Medieval France
. In 12th- and 13th-century music, a clausula (pl. clausulae) was a melismatic passage of plainchant set in the two-part (later sometimes three-part and rarely four-part) polyphony of the Notre-Dame School. The added part (the duplum) moved predominantly note-against-note to the plainchant melisma, a texture termed “discant” style. Some melismas, such as In seculum from the Gradual Hec dies and Latus from the Alleluia Pascha nostrum, were frequently set as independent clausulae because their length and melodic properties lent them well to this treatment. The primary Notre-Dame manuscripts (W1, F, and W2) are the main sources for clausulae, and together they transmit some 900 two-part discant passages, many embedded in organa. In W1 and F, there are also separate fascicles containing independent clausulae in series, each of which maintains the liturgical order of the organa to which they belong.
In the clausulae identified as the earliest, the tenor usually is notated as rhythmically equal longs without any pattern.
Somewhat later, the longs of the tenor became differentiated in length. Finally, both the tenor and the duplum were subject to modal rhythm, moving rhythmically at about the same pace. One of the most important innovations in the composition of clausulae was repeating the tenor, either with the same rhythmic pattern or with a different, contrasting one. This led to repetition in which the rhythmic pattern overlapped repetition of the melismatic melody, a device that proved to be the precursor of isorhythm, which was of great importance to the musical style of the Ars Nova in the 14th century. Texting the duplum of a clausula created the earliest motets.
Sandra Pinegar
[See also: CONDUCTUS; ISORHYTHMIC MOTET; MOTET (13TH CENTURY); NOTRE-DAME SCHOOL; ORGANUM]
Flotzinger, Rudolf. Der Discantussatz im Magnus Liber und seiner Nachfolge. Vienna: Böhlaus, 1969.
Smith, Norman E. “Some Exceptional Clausulae of the Florence Manuscript.” Music and Letters 54(1973):405–14.
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