The clausulae of the St Victor manuscript have long prompted debate amongst scholars of thirteenth-century polyphony. These forty clausulae are accompanied, atypically, by marginal incipits referring to related French motet texts. Their genesis is moot: did they originate as melismatic clausulae to which syllabic motet texts were later added, or were they originally conceived as motets from which accompanying texts were subsequently removed? In the only other extant sources to record collections of clausulae – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 628 Helmst. (W1) and Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1 (F) – such clausulae are generally believed to pre-date any related motets. That the St Victor clausulae might represent an exceptional reversal of the conventional chronological model was suggested as early as 1939 by Yvonne Rokseth, but later rejected outright by Jürg Stenzl in 1970, in the first full-length study devoted to these pieces. Fred Büttner's new monograph satisfactorily and finally resolves any further uncertainties concerning chronological relationships in this manuscript: it demonstrates conclusively that the St Victor clausulae derive from their related motets.
Die Klauselrepertoire der Handschrift Saint-Victor represents the summation of Büttner's work on St Victor, ongoing since 1988. It builds on material from his Habilitationsschrift (1998) and his edited volume – the very similarly titled Die Klauseln der Handschrift Saint-Victor (Tutzing, 1999) – recording the findings of a collaborative, eight-year long discussion group at the University of Munich. Büttner's new monograph retains the admirable breadth of this earlier study, once again separately considering each clausula in the manuscript on its own terms, while benefiting from a clearer focus and greater consistency in methodology.
Büttner believes the St Victor manuscript to have been copied in the second half of the thirteenth century, perhaps as late as 1300, for the Parisian church of Sainte-Cathérine du Val des Écoliers. This places the source in a cultural context where strong liturgical conservatism, as exemplified by a figure such as Robert Kilwardby, was in dialogue with the more secular radicalism of philosophers such as Siger of Brabant. Büttner proposes that the St Victor clausulae represent a deliberately conservative attempt to reform worldly secular French motets into a supposedly older and purer state of sacred clausulae. The collection, he suggests, consciously imitates earlier liturgically appropriate ‘Notre-Dame’ sources such as W1 or F: its contents are ordered according to the church calendar, and three-voice clausulae are placed at the start of the collection, subsequently followed by the two-voice works. The opening clausula, which carries the Latin chant ‘Et vide et inclina aurem tuam’ (from the Assumption Gradual Propter veritatem), is out of place in the liturgical sequence, and this is convincingly explained as a symbolic statement: in inviting readers or listeners to see and to incline their ear, the initial clausula draws particular attention to the importance of the St Victor collection as a model in restoring a liturgical genre, currently under threat from the secular motet. Indeed, the undesirable secular roots of the reformed clausulae are, Büttner explains, underlined by the unusual inclusion of incipits for related French texts. Significantly, five of these marginal incipits are continued with new satirical texts (see pp. 48–9), apparently parodying the ‘fin amor’ expression of the original motets.
The study is centred on seven chapters, devoted, in turn, to a case-study clausula or pair of clausulae. Each case study opens with a close analysis of the underlying chant melody, not just of the short melisma forming the clausula tenor, but also of the musical and tonal context of the host chant as a whole. The construction and characteristics of the clausulae are then scrutinised for features that might indicate motet influences. These include refrain melodies; signs of a song-like phrase structure in the duplum; any unusual irregularities in the rhythmic arrangement or text underlay of the tenor chant; and coinciding caesurae in the tenor and duplum voices. Only then are the accompanying motet texts discussed (where extant), and used to support or undermine hypotheses reached on purely musical grounds.
Büttner's analyses are cautious and considered, but the results are entirely convincing. He develops a highly sophisticated methodology, powerful enough to enable him to imagine the precise structure, syllable counts and stresses of a French motet text for which only the first line survives as an incipit (accompanying the ‘Et Florebit’ clausula). This is achieved in spite of the fact that, as Büttner demonstrates, certain features of the lost motet model were actually altered in the clausula transcription, in order to facilitate unambiguous notation in modal rhythm. As is the case in several other clausulae for which concordant motets do survive, internal divisions marking the end of text lines in a motet are omitted in the related clausula, thereby clarifying its modal notation, but obscuring the regular phrase structure of its parent motet. In keeping with the conservative aims of the manuscript, Büttner highlights the preoccupation of the St Victor notator with rhythmic intelligibility and with adhering strictly to the rules of modal notation and consonance, a preoccupation that is occasionally allowed to compromise musical sense. This also serves to refute the proposition that cum littera motets were transcribed as clausulae in order that their rhythms could be fixed in sine littera modal notation. In fact, such an act of notational translation often results in a clausula, which, while rhythmically prescriptive, is a less clear and reliable guide to the rhythm of a related motet than the motet text itself.
Though focused on the St Victor clausulae, the book contains many fascinating digressions: new light is cast on the long-running debate concerning the chronology of the motets Manere vivere and Serena virginum (pp. 158–60). There is also an insightful discussion of the relationship between the two Alleluias Adorabo ad templum (Ludwig's M 12) and Posui adiutorium (M 51) and their possible liturgical functions (pp. 199–205), and a reflection on interactions between clausulae and conducti (pp. 330–2). It is unfortunate, then, that there is no index or list of compositions discussed in order to enable readers to access easily and appreciate all of Büttner's wide-ranging observations. The text is dense, with few subheadings, and several pieces are discussed in quite specific detail without the provision of any examples. The musical examples provided are either in facsimile or, more often, in a kind of diplomatic facsimile, which retains the original notation, while adding some markings and clues as to rhythmic interpretation. Büttner's intentions (as explained on pp. 50–3) in employing such an editorial method are entirely praiseworthy. However, the examples, and the level of analytical detail to which they are subjected, may be intimidating to those whose grasp of modal notation is less than fluent. On certain occasions, particularly when different rhythmic readings are being debated, a supplementary transcription of particular passages in modern notation would have been welcome.
Yet these criticisms remain superficial, as there is little fault to find with the book's content or conclusions. Just two potentially problematic aspects of the study are worthy of note. The first concerns Büttner's tendency to assume (in the case of clausula number 15, on Et Gaudebit, and number 40, on Agmina) the priority of Latin motet texts preserved in the ‘Notre-Dame’ source F over related French texts whose incipits are given in St Victor. In the case of the Et Gaudebit motet family, Wulf Arlt (in an unpublished paper presented at the Das Ereignis Notre Dame conference in Wolfenbüttel in 1985) challenged the priority of the Latin triplum ‘Ypocrite pseudopontifices’ recorded in F over the French text ‘El mois d'avril’ preserved in later sources. It is possible, therefore, that the F motetus ‘Velut stelle firmamenti’ may also be a contrafactum of the French text ‘Al cor ai une alegrance’, cued alongside the two-voice clausula in St Victor. A version of this Et Gaudebit clausula is also preserved in F (in the only clausula concordance between St Victor and another manuscript), where it also seemingly represents a transcribed motet. Büttner uncovers musical and notational features suggesting that the F clausula may be more closely related to the French motetus than to the Latin text found elsewhere in the same source. However, he does not seriously entertain this possibility, nor does he pursue its consequences for assumed motet chronologies.
The very presence of clausulae representing transcribed French motets in the early ‘Notre-Dame’ source F, thought to date from the 1240s, raises a second question. In F, transcribed motets are very much the exception rather than the rule, and are anonymously disguised alongside ‘genuine’ clausulae without any marginal motet incipits. Büttner's conservatism hypothesis seems less applicable here. Indeed, the evidence of F suggests that the transcription of motets as clausulae was already established relatively early in the thirteenth century, pre-dating any later desire to purify worldly French motets. It appears, then, that the conversion of French motets into clausulae may be a more widespread and older practice than Büttner fully acknowledges, and one for which we therefore require further explanations.
With over 400 A4-size pages, and an appendix of colour plates, the book is undoubtedly a bargain at €30. It could not be described as an accessible study, but it is certainly an important one, and will reward, with exceptionally rich insights, anyone who takes the trouble to engage with it. As both a source of new ideas and a solid analytical basis for further inquiry it should be required reading for scholars of thirteenth-century polyphony.
