(Lat.: ‘more subtle art’) The highly refined musical style of the late 14th century, centred primarily on the secular courts of southern France, Aragon and Cyprus. The term was introduced to musicological vocabulary by Ursula Günther and derives from references in (?)Philippus de Caserta's Tractatus de diversis figuris to composers moving away from the style of the Ars Nova motets ‘post modum subtiliorem comparantes’ and developing an ‘artem magis subtiliter’ as exemplified in the motet Apta caro (CoussemakerS, iii, 118); similarly Egidius de Murino referred to composition ‘per viam subtilitatis’ in his Tractatus cantus mensurabilis (CoussemakerS, iii, 127). The development of the idiom (chiefly encountered in grandes ballades) may be traced in successive, roughly chronological stages. Of these, the post-Machaut generation – De Landes, Franciscus, Grimace, Pierre de Molins, Solage, Susay (A l'arbre sec) and Vaillant – was largely engaged in developing the classical ballade style of Machaut.
There is a more florid extension in the works of Matheus de Sancto Johanne, Goscalch, Hasprois and Olivier. Aside from the growing contrapuntal independence of the contratenor, their works are notable for an admirable tonal and motivic cohesion. That Hasprois' Ma doulce amour is found in GB-Ob Can.misc.213 (after 1428) illustrates the underlying link between the early Ars Subtilior and the subsequent 15th-century chanson. The final disruption of the traditional Machaut style occurs in the compositions of Cuvelier, Egidius, Johannes de Alte Curie, Philippus de Caserta and Trebor. Their music is permeated with lavish minim displacements and italianate sequential patterns. Yet more advanced was a final group of composers (Jaquemin de Senleches, Rodericus and Zacharia), who used elaborate rhythmic subdivisions, displacements (using split colorations), proportional, motet-like devices and multiple tonal layers. On occasion, even the less radical composers (such as Solage and Galiot in S'aincy estoit and Le sault perilleux) adopted this style, which ultimately spread to the French cultural outpost of Cyprus (anonymous ballade Sur toute fleur, c1410).
U. Günther: ‘Die Anwendung der Diminution in der Handschrift Chantilly 1047’, AMw, xvii (1960), 1–21
U. Günther: ‘Der Gebrauch des tempus perfectum diminutum in der Handschrift Chantilly 1047’, AMw, xvii (1960), 277–97
J. Hirshberg: The Music of the Late Fourteenth Century: a Study in Musical Style (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1971)
G. Greene, ed.: French Secular Music, PMFC, xviii–xx (Monaco, 1981–2)
N. Josephson: ‘Intersectional Relationships in the French grande ballade’, MD, xl (1986), 79–97
NORS S. JOSEPHSON