The diverse seven chapters of this slim but dense monograph are united, as the book's subtitle indicates, by ‘the art of composing with plainchant’. They deal with organum, clausula and motet, both Latin and vernacular, but attempt no overall sweeping conclusions. The focus is on what can be learned by close analysis of carefully chosen examples.

Nearly a century – starting in the 1930s – has been required, via manuscript facsimiles and editions, to get a grip on the repertories of thirteenth-century music, and even in the most recent decade still more editions have appeared. What is more, only now do we have available online most of the major sources in digital colour that scholars worldwide may access from their workplaces. Given the enormous collective labour that all this effort has required, it is no wonder that attempts at comprehensive overviews have been a scholarly focus – we must, after all, teach our students – and have achieved the status of historical truth. Musicologists have examined particular repertories or sources and then attempted to summarise their conclusions, adding their own narratives to the larger story. It is what we do, and Bradley's work is no exception. But the more we investigate, the more wrinkles we find in the ‘historical truth’. The narrative requires constant readjustment. Bradley confirms some common assessments but is revisionist on others about the development of the thirteenth-century motet.

Despite the title, not all the repertory discussed in this book is from Paris, but the author's primary manuscript source, the Florence manuscript (F), is Parisian, even if some individual works are from elsewhere. She digs deep into this source from a variety of perspectives. The first chapter focuses on the fifth-mode plainsong gradual Propter veritatem V. Audi filia and its polyphonic settings as organa, discant clausulae and motets. Four segments of the polyphonic tenor (Veritatem, audi filia, aurem tuam and quia concupivit rex) appear separately in clausulae and motets, but atypically, none of the nineteen motets, whether Latin or French, relate to the clausula settings. Both Chapters 1 and 2 make clear that the supposed ironclad authority of a plainchant tenor could in fact be treated with a much looser adherence to the chant in some organa, clausulae and motets. Bradley makes the point that these melodic variants are apparently not errors but compositional choices. Thus a main finding of Chapter 1 is that the supposedly inviolable authority of a liturgical plainchant tenor could be changed and reshaped in a variety of ways.

In Chapter 2, ‘Mini Clausulae and the Magnus liber organi’, Bradley examines the last two series of 154 clausulae in Fascicle 5 of the Florence manuscript, those labelled ‘abbreviation clausulae’ by William Waite and ‘mini clausulae’ by Alejandro Planchart. She concludes that these brief snippets of discant were not meant to be substituted for passages in the Parisian Magnus liber but were probably for a less ambitious and more utilitarian cycle of organa for the Office and Mass in another location. None have multiple tenor statements, only three use ligatures in the tenor, none have associated motets, and the shortest are only three ternary longs in length. But the editor/scribe of F evidently included this collection because of his desire for comprehensiveness, and Bradley suggests that it offers a glimpse of how churches other than Notre Dame may have sought to cope through music of a more practical functionality.

Chapter 3, ‘Texting Clausulae: Repetition and Regularity on the REGNAT Tenor’, examines two Regnat clausulae (nos. 6 and 8) and their two related Latin motets, Deus omnium and Infidelem populum. After analysing the structure and phrasing of the clausulae, both of which are unusually regular, Bradley discusses how the texts are made to fit (Deus omnium is in fact isosyllabic), concluding that indeed the clausulae came first. But she uses these examples to puncture the views of other scholars in various ways, one being that clausula-based motets were inherently irregular in phrasing and poetic lines.Footnote ¹

Chapter 4, ‘Transcribing Motets: Vernacular Refrain Melodies in Magnus liber Clausulae’, offers, in the author's own words, ‘substantial evidence against the current default assumption that clausulae containing refrain melodies are the sources of these refrains’ (p. 112). If Chapter 3 dwells on clausula-based motets, this chapter reverses that narrative by arguing that where clausulae have been found to have melodic refrains also found in French motets, the French motets were composed first and the clausulae are melismatic transcriptions of them. Offering a list of thirty-three Magnus liber clausulae containing refrain melodies, Bradley then focuses on a subset of eleven that have ‘refrains extant with the same text and music in more than one host source’ (i.e., ‘intertextual refrains’) (p. 114). She enumerates patterns of transmission, notational irregularities in the clausulae, musical evidence of quotation in tenor-refrain relationships, and possible traces of performance that group these examples together. She concludes that at least twenty (approximately sixty per cent) of the thirty-three clausulae with refrains are in fact transcribed French motets, and that more may be found in future research. An unanswered question is whether the refrains originated in motets or in chansons. In any case, we must assume that the origins of the French motet are rather a separate story from that of Latin clausula-based motets.

Bradley's fifth chapter is entitled ‘Framing Motets: Quoting and Crafting Refrains against Plainchant Tenors’, and it demonstrates that refrains could be newly created in French motets without travelling from chanson to motet. She first chooses for analysis the two-voice clausula-related motet Ne m'oubliez mie / Domino found in Fascicle 6 of the Montpellier codex; it begins and ends with refrains (vdB 1361 and 287) and contains two statements of the tenor in the second rhythmic mode. Its clausula version (Domino no. 12) is notationally very irregular in the duplum, leading several scholars (notably Waite) to suggest that the motet preceded the clausula. Bradley agrees, and believes that the motet composer chose to quote two refrains that circulated fairly widely in motets rather than composing them anew, deftly fitting them against the chant tenor. This chapter's second motet, Nus ne se doit / Audi filia, also has opening and closing refrains, but they are unique to this motet. Despite this, Bradley finds that they behave very much like the attested refrains in Ne m'oubliez mie, prompting her to say that they are ‘not quotations, but instead expressly crafted for the motet in question’ (p. 165). She notes that the word motet is ‘a vernacular and diminutive term’ that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries could also be used as a term for refrains (p. 146). In newly composed French motets not dependent on clausulae, their tenor choices ‘seem to have been driven primarily by muscial, rather than textual, concerns’ (p. 177). She goes so far as to suggest that ‘the motet originated, not through the addition of Latin texts to clausulae, but principally as a newly created vernacular texted genre in which refrains were a central component’ (p. 178).

Chapter 6, ‘Intertextuality, Song, and Female Voices in Motets on a St Elizabeth of Hungary Tenor’, deals with two unusual hagiographical French motets on the tenor Decantatur, which comes from the fifth responsory of matins in the Cambrai office Gaudeat Hungaria, composed for St Elizabeth of Thuringia, who was canonised in 1235 and whose heart was a relic in Cambrai. This office was not widely circulated, but the responsory Ante dies exitus includes the long melisma on decantatur at the end of the respond – the choral part of the chant. This forms the tenor of the two-part motet Un chant renvoisie, preserved in the manuscipt ArsB (Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, 3517–18). The first few lines of the poem mention two miracles of the saint, including a posthumous one in Cambrai. This motet has a terminal intertextual refrain (vdB 623) that Bradley concludes is a quotation, not newly composed. This refrain is also found in a widely transmitted motet, Douce dame sans pitie / Sustinere, also most likely a quotation: ‘two pre-existent melodies, tenor and refrain, are being combined and quoted simultaneously here’ (p. 199). The Decantatur tenor turns up in another motet, Amis, vostre demoree, whose tenor in Mo 6 is mislabelled Pro patribus. It quotes a refrain from a chanson de femme by Moniot d'Arras. Though the motetus text is not specific to St Elizabeth, now that the correct tenor is known, the motet can be interpreted to speak (sing) with her voice. Bradley offers many suggestive avenues for further study concerning the ‘simultaneous intertextuality’, ‘rich semantic potential’ and ‘networks of meaning’ of two-voice motets (pp. 210–11).

Bradley's seventh chapter, ‘From Florence to Fauvel: Rereading Musical Paradigms through a Long-Lived JOHANNE Motet’, treats a well-known musical network that extends throughout the thirteenth century and beyond, exemplifying almost every type of motet as well as a related clausula. These works are all on the tenor Johanne from the M 29 Alleluia V. Inter natos in the Magnus liber, for the Nativity of John the Baptist on 24 June. Against conventional wisdom, Bradley believes that the earliest piece in this family is the à2 French motet Ne se que je die in W₂, preceding both the Johanne no. 3 clausula and the tropic Latin motet Clamans in deserto unique to F. Two other Latin contrafacts, Veritas arpie (from W₂ all the way to the Roman de Fauvel) and Arida frondescit (in the treatise of Franco of Cologne), as well as a French triplum appear along the way. Why was this two-voice piece so attractive? Bradley sets out to answer, finding through analysis of music and text that it is not only carefully integrated but is significantly easy to memorise, with its AAB form, ‘square’ phrases with open and closed cadences, motivic repetitions and limited rhymes. Ne se que je die, with its ‘sophisticated and intricate musico-textual design’, is the best exemplar of these traits.

The idea that some motets, especially vernacular motets, might have been composed before their presumed clausula ‘models’ has been floated off and on over the past seventy-five years, but evidence in support of this view has only in the last few years taken a major leap in size and significance.

In the conclusions of Bradley's book, which form Chapter 8, she reminds us again that the number of thirteenth-century Latin motets based on pre-existent clausulae is only a small portion of the overall repertory, though they have received heavy emphasis in our historical narratives. She returns to the idea of the ‘motet's possible origins as a vernacular genre, one heavily dependent, from the outset, on refrain quotation’ (p. 248). She sees an aesthetic of compositional play and crossover in the minds of educated clerics who keenly understood the boundaries of genre and delighted in mixing and manipulating them. She believes these clerics formed a collaborative, rather than an authorial, compositional culture and a fairly circumscribed musical community. Bradley comments that ‘the spirit of compositional play, and a profound interest in quotation, are consonant with the beginnings of the motet as a vernacular genre that delights in the combination of apparently contradictory materials: the plainchant foundations that were also the basis of organa and clausulae and vernacular-texted upper voices and refrains characteristic of courtly song’ (p. 249).

In more ways than one, Bradley's book is revisionist; it changes the game for the history of thirteenth-century music. She presents many more intriguing observations and ideas than can be mentioned in a review. If I had one complaint, it would be that in her carefully worked out case studies and detailed analyses, she does not often deeply engage with the work of other contemporary scholars; they are cited, but sometimes only for the sake of correction. Ultimately, her revisionist conclusions will be more readily accepted through dialogues with the work of her peers, as we all search for consensus. The origins of the motet are among the things that virtually all musicologists must cover in teaching music history, and we all need to get it right. For this reason alone, when the history books are next rewitten, Catherine Bradley's book must figure in their story; it has much to tell us.Footnote ²