(fl late 14th century or early 15th). English composer. He composed the motet Sub Arturo plebs/Fons citharizancium/In omnem terram and perhaps four songs; for the composer of one or possibly two pieces in the Old Hall Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.57950) see Aleyn. The composer of the motet (ascribed ‘Jo.Alani’ and containing a reference to ‘J. Alani minimus’) is sometimes identified with the Dominus Johannes Aleyn who was chaplain in Edward III’s Chapel Royal and canon of St George's Chapel, Windsor, from 1362 until his death in 1373 (full documentation in Wathey, pp.167–8); ‘unus rotulus de cantu musicali’ was bequeathed by him to the chapel. Many other prebends and favours appear to indicate royal patronage, particularly from Queen Philippa.
The motetus text of Sub Arturo plebs refers to earlier theorists whose work had led Alanus to compose a piece of such novel complexity. But the work’s main historical fascination lies in its triplum text, which names 14 musicians, most of them first identified by Brian Trowell among the royal households. Trowell originally associated the motet with two events at St George’s Chapel, Windsor: the foundation of the Order of the Garter in 1349 or the 1358 celebrations of the victory at Poitiers (1356). Roger Bowers established, with further research and identifications, that the musicians named cannot all have been active at the same time and that the list must be to some extent retrospective. Ursula Günther pointed to the advanced musical style and suggested a date of 1367. Margaret Bent held that, but for the composer datings, the musical style would suggest composition after 1400. As an uneasy compromise she opted for the early 1370s (Bent, 1973, 1977; Bent and Howlett, 1990), a dating proposed on other grounds by Bowers and (independently) Wathey; but an even later date becomes possible once it is accepted that the composer may not have been the man who died in 1373 and that some of the musicians were already dead when the work was written.
The motet appears in F-CH 568, I-Bc Q15 and the English ‘Yoxford’ fragment; its tenor alone is cited in an Italian-language treatise (in I-Fl Redi 71; ed. in CSM, v, 1957, p.57). It is not transmitted in any source likely to date from much before 1400; and the musical style strongly indicates composition later than the 1370s. Bent (1973) drew attention to its ‘classical 15th-century structure, … three levels of diminution, and rhythmic overlapping between upper voices and tenor in the final section’. One could add that contrapuntal process, the manner in which the pan-isorhythm is treated and the pitch juxtaposition of the rhythmic repetition in the triplum all fall very much into line with the early 15th-century motet tradition. Sub Arturo plebs remains a key problem since a date in the 1370s would call for a heavy adjustment to received notions of mid-14th-century style or styles.
Four songs ascribed ‘Alanus’ in the lost Strasbourg manuscript (F-Sm 222, probably of Swiss origin) are inevitably hard to compare with the motet. The virelai S’en vous pour moy (also in F-Pn n.a.fr.6771, ed. in CMM, liii/1, 1970) and Min herze wil all zit (also with the contrafactum text O quam pulchra, ed. in Cw, xlv, 1937, pp.9–10) could just be aligned stylistically with the English song repertory of the years around 1400; but Min frow, min frow es tut mir we (ed. in Rosenberg) seems thoroughly German in style and its text fits the music well. Of the fourth song only an untexted incipit survives.
E. Coussemaker: Les harmonistes du XIVe siècle (Lille, 1869), 12
H. Rosenberg: Untersuchungen über die deutsche Liedweise im 15. Jahrhundert (Wolfenbüttel, 1931), appx, no.2
B. Trowell: ‘A Fourteenth-Century Ceremonial Motet and its Composer’, AcM, xxix (1957), 65–75
U. Günther: ‘Das Wort-Ton-Problem bei Motetten des späten 14. Jahrhunderts’, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler, ed. E. Klemm (Leipzig, 1961), 163–78
U. Günther, ed.: The Motets of the Manuscripts Chantilly … and Modena, CMM, xxxix (1965), 1ff [commentary], 49ff, [edn]
F. Ll. Harrison, ed.: Motets of French Provenance, PMFC, v (1968), 172ff [edn], 200, 206, 217, suppl. 20–21
M. Bent: ‘The Transmission of English Music 1300–1500: Some Aspects of Repertory and Presentation’, Studien zur Tradition in der Musik: Kurt von Fischer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H.H. Eggebrecht and M. Lütolf (Munich, 1973), 65–83, esp. 70ff
M. Bent, ed.: Two 14th-Century Motets in Praise of Music (Newton Abbot, 1977)
M. Bent and D. Howlett: ‘Subtiliter alternare: the Yoxford Motet O amicus/Precursoris’, CMc, nos.45–7 (1990), 43–83
R. Bowers: ‘Fixed Points in the Chronology of English Fourteenth-Century Polyphony’, ML, lxxi (1990), 313–35; see also ‘A Postscript’, ML, lxxx (1999), 269–70
A. Wathey: ‘The Peace of 1360–1369 and Anglo-French Musical Relations’, EMH, ix (1990), 129–74, esp. 150–53, 165–74
D. Fallows: A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999)
DAVID FALLOWS