2. Hana Vlhová-Wörner: Cantus fractus in vernacular chant of the 1420s: lost genres
Channel: SMNF cz
Date: 2020-12-23

Cantus Fractus 2020 conference
http://www.smnf.cz/en/news/Virtual-conference-Rhythm-in-Music-and-the-Arts-in-the-Late-Middle-Ages/




Cantus fractus in vernacular chant of the 1420s: lost genres and transcription challenges 
Hana Vlhová-Wörner, Czech Academy of Sciences




The so-called Jistebnice Kancionál from the 1420s/early 1430s with the vernacular Hussite liturgy and Hussite songs includes several pieces (sequences and Patrem) in cantus fractus. Several other examples of rythmisized Latin chant (Sanctus and Agnus Dei) can be identified at the end of the manuscript, inserted among additions from the second half of the fifteenth century. While the repertory and style of the Latin chant additions correlate with late-fifteenth century music documents, no parallels have, so far, been found for the older repertory strata from the 1420s and 1430s. This is surprising, because these pieces show close connection to the repertory development outside Bohemia. Rhythmic performance of sequences is amply documented in
individual European traditions, yet the Jistebnice Kancionál remains the single (written) evidence that the genre was also cultivated in Bohemia. Similarly, the vernacular Patrem could be identified as the famous Patrem Cardinalis, for which the Jistebnice Kancionál presents an isolated document from pre-Hussite (before 1420) Bohemia. Based on the recently confirmed Prague origin of the manuscript and its close connection to the Prague intellectual elite, it seems that the vernacular manuscript survived as a unique document of the (Latin) repertory cultivated in the early fifteenth century, today lost. Inscriptions in the Kancionál display scribe's major struggles with rhythm capture, which indicates that he was dealing with an entirely new idiom for which he lacked reliable written models.