On Sonority in Fourteenth-Century Polyphony: Some Preliminary Reflections

Abstract

Introduction. Harmonic aspects of Guillaume de Machaut's music have long kindled the interest of music historians, as is evident from such classic contributions as Gilbert Reaney's inauguratory essay on fourteenth-century harmony, H.H. Eggebrecht's thorough analysis of Motet No. 9, and Wolfgang D6mling's concise monograph on the secular songs.1 The last two in particular assign significant structural purport to sonority in individual compositions. More recently, Ramon Pelinski and Hellmut Kiihn have pressed the general thesis that sonority assumes a structural role in Machaut's music, Kiihn extending it to the fourteenth century at large.2 Invaluable as they have been in broadening musical perspectives beyond narrow confines of rhythmic pattern, motive, and reiterative form, these studies are marred collectively, and to varying degrees individually, by insufficient grounding in a settled domain of primary theoretical concepts. They lack consensus on such fundamental issues as nomenclature and classification of sonorities, assessment of relationships between sonorities, and designation of basic syntactical processes. The individual authors (Kiihn excepted) tend to assume a shared understanding with the reader and neglect the admittedly tedious business of justifying first premises. Some among their manifold observations