Polyphonic composition in the decades around 1500 frequently involved references, more or less direct, to music, musicians and music-making. Composers used specific chant or song melodies as cantus firmi, they used notational means to manipulate musical material, and they referenced solmisation through puns, soggetto cavato and hexachordal motifs. Perhaps most obviously, they named themselves and their contemporaries in motet and song texts and described themselves in the act of performance. The increasing use of apparently self-referential devices coincides with a growing awareness of composers as composers, no longer merely singers who compose. Jane D. Hatter’s stimulating new study connects these two trends, arguing that self-reference was an intentional tool used by composers to forge a new professional identity, indeed to construct the idea of a compositional community with artistic connections to the past yet firmly embedded in the present.

The book is neatly divided into two parts, ‘Music about Musicians’ and ‘Music about Music’. The references discussed in the first half are mostly textual ones in which the composers named themselves, as in ‘musicians’ motets’ and laments specifically for musicians. Some of these references can be oblique, as in the case of acrostics and other wordplay. The second half concerns what Hatter calls ‘Musica compositions’, where structuring devices seem to reference pedagogical or theoretical concepts like hexachords, solmisation or mensuration. Hatter’s primary source of evidence is the music itself, and she brings new insights to well-known repertoires while introducing some anonymous and lesser-known compositions. The pieces she analyses have never quite fit into the standard music-historical narratives of the Renaissance because their structured, referential aspects seem opposed to the apparent new emphasis on text setting, clarity and expressiveness. One of the strengths of Hatter’s contextualisation is that it does not rely on seeing these pieces as ‘vestiges’ of an older tradition, instead providing a thoroughly timely motivation for their composition.

The book is framed within an art-historical metaphor presented in the opening chapter of each part. Paintings for guilds of visual artists would frequently depict St Luke in the act of painting the Virgin Mary. These often seem to have been self-portraits, thus showing the artist at work while placing himself in the artistic lineage of the Christian proto-artist. In the same way musicians’ motets present composers and singers in the act of performance, and, along with laments for musicians, they place composers within a musical and compositional tradition. The guild paintings also include more specific details concerning the artist’s trade, from objects like brushes and pigments to the portrayal of specific techniques of portraiture. This, according to Hatter, is akin to composers highlighting music-theoretical concepts, for example in structured tenors based on hexachords.

The comparison is clever and insightful, both a useful way to conceive of the relationships between composers and a helpful reminder of the broader culture in which the composers lived. In the first half it works particularly well, for the self-reference in musicians’ motets and laments for musicians is if anything more literal than in their visual counterparts. Anyone familiar with this repertoire will find Hatter’s argument instinctively compelling: the composers of musicians’ motets were not only creating works of divine praise, but they were also portraying themselves as active participants in that praise. Likewise, laments for musicians may have been sincerely felt homages to composers of an older generation, but they were also an opportunity for younger composers to intentionally place themselves within a compositional tradition. In his motet In hydraulis, Busnoys named himself, an ‘unworthy musician’, alongside Pythagoras and Ockeghem, with more than a little false modesty.

Hatter’s interpretations of the self-referential texts are frequently enlightening. She sets them in their devotional contexts, and she brings out the significance of what may at first seem only tangential references to musicians and music-making, as in the anonymous Decantemus in hac die in Petrucci’s Motetti libro quarto (pp. 82–4). She shows how Du Fay’s Fulgens iubar portrays the act of singing in a specific liturgical context (pp. 80–2) and how Compère’s Sile fragor is concerned with the physicality of the voice (pp. 85–7). Perhaps most effective is her analysis of the construction of compositional lineage. She helpfully points out that while some composers of laments may have known those they were lamenting, others were writing long after their deaths. In particular, she identifies a long tradition of laments for Josquin spanning most of the sixteenth century (pp. 115–20). Her textual analyses of motets such as Busnoys’s Anthoni usque limina and In hydraulis demonstrate how composers attempted to build their own professional identity through explicit self-reference as well as drawing on the authority of Greek music theory (pp. 158–64).

Hatter provides new or adapted translations for several of the Latin texts, which serve as the foundation for her interpretations. These are not all without issues. As one example, Hatter translates ‘preces fundare’ in Compère’s Omnium bonorum plena as ‘to found (or fund) prayers’, while claiming that other translations have tended to change its meaning to ‘offer’ or ‘pour forth prayers’ (p. 70). In fact the word given in Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, Castello del Buonconsiglio MS 1378 (Trent 91) is ‘fundere’, whose meaning aligns with the previous translations.Footnote ¹ Ludwig Finscher’s mistranscription as ‘fundare’ has been repeated by scholars including myself, though it was correctly transcribed by Joshua Rifkin.Footnote ² Correctly translated, the motet text does not imply a connection to foundations or endowments, as Hatter suggests. This may be an extreme case, but elsewhere secular interpretations are exaggerated at the expense of the more self-evident spiritual ones. According to Hatter, Josquin’s provisions for commemorations after his death mean that he was ‘clearly concerned with being remembered’ (p. 117). This very well may be true, but the explicit purpose of such commemorations was not ‘remembrance’ of the dead but prayers for their souls.Footnote ³

In several of the motets discussed, the textual references to musicians are complemented by solmisation puns. Hatter considers these puns to be references to music pedagogy or theory, which in turn signify the musical profession. In some cases, they are clearly highlighted within the musical texture: ‘ut sol’, from the phrase ‘electa ut sol’, is sung repeatedly to an open fifth in Josquin’s Illibata dei virgo nutrix as well as the settings of O virgo prudentissima by both Josquin and Isaac (p. 213). Elsewhere the potential puns are hidden. In Fulgens iubar, the word ‘ut’ is found six times in the triplum text, and each is clearly set to a note with the pitch G, F or C, the ‘ut’ of the hard, soft and natural hexachords.Footnote ⁴ Hatter argues that these puns were intended for the choirboys who may have sung this motet (pp. 33–4). But the pun is weakened by the fact that not all of these would necessarily or even likely have been sung in the proper hexachord for the note to have been ‘ut’. In the same composer’s four-voice Ave regina celorum, the self-referential tropes in the text are set musically to sections involving numerous notated flats. Hatter interprets the resulting solmisation ‘fa–mi’ as a ‘sounding version of Du Fay’s name and musical signature’ (pp. 44–9, at p. 44). Another version of the same pun may be found in the tenor of Omnium bonorum plena: the mention of Du Fay’s name in the text might coincide with the same ‘fa–mi’ solmisation for e {fl}′–d′ (p. 73).Footnote ⁵

The second part of the book focuses on pieces that ‘display aspects of abstract music theory in their compositional framework’ (p. 125), pieces that Hatter interprets as ‘music about music’. She argues that these pieces should be read ‘within the context of the semipublic reading practices of courtly, humanistic scholars’; that is, that a professional ‘reader’ could verbally present music compositions in presentation manuscripts to an educated audience already familiar with concepts like hexachords and solmisation (p. 132). Such practices, however widespread they may have been, provide one solution to the question of how music, outside of its verbal text, can reference itself. Even so, I found myself thinking that Hatter’s self-reflexive repertoire was defined either too broadly or too narrowly. A couple of the pieces discussed (Obrecht’s Regina celi, pp. 154–5, and Tinctoris’s Difficiles alios, p. 159) were probably originally intended as music examples for treatises and thus by design reflect theoretical principles, even if they were also transmitted in non-theoretical sources. When the opposite happens – music intended primarily for performance is imported into theory treatises – they ‘were not usually used to elucidate the principles that they seem to demonstrate’ (p. 138). This tension serves to highlight the fact that, in this repertoire, the composer’s intention is hard to pin down. By composing a hexachordal motif in O decus ecclesie, was Isaac ‘presenting the musical “tools of the trade”’ (p. 127, my emphasis), or was he simply using them?

In other examples, it is less clear precisely what the composers may have been trying to reference. Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus was included for discussion on the basis of its homographic cantus firmus (with multiple musical readings deriving from the same notation) and use of mensural transformation, which Hatter interprets as the composer foregrounding ‘abstract concepts of music theory’ (p. 144). Here Hatter uses ‘music theory’ in the modern analytical sense, for ‘mensural transformation’ and ‘homography’ are modern terms that help to make sense of phenomena that fifteenth-century theorists only addressed obliquely. Isaac would have been able to explain his tenor using simple contemporary theoretical language, but Domarto was introducing creative manipulations of the notational system which long eluded accurate characterisation. The mass may be referencing the long and nebulous tradition of composition on a structured cantus firmus, but the only direct reference is to the specific chant melody. In an article cited frequently by Hatter and engaging in many of the same questions, Rob C. Wegman argued that canons and other aspects of notational complexity were designed to make compositions ‘inaccessible to outsiders’, which itself promotes ‘professional demarcation’. The ‘obscurity’ mentioned in Tinctoris’s definition of canon may be the point, rather than what is being obscured.Footnote ⁶ The effect that Hatter is proposing – increased professionalisation – may be the same, but the means of achieving it are different.

Domarto’s mass is one of five pieces cited by Hatter as featuring mensural transformation.Footnote ⁷ She also briefly discusses the mensuration canons in Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum (p. 144) and mentions in passing the ‘complex manipulations’ of the L’homme armé melody in masses (p. 142). This could leave the impression that homographic tenors, whether undergoing mensural or other sorts of transformation, are less widespread than they are.Footnote ⁸ Indeed, they feature in some of the other pieces she discusses. The tenor in Compère’s Omnium bonorum plena sings the song melody twice, with its original pitches and note values, in two different mensurations – even though both iterations are notated separately.Footnote ⁹ The tenor of Du Fay’s Fulgens iubar also undergoes homographic transformation, but this is obscured by the fact that she labels it ‘isorhythmic’. Hatter cites Margaret Bent’s important critique of the term but continues to use it without addressing Bent’s broader argument on how it has distorted our understanding of musical development.Footnote ¹⁰ By calling the compositional approach to Fulgens iubar ‘archaic’ and ‘somewhat rigid’ (p. 36) yet that of the same composer’s four-voice Ave regina celorum ‘innovative and affective’ (p. 41), the level of compositional continuity between the two is lost.

Much of the repertoire discussed in both parts of the book uses pre-existing melodies as cantus firmi. Hatter argues that cantus firmi can have ‘symbolic power’ (p. 41), and her analyses invariably include thoughtful consideration of textual relationships and the effects of their juxtaposition. Somewhat counterintuitively, she does not discuss musical quotation as a category of ‘music about music’. The connection between compositions based on chant or song cantus firmi and the increasing self-awareness of composers may not be obvious, but I would be interested to hear how Hatter considers this much more substantial repertoire to fit into her narrative, not least because cantus firmi of some sort feature in so much of the music she analyses. One motet that in any case would belong in this discussion is Josquin’s O virgo prudentissima, whose text refers explicitly to the cantus firmus Beata mater, just as the ‘la mi la’ figure is eventually sung by all voices in his Illibata dei virgo nutrix (discussed on pp. 214–15, shown in ex. 8.1).

Regardless of what exactly one is willing to consider as self-referential, Hatter nevertheless compellingly presents the connection of this repertoire to the professionalisation of composers c. 1500. This comes across particularly well in her chapter on the symbolic use of the hexachord, which she argues ‘was central to composers’ active role in promoting the understanding of music as both a liberal art and a Christian practice in the early modern period’ (p. 169). In a wide-ranging examination of late fifteenth-century music theory, Hatter shows how theorists attempted to construct a conceptual link between the newly named hexachords and the Greek tetrachord, thus evoking the authority of ancient music theory. Compendia of knowledge such as Gregor Reisch’s Margarita philosophica demonstrate the centrality of solmisation to the study of music, with the hexachord used as a visual symbol of music itself.

This provides an excellent background for her analyses of eleven compositions from c. 1480 to c. 1530 that use the hexachord prominently, either as a cantus firmus or as a melodic motif. She categorises the hexachordal statements as ‘progressive’ – with notes being added or taken away with each subsequent statement, as in Isaac’s O decus ecclesie – or ‘complete’, with each statement containing all six notes, as in Brumel’s Missa Ut re mi fa sol la. Notable for its integration of the hexachordal motif into its text and all voices is Josquin’s Ut Phebi radiis, which at one point features the hard, soft and natural hexachords simultaneously in imitation (pp. 197–200). Hatter suggests that O decus ecclesie has, in addition to its hexachordal tenor, a ‘Pythagorean bass’ because it prominently features ‘intervals derived from some of the simple super-particular ratios’ (p. 201). All melodic intervals regularly used at this time, besides the major and minor sixth, can be derived from superparticular ratios, so their significance here is not clear to me. The final example, Compère’s Virgo celesti, has two tenors, one hexachordal and the other featuring the hymn Ut queant laxis, itself famous for its connection to the hexachord. Hatter suggests that Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 463 has imperfection coloration at the beginning of the altus to visually emphasise the hexachordal motif. In fact the coloration is also present in Petrucci’s Canti B, and while either coloration or a dot of division is notationally necessary, the composer (or scribe or music printer) indeed could have been using it both for its literal meaning and to highlight something else.

As is explicit in the title of the book, Hatter is arguing that composers are constructing—‘composing’—a community. She imagines this as a community made up exclusively of composers, or at least musicians. Indeed, the motets and songs discussed in the first part of the book envisage precisely that kind of community. This is in part because she intentionally excludes repertoire which highlights a broader community, for example musicians’ motets which ‘are clearly presented as an extension of service to a specific patron’ (p. 55, n. 4), or laments for non-musicians. These exclusions seem designed to give the impression that composers’ ‘guild-like social structures’ (p. 25) were somehow equivalent to the actual guilds of visual artists. Again, the comparison is clever and insightful, but I wonder to what extent their status as clerics might have made their social structures different from those of painters and illuminators.

This is an important book, not least because the growing self-awareness of composers was a turning point in music history. Hatter presents a small but significant part of this story: a self-referential repertoire that represents or even helps to build a new professional identity for composers. Questions remain, for this transition may not have been so sudden: Isaac’s appointment as Maximilian’s court composer did not come out of nowhere, nor did it immediately change everything. To put this in perspective, Hatter discusses self-referentiality for earlier musicians, especially Machaut (pp. 57–9 and 94–6). What changed from Machaut to Du Fay to Josquin and beyond? While Hatter reflects on some external forces – including polyphonic music printing and the Reformation (p. 3) – she is more interested in drawing connections than in making distinctions. Her greatest strength lies in showing the power of music itself. This comes together beautifully in her analysis of Illibata dei virgo nutrix, a ‘self-conscious effort to evoke the power of a tradition of musical works for the spiritual and professional benefit of living composers’ (p. 208). Can it be an accident that the composer of so much of this self-referential repertoire is a figure so notable for his posthumous fame, Josquin?