying out a careful study of musica ficta as demonstrated in the accidentals which appear in the manuscripts of the period, we should be able to arrive at a series of rules which were well known by the contemporary musicians, and which should therefore form the basis for modern performance.