(d 1286). ?French poet and priest. He was a canon and priest of the collegiate church of St Pierre in Lille, near Arras. About 1280, he wrote a metrical and rhymed paraphrase of the famous poem, Anticlaudianus, by the 12th-century theologian, philosopher and poet Alain de Lille. Its plot concerns Nature’s formation of a perfect man to be imbued with the Arts and Virtues, and an ascent to heaven, on which journey the music of the spheres is heard, to request a soul from God. Adam named his new work Ludus super Anticlaudianum. It survives today in one manuscript (F-Lm 316), thought to be partly autograph. Adam’s work retains the plot, the moral and the didactic character of the original, but the forbidding allegory and encyclopedic tone is modified in favour of a simpler style and language so that the work, although in Latin, is almost like a roman. Emphasizing a more entertaining but still serious purpose, Adam inserted within the work 38 musical pieces with sacred or semi-sacred texts; 36 are monophonic songs and the remaining two are polyphonic compositions. 20 of these are contrafacta modelled on earlier compositions whose titles are in most cases mentioned in the rubrics. They consist of hymns, sequences, a responsory, an alleluia, a processional antiphon, trouvère songs, dances (a lai-notula and a rondeau), a pastourelle and a polyphonic motet. Of the other 18 pieces, one is a two-part Agnus Dei in conductus style. Altogether, the pieces in the Ludus form a kind of anthology in which almost every contemporary sacred and secular style is represented.
The insertions are not made arbitrarily but mostly fall into two large sections where the choice of form or style seems to emphasize the action of the poem. In the first section, whose poetry consists of supplications to and praises of the saints, Christ and the Virgin, Adam used contrafacta of secular songs, of hymns and of some unspecified items which have the character of antiphons. Here there is a resemblance to a canonical Office. Later, the newly-formed man, whose creation is the subject of the poem, is endowed with gifts by the Arts and Virtues and finally receives the soul brought from heaven to make him perfect. The series of offerings followed by the descent of the Spirit is symbolized in music by the choice of certain items from the Mass, namely the responsory (analogous to the gradual), alleluia, sequence and finally the motet, which is based on a plainchant for Pentecost. The musical insertions thus have an unusually clear and demonstrable symbolic meaning.
The sources of the contrafacta are either popular and widely distributed compositions of the century, such as songs by Thibaut IV of Navarre and Henri III of Brabant and ecclesiastical tunes such as the sequence Letabundus, or are of local importance, like the chants to St Peter and St Elizabeth. Two contrafacta should be singled out: the motet O quam sollempnis/Tenor Amor, based on Et quant iou remir son cors/Tenor Amor, is known in a large number of manuscripts including I-Fn 29.1 (F); the notula is one of the few examples of this form, which Johannes de Grocheio mentioned in De musica (c1300). The notation of the Ludus is that of contemporary plainchant or of the secular chansonniers.
Adam de la Bassée possibly influenced Adam de la Halle, who worked in Arras up to 1283 and wrote his Jeu de Robin et Marion after this date, thus after the Ludus. The slight clues suggesting such influence have not yet been investigated. The effect of Adam on the authors of romans, many of whom lived in the area of Lille and Arras, is, however, more probable. The Ludus, as a comprehensive musical anthology, may have been a direct predecessor of the Roman de Fauvel (1316), a similar anthology with other shared characteristics.
G.M. Dreves and C. Blume, eds.: Analecta hymnica medii aevi, xlviii (Leipzig, 1905/R), 298–316 [texts of musical items only]
P. Bayart, ed.: Ludus super Anticlaudianum (Tourcoing, 1930) [complete edn of text; includes facsimiles and old-fashioned transcriptions of the musical folios]
Andrew Hughes: ‘The Ludus super Anticlaudianum of Adam de la Bassée’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 1–25
ANDREW HUGHES