Unresolved

Abstract

How expert were professional singers of the fifteenth century? I address this question by examining some of the period's most notationally complex pieces, which employ devices such as verbal canons, strict fuga, and mensural augmentation. In such cases editors and scribes at times provided a resolutio—a resolved version of a conceptually or notationally complex voice part. More often, however, they left the singer to fend for himself. In fact, among a sample of more than 200 pieces in the repertory of the Cappella Sistina, only a handful were deemed sufficiently demanding to warrant simplification. One among these stands out for its extreme notational complexity: the Missa L’homme armé of Marbrianus de Orto (d. 1529). The unusual metrical relationships between the cantus-firmus voice and the others led a Vatican scribe to provide resolutiones for nearly every section of de Orto's mass. Equally unusual, and rather puzzling, is that the resolutiones drastically reinterpret the rhythms of the cantus firmus. This piece thus emerges as one of the most extraordinary of the period—indeed, as the exception that proves the rule: in the great majority of cases the papal singers needed no help in performing even the most abstruse music composers had to offer.