(Lat.: ‘fixed melody’; Ger. fester Gesang; It. canto fermo).
A term, associated particularly with medieval and Renaissance music, that designates a pre-existing melody used as the basis of a new polyphonic composition. The melody may be taken from plainchant or monophonic secular music, or from one voice of a sacred or secular polyphonic work, or it may be freely invented. Cantus firmus composition is now understood to encompass a wide range of rhythmic and melodic treatments of an antecedent tune within a new polyphonic texture.
M. JENNIFER BLOXAM
Early theorists used the term ‘cantus firmus’, in both its Latin and its Italian forms, with a variety of related meanings. Frobenius identified three broad stages in its usage:
(1) From the 13th century to the 17th the term had three related meanings. The original one, used by theorists from Boncampagno da Signa (Rhetorica novissima, 1235) to Zarlino (Le istitutioni harmoniche, i, 1558) and Forkel (Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, ii, 1801), indicates cantus planus, or plainchant, as opposed to any type of measured music. The second identified a plainchant moving in long and equal note values on which a new composition is based, as opposed to canto figurato (where a line of measured music drawn from a polyphonic work serves as the basis of another); this second meaning was used by, for example, Vicentino (L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, 1555). In the third meaning, closest to the modern understanding of the term, a cantus firmus was simply a melody, usually a plainchant, used as the basis of new polyphony; the earliest such use of the term appears in the anonymous Discantus positio vulgaris transmitted by Hieronymus de Moravia (d after 1271).
(2) Beginning in the mid-16th century, the term ‘cantus firmus’ came to be synonymous with a ‘subject’ against which counterpoint was either improvised or written. This definition has its roots in earlier counterpoint treatises that identify the given melody as the tenor and the added voice usually as the discantus (Anonymus 4). During the 16th century the terminology varied; for example, Zarlino (Le istitutioni harmoniche, iii, 1558) used the term to designate a subject of plainchant in long notes of equal value (a soggetto de canto fermo), as opposed to a subject drawn from a polyphonic piece (a soggetto de canto figurato). By the early 18th century, however, counterpoint manuals (such as that by Fux, 1725) generally used the term to mean a given melody, whether chant or freely invented, to which counterpoint was added.
(3) Since the 18th century, music theorists and historians have used the term in its current general sense to denote any pre-existing melody used as the basis of a new polyphonic work.
The earliest music based on a cantus firmus is found within the earliest extant polyphony in the Western tradition. In the treatise Musica enchiriadis (c900), the oldest notated examples of organum have a plainchant as the principal part below which other parts sing in parallel perfect intervals in note-against-note style. Early practical sources show greater freedom in the relationship of the added voice to the pre-existing part: the Winchester Troper (GB-Ccc 473, first half of the 11th century), for example, preserves a body of two-part polyphony in note-against-note style in which the added voice forms intervals of a 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th and crosses above the chant.
Two important changes in the relationship between chant and added voice occurred around 1100. First, the chant began to appear in the lowest-sounding voice, serving as the true foundation of the new composition; this shift is first apparent in the treatise Ad organum faciendum (c1100). Second, the note-against-note style was largely superseded by a texture in which the added voice moved melismatically above the slower-moving individual notes of the chant, using the full range of intervals in a free mix of parallel and contrary motion; the best-known early examples of this are found in manuscripts from Aquitaine (F-Pn lat.3549) and Santiago de Compostela (‘Codex Calixtinus’, E-SC). The structural prominence thus given to the pre-existing melody remained a principal feature of cantus firmus technique for centuries.
Important developments occurred in the repertory of organa created by Leoninus and Perotinus at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, around 1200. Leoninus cast sections of organa in the so-called discant style, in which both the chant and the added voice are organized in a rhythmic mode. By imposing a regular, repeating rhythmic pattern on the original plainchant, composers at Notre Dame began a process of rhythmic manipulation of the cantus firmus that was to reach its apogee in the 15th century.
The first step towards polyphonic composition based on a plainchant cantus firmus that was independent of its liturgical context was taken with Perotinus's substitute clausulas for Leoninus's organa. These clausulas were newly composed segments of organa in discant style based on short sections of chant and designed to replace the corresponding sections in the earlier settings. Most significantly for the evolution of cantus firmus technique, the clausulas often treat the excerpts of chant on which they are based not as inviolable sacred melodies but as raw material to be manipulated. For example, the phrases of the chant might be repeated, and the melody subjected to augmentation, diminution or retrogression. A typical clausula tenor, showing repetition of the chant fragment in a different rhythmic disposition, is given in ex.1. The compositional experimentation seen in the clausula repertory thus anticipated many of the formal procedures explored on a larger scale in 15th-century masses and motets.
During the 13th century, chant-derived tenors in clausulas began to function as the structural foundation of new pieces independently of their original liturgical context. Text was added to the upper voices of clausulas, newly composed texted upper parts were provided for existing tenors, and by the late 13th century this new genre, the motet, was built over a cantus firmus chosen primarily for its compositional potential rather than for its liturgical context. As the modal system of rhythm gradually dissolved in the second half of the 13th century, secular cantus firmi, deriving from street cries, refrain songs or dance-tunes and retaining the original rhythms of their models, also appear as the basis of motets. Short sections of chant were to remain the most popular source of cantus firmi in the 14th century, but this must be attributed to the organizational clarity composers could achieve with such an economy of material rather than to any explicit or implicit association with the liturgy.
Examples of plainchants used as a cantus firmus that were cited by theorists up to and including Guido of Arezzo include the Te Deum, sequences, hymns and antiphons: that is, syllabic chants with short phrases suited to brief didactic examples. Practical sources of organum from this period show that a great variety of plainchants were selected for polyphonic elaboration, most of which celebrate the major liturgical feasts or local saints; settings of the Gradual, Alleluia and sequences for the Mass, Office responsories and Benedicamus Domino settings were particularly popular. Because polyphony was performed by solo voices during this period, only the soloistic sections of the responsorial chants were drawn on for cantus firmi. This practice led ultimately to the use of brief internal segments of chant melodies as cantus firmi in the medieval motet.
Although the fragments of chant on which early motets were based usually bore only one or two words of text, the topic of the chant or the feast to which it belonged often furnished the subject for the new text in the upper voices. These texts were often devised to rhyme or alliterate with the text of the tenor cantus firmus, and such textual interplay increased in sophistication during the 14th century.
Composers such as Vitry and Machaut inherited from the 13th-century organum and motet the device of the strictly regulated tenor cantus firmus taken from a segment of plainchant. With the rise during the 14th century of the motet as the most substantial genre, cantus firmus technique entered a new phase of complexity and subtlety. More frequent repetitions of plainchant segments were customary, and the relationship between the statements of the pitches of the chant fragment (the ‘color’) and the repetitions of the tenor's rhythmic pattern (the ‘talea’) became more intricate as, for example, color and talea were allowed to overlap, or the rhythmic pattern was subjected to proportional diminution. Both techniques occur in Machaut's J'ay tant mon cuer/Lasse! je sui en aventure/Ego moriar pro te. This large-scale articulation of repeated melodic and rhythmic patterns in a cantus firmus is known as Isorhythm, a term coined in 1910 by Friedrich Ludwig. The cantus firmus of an isorhythmic motet usually moves more slowly than the two or three upper voices, resulting in a texture that accentuates the tenor as the structural foundation.
Although isorhythmic treatment of cantus firmi prevailed in the 14th century, English composers experimented with different ways of arranging the pre-existing melody within its new polyphonic context. The English cultivation of the ‘migrant’ cantus firmus, in which phrases of the pre-existing tune wander from one voice to another in succession, was a particularly influential alternative to isorhythm, as was the use of a paraphrased plainchant melody in the highest-sounding voice; both techniques are found in late 14th- and early 15th-century English sources, notably in the Mass Ordinary settings in the Old Hall Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.57950).
In the 14th century liturgical polyphony continued the tradition of elaborating plainchant polyphonically for performance in its correct liturgical context. Hymns and antiphons in particular provided melodies for polyphonic elaboration, as either tenor or treble parts. There was an important change in the type of chant treated polyphonically in the mass as composers turned for cantus firmi to the frequently used plainchants for the Ordinary rather than to the Proper chants appropriate only to a single specific celebration. Following the direction taken in chant manuscripts of the period, which often group the chants of the Mass Ordinary into cycles according to their festal rank, composers of polyphony began to conceive of the Mass Ordinary as a musical unit. The first examples of the polyphonic Mass Ordinary cycle date from this time, the most notable being Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame. This work, like the other grouped settings of Mass Ordinary items from the 14th century, achieves unity primarily through the use of the liturgically appropriate plainchants as cantus firmi, rather than through the recurring appearance of a single pre-existing melody, as was to become the norm in the next century. By the end of the 14th century, the treatment of the cantus firmus in mass settings in France, England and Italy varied considerably.
In the 15th century there were important developments in cantus firmus techniques, in both their significance as an organizational concept and the variety of their implementation. Sparks, whose study of cantus-firmus procedures in the 15th century remains the most extensive and illuminating to date, identified two basic ways of treating a cantus firmus during this period: ‘cantus-firmus elaboration’, involving the treatment of the borrowed material as the melody of a polyphonic setting; and ‘structural cantus firmus’, involving the quotation of the pre-existing tune in the tenor as the formal determinant of a new composition.
In cantus firmus elaboration, a composer embellishes a plainchant melody by adding a rhythm to it and interpolating notes between the original ones; this paraphrased voice-part is typically the highest in a three- or four-voice texture. The technique was first cultivated by English composers such as Power and Dunstaple and appears both in mass movements and in Magnificat settings, antiphons and hymns. A great variety in the application of paraphrase technique, from almost literal quotation of the plainchant melody to decoration so lavish that the original is virtually obscured, can be found, even within the works of one composer. This can be seen from a comparison of the treatment of the chant in the opening superius phrases of Dunstaple's Marian hymn Ave maris stella and his Marian antiphon Regina celi laetare (ex.2).
Cantus firmus elaboration became the favoured way of casting a plainchant melody in continental settings of shorter liturgical texts as well as in individual and paired mass movements between about 1420 and 1450, as such works by Du Fay and Binchois show.
Whereas cantus firmus elaboration preserves the essential character of the borrowed material as a melody, normally using the entire chant with its text and closely observing the continuity and articulation of phrases, the technique of structural cantus firmus treats the borrowed material not as a melody but as a succession of pitches to be manipulated as the structural foundation of a new polyphonic edifice. Whether derived from plainchant or secular song, or newly invented, the structural cantus firmus usually appears in the tenor voice; typically, the note values of the original melody are elongated, phrase structures are disregarded or fractured by extended pauses, and the text of the original is omitted. The status of the borrowed tune as ‘raw material’ is most apparent in compositions employing some kind of schematic manipulation of the cantus firmus, such as complex repetition, augmentation, diminution, melodic inversion and retrograde motion. The structural cantus firmus of the 15th century has a much longer history than the elaborated cantus firmus, originating in the manipulation of fragments of plainchant in the substitute clausulas of the 13th century. But these two basic methods are by no means mutually exclusive: techniques of elaboration often infuse a structural cantus firmus, for example, and an elaborated cantus firmus may co-exist with a structural cantus firmus, as in the many Credo settings of the period that paraphrase the Credo chant while quoting another pre-existing melody as a structural tenor.
Cantus firmus, §4: 15th century
It is in the 15th-century cyclic mass that the most complex and ingenious treatments of cantus firmi are found. As with cantus firmus elaboration, English composers played an important role in the development of the mass cycle based on a structural cantus firmus. A significant initial step in this development was the occasional appearance of single mass movements based not on the liturgically correct plainchant from the Ordinary, but rather on Proper chants (or chant fragments) from the Mass or Office; one example is the isorhythmic Credo by W. Typp on the antiphon Benedicam te Domine in the Old Hall Manuscript. This prepared the way for the use of a single cantus firmus to create a primarily musical unity between movements of the Mass Ordinary, the liturgical link being provided by the festal association of the single cantus firmus chant from the Proper rather than by the use of the appropriate Mass Ordinary chants. The first composers to bind movements of the Mass Ordinary together through a single tenor cantus firmus were Power and Dunstaple. The two basic approaches to the treatment of the tenor cantus firmus that obtained throughout the century are apparent even at this early stage in the evolution of the cyclic mass. Power's Mass Alma Redemptoris mater and Dunstaple's fragmentary Mass Da gaudiorum premia both employ a rigid plan in which all movements of the cycle are governed by the same rhythmic and melodic formulation of the cantus firmus (an extension of the isorhythmic structure of the motet), while the Mass Rex seculorum, attributed to both Power and Dunstaple, allows the tenor cantus firmus a different rhythmic disposition and melodic ornamentation in each movement.
In these first English cyclic masses, which probably date from between about 1430 and about 1440, the cantus firmus is in the lowest voice of a three-voice texture. The earliest extant mass to use a four-voice texture with the tenor cantus firmus supported by a freely composed contratenor bassus appears to be the anonymous English Missa ‘Caput’, a strict cantus firmus mass once believed to be by Du Fay which dates from the 1440s. Continental composers in the second half of the century adopted this texture while greatly expanding both the types of cantus firmus and the variety of treatment. Du Fay played an important role in the development of the cantus firmus mass on the Continent, and his four tenor masses embody the main lines of future development in cantus firmus technique. His Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’ (1450s) may be the first mass cycle to use a secular cantus firmus (from the tenor of his own chanson) and shows, in its use of strict diminution in repeating cantus firmus statements, the clear influence of the isorhythmic motet. The isomorphic notation of the cantus firmus in this mass, whose rhythm changes according to written canons, has a counterpart in Missa ‘Spiritus almus’ by Du Fay's contemporary Petrus de Domarto, in which an isomorphically notated cantus firmus is transformed through changes of mensuration. A much freer approach is evident in Du Fay's Missa ‘L'homme armé’, where the cantus firmus, a monophonic secular song that attracted composers well into the 16th century, is treated to a wide array of manipulations, including literal repetition, melodic ornamentation, rhythmic augmentation, canon and migration. Du Fay's Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’/‘Beata es Maria’, which quotes two Marian antiphons with their Proper texts, is the first example of multiple cantus firmus composition and polytextuality, with their attendant exegetical and narrative possibilities, in the mass. In his last extant mass, Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’ (early 1470s), the extensive and varied paraphrase of the plainchant melody in the tenor achieves an effective integration of the cantus-firmus-bearing voice into the surrounding contrapuntal fabric (ex.3). Moreover, the anticipatory statements of cantus firmus material in other voices and the elements of parody (referring to his own setting of the antiphon Ave regina celorum) in this work were extensively explored by composers later in the century.
In the second half of the 15th century, the tenor of a polyphonic chanson supplied the cantus firmus of many cyclic masses. Jean de Ockeghem's four masses based on chanson tenors display his skilful handling of cantus firmus technique. In the Missa ‘Ma maitresse’ and Missa ‘Fors seulement’, for example, the borrowed material not only migrates between voices but also is derived from different voices of the chanson models; the simultaneous quotation of two voices of the model often blurs the distinction between cantus firmus and parody. Cantus firmus material sometimes permeates the musical fabric, foreshadowing the motivic integration that characterizes the generation of Josquin. Only one surviving mass by Ockeghem, the Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’, uses a plainchant cantus firmus in a structural role, but the chant melody is heavily paraphrased, and certain phrases are moved or even omitted. Only in the Missa ‘Caput’, whose structure owes something to the anonymous English mass of that name, does Ockeghem present a cantus firmus according to a rigid rhythmic plan.
Ockeghem's predilection for the free approach to cantus firmus treatment contrasts with the strict procedures preferred by Busnoys, whose Missa ‘O crux lignum’ and Missa ‘L'homme armé’ continue to explore the technique of the notationally fixed cantus firmus transformed through mensural or proportional change that was first seen in Du Fay's Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’ and Domarto's Missa ‘Spiritus almus’.
The wide choice of cantus firmus material available to late 15th-century composers is evident in the substantial production of cantus firmus masses by Obrecht and Josquin. These composers, typical of their generation, clearly inclined towards cantus firmi taken from polyphonic chansons or popular songs; both, for example, based masses on the tenors of chansons (Fortuna desperata and Malheur me bat), and, on occasion, on dance-tunes (e.g. Josquin's Missa ‘L'ami Baudichon’ and Obrecht's Missa ‘Pfauenschwanz’). Freely invented cantus firmi were used for the first time in this period, the most famous example being Josquin's Missa ‘Hercules dux Ferrariae’, whose cantus firmus is derived from a solmization of its title. Obrecht and others combined two or more cantus firmi in one mass (a technique first explored by Du Fay), weaving together medleys of popular songs (Missa ‘Schoen lief’), chanson tenors (Missa diversorum tenorum) and plainchants (Missa ‘Sub tuum praesidium’, Missa ‘Martinus adhuc catechuminus’). The quotation of a single chant melody as a cantus firmus also persisted: Josquin based two masses on Marian plainchants (Missa ‘Ave maris stella’ and Missa ‘Gaudeamus’), while five of Obrecht's masses rely on a single chant.
Obrecht expanded the constructivist aspects of cantus firmus technique explored by Busnoys, particularly those involving segmented quotation, in which the cantus firmus was broken into small units, one of which then served, in various guises, as the basis of entire movements or large sections of movements (e.g. Missa ‘Maria zart’). Obrecht's cantus firmus manipulation was intimately connected with the notational appearance of the cantus firmus: in the ‘Pleni sunt coeli’ of the Missa ‘Forsseulement’, for example, he quoted the superius of the chanson with all rests omitted, and in the Credo of the Missa ‘De tous biens pleine’ he arranged the notes of the cantus firmus in order of temporal value, first stating all longs from the original, then all breves, and so on.
If Josquin's masses represent a peak of cantus firmus technique, they also signal the decline of cantus firmus as the principal organizing element of polyphonic composition. The variety and inventiveness of Josquin's cantus firmus treatment is astonishing: in his Missa ‘Faisant regretz’, for example, a migrating ostinato cantus firmus is constructed from a four-note phrase taken from a rondeau by Walter Frye; in his Missa ‘L'homme armé’ super voces musicales the cantus firmus melody appears on every note of the natural hexachord in succession; and in his Missa di dadi the tenor, drawn from a chanson by Robert Morton, undergoes a series of augmentations, the proportions of which are indicated by dice faces. But the primacy of the cantus firmus was gradually undermined by the increasing use of two techniques that were to have a profound effect on 16th-century composition: borrowing more and more material from more than one voice of the antecedent, effectively merging cantus firmus and incipient parody procedures (e.g. Missa ‘Malheur me bat’); and unifying the entire musical fabric by allowing motifs from the cantus firmus to permeate all voices, as in the opening of Missa ‘Pange lingua’ (ex.4).
Although the cyclic mass established itself early on as the centrepiece of 15th-century sacred music, masses and individual mass sections based on the appropriate liturgical chant from the Mass Ordinary (and also from the Proper, in the case of plenary masses) appeared throughout the century. An important group of such masses, several probably by Du Fay, is found in the manuscript I-TRmf 88, and Josquin contributed to a thriving tradition of Marian masses based on chants of the Ordinary with his Missa de Beata Virgine. Unlike the cyclic mass, whose cantus firmus generally functions in a structural capacity, mass settings based primarily on the liturgically appropriate plainchant favour cantus firmus elaboration, usually paraphrasing the chant in the highest voice.
Cantus firmus, §4: 15th century
Cantus firmus elaboration continued throughout the 15th century as the preferred means of incorporating plainchant melody into smaller liturgical and devotional works such as hymns, Magnificat settings and Marian antiphons. This general method of treating chant ranged from simple improvised or composed harmonizations based on pitting parallel movement in the accompanying voices against the plainchant (as in the English technique of faburden and the related continental fauxbourdon) to highly embellished settings indebted to the treble-dominated style of the chanson. In contrast, the structural cantus firmus was typically reserved for ceremonial and festal occasions; isorhythmic treatments held sway until the mid-15th century (e.g. Du Fay's Nuper rosarum flores, intended for the dedication of Florence Cathedral in 1436), while in the second half of the century the so-called ‘tenor motet’, an often polytextual four-, five- or six-voice piece based on one or more usually slow-moving tenor cantus firmi, evolved as a distinct type (e.g. Regis's O admirabile commercium, Josquin's Huc me sydereo). Plainchant remained the preferred source of cantus firmi for the motet in the later 15th century, though chanson tenors provided cantus firmi for a distinct subgroup of Marian motets (e.g. Josquin's Stabat mater/Comme femme desconfortée). Ambitious constructivist tendencies are less frequently encountered in the motet than in the mass, though contrived cantus firmi and rigid schematic designs (both in Busnoys' In hydraulis), as well as canonic cantus firmi (e.g. Josquin's Veni Sancte Spiritus) are also found.
Cantus firmus, §4: 15th century
Although the French chanson in the 15th century was generally a freely composed, treble-dominated composition, two categories of chanson involved the use of a cantus firmus. Monophonic popular songs or the tenors of well-known chansons were often given new polyphonic guises, as the many settings of the Flemish song In myne zynn and of the tenor of Ockeghem's Fors seulement L’attente attest. Popular tunes, as well as individual lines from pre-existing chansons, were also woven together in the so-called combinative chansons concentrated in the Dijon and Escorial chansonniers (F-Dm 517, E-E IV.a.24), in which two or more separate cantus firmi, with their original texts, are symbolically juxtaposed.
A vigorous tradition of cantus firmus setting in German song began with the rise of the Tenorlied. In the 15th century the pre-existing melody of the Tenorlied generally served as the highest voice of a three-voice texture, as seen in sources such as the Glogauer and Lochamer Liederbücher (D-Bsb Mus.MS.40098 and 40613), while in the 16th century a four-voice texture with the cantus firmus assigned to the tenor became the norm. Cantus firmus also played a role in the instrumental music of this period, for example in basses danses and in the many untexted (presumably instrumental) settings of the popular tune T'Andernaken.
With the gradual shift to a pervasively imitative musical syntax and the related conversion to so-called parody procedure in the construction of the polyphonic mass, the structural cantus firmus declined in importance. Its use was reserved for works of a particular type. The ceremonial tenor motet continued to flourish well past mid-century (e.g. Da pacem Domine by Lassus). Traditions of composition based on a specific cantus firmus or type of cantus firmus begun in the 15th century continued, for example, with the production of masses on the L'homme armé tune (e.g. two each by Morales and Palestrina), masses based on solmization syllables (e.g. Missa ‘Ut re mi fa sol la’ by Morales and Palestrina), and a complex of chansons incorporating the tenor of Ockeghem's Fors seulement. An English tradition of masses composed on a Square (a cantus firmus derived from the bottom part of a pre-existing sacred composition) also continued from the previous century. Strict cantus firmus masses intended to honour an individual or occasion still appeared (e.g. Palestrina's Missa Ecce sacerdos magnus, for Pope Julius III). Elaborated plainchant continued to provide the material for much sacred music, but rather than confining the paraphrased chant to the melody or locating it intact in the tenor part, as was customary in the 15th century, composers now imbued the entire contrapuntal fabric with material derived from the pre-existing melody; this procedure, already well honed by Josquin, dominated Palestrina's hymn settings, for example, as well as 35 of his 104 masses.
Instrumental music in the 16th century drew on both plainchant and popular song for cantus firmi; a noteworthy example is the English tradition of In Nomine settings, which use a segment of the plainchant cantus firmus from Taverner's Mass ‘Gloria tibi Trinitas’.
While the compositional manipulation of a cantus firmus has been the main focus of modern research on this subject, recent scholarship has paid increasing attention to what a cantus firmus can reveal about the liturgical, devotional and symbolic content of a work. Analyses of Machaut's motets have reached beyond the structural device of isorhythm to illuminate the central role of the cantus firmus in the creation of textually allusive and numerically symbolic relationships between the tenor and the added parts. 15th-century sacred music has been specially conducive to the exploration of symbolism in relation to cantus firmi: for example, connections have been proposed between biblical, architectural and Marian symbolism and isorhythmic structures in Du Fay's motet Nuper rosarum flores, between dice-game allegories and the choice and treatment of cantus firmus in Josquin's Missa di dadi, and between symbolically invested numbers and virtually every detail of the cantus firmus structure of Obrecht's Missa ‘Maria zart’. Other scholars have used plainchant cantus firmi to link particular repertories or specific pieces to certain places or institutions, with important ramifications for context and chronology. Thus the Magnus liber organi has been proved on the basis of its cantus firmi to have been created specifically for the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris; the dependence of Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame on the traditions of liturgy and chant at Reims Cathedral has been demonstrated, as has Obrecht's use of local Flemish traditions of plainchant in his masses and motets; and regional profiles in the monophonic hymn repertory have been traced in 15th-century polyphonic Office hymns.
By the end of the 16th century the heyday of cantus firmus composition had passed. From Monteverdi's bow to the cantus firmus tradition in the Vespers of 1610, to Berlioz's quotation of the ‘Dies irae’ in the Symphonie fantastique and to Messiaen's frequent use of plainchant melodies, the use of a cantus firmus after about 1600 usually assumes an archaic symbolism. One notable exception is the music of Charles Ives, which is pervaded by pre-existing folk, popular and religious melodies. Only in the vigorous tradition of vocal and instrumental elaborations of Protestant chorale tunes, stretching from the 16th century to the 20th and encompassing the chorale concertos of Praetorius, the cantatas of J.S. Bach and the oratorios of Mendelssohn, has cantus firmus composition enjoyed a continuous development beyond the Renaissance. In the 20th century, composition based on a cantus firmus came to serve a primarily pedagogical purpose, as students learnt to write counterpoint in the didactic tradition established in the 18th century by Fux.
BlumeEK
Grove6 (L. Lockwood)
MGG1 (H. Husmann)
ReeseMR
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W. Kirsch: ‘Zum Verhältnis von Motettenstil und liturgisch-musikalischer Praxis im 16. Jahrhundert’, GfMKB: Leipzig 1966, 196–201
M. Maniates: ‘Combinative Chansons in the Dijon Chansonnier’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 228–81
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M.J. Bloxam: ‘In Praise of Spurious Saints: the Missae Floruit egregiis by Pipelare and La Rue’, JAMS, xliv (1991), 163–220
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P. le Huray: ‘Some Thoughts about Cantus Firmus Composition, and a Plea for Byrd's Christus resurgens’, Byrd Studies, ed. A. Brown and R. Turbet (Cambridge, 1992), 1–23
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M.J. Bloxam: ‘Plainsong and Polyphony for the Blessed Virgin: Notes on Two Masses by Jacob Obrecht’, JM, xii (1994), 51–75
J.W. Bonda: ‘Tandernaken, between Bruges and Ferrara’, From Ciconia to Sweelinck: donum natalicium Willem Elders, ed. A. Clement and E. Jas (Amsterdam, 1994), 49–74
M. Everist: French Motets in the Thirteenth Century: Music, Poetry and Genre (Cambridge, 1994)
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P. Macey: ‘Some Thoughts on Josquin's Illibata dei virgo nutrix and Galeazzo Maria Sforza’, From Ciconia to Sweelinck: donum natalicium Willem Elders, ed. A. Clement and E. Jas (Amsterdam, 1994), 111–24
A.B. Scott: ‘Medieval and Renaissance Techniques in the Music of Charles Ives: Horatio at the Bridge?’, MQ, lxxviii (1994), 448–78
C. Wright: ‘Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores, King Solomon's Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin’, JAMS, xlvii (1994), 395–441
J.P. Burkholder: All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven, CT, 1995)
A.V. Clark: Concordare cum materia: the Tenor in the Fourteenth-Century Motet (diss., Princeton U., 1996)