(Lat., from conducere: ‘to escort’, ‘to guide’; pl. conductus, conducti).
A medieval song with a serious, usually sacred, text in Latin verse. The genre seems to have originated in the south of France near the end of the 12th century. Taken up by the Parisian composers of Notre Dame, it flourished with great brilliance from about 1160 to about 1240. It was superseded in the second half of the 13th century by the motet. A handful of new conductus from the 14th century are peripheral, chiefly German in origin.
1. Aquitaine and related areas.
3. Rhythmic interpretation in the Parisian conductus.
5. Spain, Germany, England, Italy.
JANET KNAPP
The word ‘conductus’ first appears in mid-12th-century sources. It is found in E-Mn 289 (c1140) above nine songs, several of which are introductions to lessons. Resonet intonet, for example, concludes with an exhortation to the congregation to prepare itself for the reading of the scriptures:
Munda
sit, pura sit hec ergo concio,
Audiat, sentiat quid dicat lectio.
The presumption is that such a piece was sung as the lectionary was carried to the place appointed for the reading.
Each of four songs in the manuscript in E-SC, allegedly compiled by Calixtus between 1123 and 1152, is presented under the rubric conductum, a word otherwise used in the period for ‘safe conduct’. Three are followed by an injunction to the lector to commence the reading; the fourth, Salve festa dies, was undoubtedly used for the same type of procession as the ancient hymn that is its model. One of the songs, Sancte Iacobe, is supplied with an alternative ending that transforms it into a Benedicamus Domino introduction. Copied in very small letters beneath the closing line of the poem are the words ‘Quapropter regi regum benedicamus Domino’. This sort of adjustment is not unusual, as processional introductions, conductus and Benedicamus trope are, in fact, readily interchangeable.
The Tegernsee Antichrist Play (c1160) makes mention of a conductus, Alto consilio, to be sung while Ecclesia, attended by Iustitia, Misericordia and others, moves towards her throne.
Songs called conductus had an important place in Circumcision Offices that were compiled early in the 13th century for the northern French cities of Laon (F-LA 263), Sens (SEm 46) and Beauvais (GB-Lbl Eg.2615), as well as for the Office, known from a 16th-century manuscript, for the town of Le Puy in the south. These pieces relate to a variety of ritual activities: a conductus ‘ad tabulam’ for the beginning of first Vespers in Sens, for example, was designed to precede the reading of the tablet (a list of duties for the week's services, naming the persons to whom they were assigned). The song is the famous ‘prose’ of the ass, Orientis partibus, which repeats after each of its seven strophes the French refrain ‘Hez, sir asne, hez!’. Conductus are associated, in one or more of the Offices, with the readings for Matins and the Mass, the medieval drama, the dismissal following second Vespers, and with the festive meal at the close of the day. The Play of Daniel, written by the students of Beauvais and recorded in Lbl Eg.2615 with the Circumcision Office, uses conductus to accompany the entrances and exits of the dramatis personae. (See Medieval drama.)
Designated conductus by reason of their particular function, the foregoing pieces belong to a larger repertory of freely composed Latin song. The core of this repertory, Aquitanian in origin, is preserved in a series of four manuscripts, three of which came into the possession of the abbey of St Martial in Limoges soon after the beginning of the 13th century. (The idea, once current, that St Martial was the leader in the musical-poetic movement represented by these manuscripts has since lost ground.) The earliest layer of F-Pn lat.1139 (A), dating from the end of the 11th century, contains over 50 verse songs. Some of these are independent, their function betrayed neither by content nor by rubric; 16, including an Alto consilio, are called versus. The contents of F-Pn lat.3549 and 3719 (manuscripts that together span the greater part of the 12th century) and GB-Lbl Add.36881 (from just beyond the turn of the century into the 13th) bring the total of Aquitanian verse compositions to well over 100.
Historical aspects of the relationship between Aquitaine and the places named above are not clear: the existence of an independent Sicilian school and its possible connection with that of Aquitaine can only be speculative; likewise the probability that these smaller centres were offshoots from the flourishing, long-lived Aquitanian line. However, taking into account not only broad similarities of style, but also a significant number of concordances, one may speak with certainty of a single artistic movement, a single, all-encompassing repertory.
Like the tropes and proses of an earlier era, the songs that make up this repertory celebrate the great festivals of the Church year. The overwhelming majority are dedicated to the Nativity and the feasts within the Octave: St Stephen, St John and Holy Innocents. Those honouring Mary are next in importance, followed by a few for St John the Baptist, St Nicholas, Mary Magdalene and, in E-SC, St James. Jerusalem mirabilis (A, f.50), which urges participation in a crusade to recover the holy city, is one of the rare topical pieces in the repertory.
The music tends to reinforce the characteristically strophic structure of the poetry, although as many as a quarter of the Aquitanian songs are through-composed. The declamation of the accentual verses – some of which are entirely regular, while others show stability of rhythmic pattern only at the cadence – may be either syllabic or melismatic. Syllabic is to be understood strictly, i.e. as a single note to a syllable, and in the broader sense of a delivery which, though ornamented, permits the ear to grasp the poetic organization. Resonet intonet (ex.1) is essentially syllabic, its embellishments so placed as to emphasize the ordering of the line into four groups of three syllables. The second strophe of Letabundi iubilemus (ex.2) illustrates a fundamentally different relationship between music and text. (The transcriptions are not meant to suggest that all notes were of the same duration, but, because we do not know what the rhythmic practice was, singing the notes evenly is feasible.)
One of the distinguishing features of the Aquitanian school proper is its early, continuing interest in polyphony. Scholars have identified eight compositions for two voices in the hand of the original scribe of A, and three others in a later hand. The latter show a steady increase in the amount of part-writing, most of it associated with verse songs. The successively composed voices of the polyphony relate to each other in one of two ways: they may move simultaneously (i.e. note against note), a relationship equally appropriate to syllabic and to melismatic delivery of a text; on the other hand, the notes of the first voice, each linked with a single syllable, may be overlaid with figures of two, three, four or occasionally, for reasons of emphasis or formal definition, as many as a dozen or more notes in the second voice. Excerpts from a polyphonic song surviving in all but the oldest of the Aquitanian sources show both types of contrapuntal structure (exx.3a and 3b). The similarity of range and the predominantly contrary motion of the two voices are standard features; so also are the liberal use of dissonance in the texted opening of the piece, and the restriction to consonant intervals, perfect and imperfect, in the note-against-note passage.
The Parisian school of song composition shows few if any signs of direct contact with that of Aquitaine. Limited concordances between the Notre Dame sources and those from Sens and Beauvais further suggest that Paris had no strong musical ties with these, its close neighbours. It was, rather, at the centre of a movement that attracted English participation and thats seems to have had some influence in an easterly direction.
The name ‘conductus’ appears not in the Parisian musical sources but in the theoretical literature. The anonymous author of the Discantus positio vulgaris (c1240), the earliest of the relevant treatises, defined the conductus as a (polyphonic) setting of a poetic text (CoussemakerS, i, 96). What was originally used to refer to function has become a generic or categorical designation. Subsequent theorists took this use of the term for granted. They amplified the definition, noting that the first voice, now called tenor, was newly composed and that the single text was simultaneously declaimed in all voices.
An English theorist, known after Coussemaker as Anonymus 4, analysed the Notre Dame repertory in terms of books devoted to particular species of composition. In an essay on measured rhythm (c1275) he listed, among others, a book of three-voice conductus with caudas (i.e. melismas), one of two-voice conductus with caudas, and a third of two-, three- and four-voice pieces without caudas. He made no secret of his preference for the melismatic pieces, several of which he singled out for comment. Thus we learn, for example, that Salvatoris hodie (earlier identified as the work of Perotinus) and Relegentur ab area have organum-like cadencing figures at the ends of verses, and Hac in die Rege nato is a centonization of conductus titles. He dismissed the simple pieces with the remark that they were much used by lesser singers. Anonymous IV’s primary concern was with polyphony, but he did point out that monophonic categories, including the conductus, have their own books (ed. F. Reckow, 1967, p.82).
The central source for the Notre Dame conductus is a manuscript of the mid-13th century, I-Fl Plut.29.1. More than 250 compositions are arranged in fascicles which correspond loosely to the books of Anonymous IV. Fascicles six and seven contain, respectively, 55 conductus for three voices and 129 for two. Within the fascicles, melismatic and syllabic pieces are on the whole arranged together. The tenth fascicle preserves about 80 monophonic conductus; three pieces for four voices follow the four-voice organa at the beginning of the manuscript. The repertory in I-Fl is virtually all-inclusive. Sources next in importance, D-W 677, of English provenance, and E-Mn 20486, contain but a handful of pieces not present in the larger manuscript.
The subject matter of the Notre Dame conductus is varied. Songs dedicated to feasts of the Lord, particularly the Nativity, have preference, as in the older repertory. Among the saints, however, it is not only the companions of Christ who are honoured, but also more modern witnesses to the faith: Martin, Germanus of Paris, William of Bourges and Thomas à Becket. There are laments, after the manner of the ancient planctus, on the deaths of temporal and ecclesiastical princes, and more joyful songs associated, also by tradition, with coronations, elevations and homecomings. Outraged protests against corruption in the clergy have a significant place in the repertory; pious in intent, they can hardly be considered sacred. Certainly, love songs and a scattering of witty, thinly disguised requests for money are at odds with the serious tone of the poetry as a whole. A few of the texts are attributed in other sources to Walter of Châtillon, Philip the Chancellor and John of Howden. The majority, however, remain anonymous.
Music theorists of the 13th century were consistent in describing the conductus as a species of discant or precisely measured polyphony. They included it with the organum, the motet and the hocket among the genres governed by the rhythmic modes. The notation of the melismas is such that in most instances a reading in one or the other of these modes is easily deduced. As in all Notre Dame polyphony, the 1st mode is by far the most popular; it is followed at some distance by the 3rd, then by the 5th, 6th and 2nd. The interpretation of texted material is more difficult; figures which seem to suggest no mode at all must be recast in the mind (‘in intellectu’) into patterns with rhythmic significance. The theorists sketched out a few guidelines for this procedure, and some help is to be gained from a handful of pieces that survive in both texted and melismatic form. Combining the information from the theoretical and musical examples with a careful analysis of poetic rhythm, scholars have been able to solve at least some of the problems related to the proper delivery of the text.
Trochaic verses, which dominate the repertory, are frequently declaimed in the 1st mode, the alternating accents of the poetry coinciding with the longs of the musical phrase. Quite as often, especially in settings with caudas, the syllables move in the more deliberate pace of the 5th mode. In such cases it is necessary to distinguish between the declamatory rhythm and the overall musical rhythm. The latter may be that of any mode (including the 5th); more often than not it is orientated towards the 1st.
Among non-trochaic verses, the one most widely used is the octosyllabic line with an antepenultimate stress. This could signify a series of iambs that might, in theory, be translated into the breves and longs of the 2nd mode. However, while the cadence is iambic, the first half of the line is variable; some of the time it is regular, much of the time it is not. Once again the 1st mode seems to be indicated. A ternary long substituted for one long–breve pair effects the alignment of stressed syllables with the longs of the mode (see exx.4a and 4b). These patterns are also subject to augmentation.
The most troublesome of the verses set by the Notre Dame composers is one of six syllables with an antepenultimate stress. The position of this primary accent suggests dactylic rhythm, and, indeed, the largely syllabic settings show a regular division of the line into two groups of three syllables. Some are of the view that the 4th mode is intended ( ex.5). There are two difficulties with this interpretation. The first, a purely musical one, is that all the phrases are imperfect or incomplete; a proper 4th-mode phrase ends not with a ternary long but with a pair of unequal breves followed by a ternary rest. The second arises out of the irregularity of the poetic rhythm; the accentual patterns of the couplets cited are not the same. If these and others like them are read in the 4th mode, the relationship of poetic and musical values is in a constant state of flux; the stressed syllable in the first half of the line falls now at the beginning of the foot, now in the middle, sometimes with a breve of one beat, sometimes with one of two beats. Conflicts of this kind, common enough in the motet, are seldom encountered in the conductus.
A stronger case can be made for the 5th mode (ex.6). A progress in ternary longs neutralizes the poetic stresses and provides for phrases that are complete. Most of the songs built of these six-syllable lines belong to the earliest extant layer of Notre Dame composition. The date of origin tends to corroborate the use of the 5th mode, one of the first to take shape. (See also Rhythmic modes.)
The conductus is distinguished from the other categories of Notre Dame polyphony by its original tenor. The exceptions to this rule are a few syllabic songs based not on plainchant but on vernacular tunes. When, as occasionally happened, a composer set a liturgical text in the manner of a conductus, he put aside the traditional melody. The stereotyped patterns imposed by usage on the chant differ from those of accepted conductus models, which call for a rhythmically flexible tenor, closely orientated towards the other voices. The orientation, which is not only rhythmic but melodic, is sometimes complete, as when the voices exchange identical material a phrase at a time. The harmonic relationship of the voices is, broadly speaking, consonant. Perfect intervals occur at those points that define the structure of the composition; dissonances are freely interspersed. Major and minor 3rds, the secondary consonances associated by the author of the Discantus positio vulgaris with the conductus (CoussemakerS, i, 96), are most prominent in compositions of English origin.
Anonymous IV’s opinion as to the relative merits of melismatic and syllabic composition seems to have been representative. Less than a third of the repertory is made up of pieces without caudas; of these, the majority are for three voices. The simplicity of the declamatory style is matched by the clarity of formal design. The strophic melodies, with their balanced, sharply outlined phrases, show a great deal of text-related repetition. Normally found at the beginning, this may, in stanzas of the lai or sequence family, be continuous. The added voices (duplum, triplum, quadruplum) cadence with the melody, so emphasizing its structural divisions.
In contrast to the syllabic songs, those with caudas are almost invariably through-composed. Within strophes, successive lines of text are sung to different melodies; linked by common melodic and rhythmic figures, however, the musical phrases, though seldom twice alike, are stylistically consistent. Repetition has a large place in the elaborate compositions, but it is most often associated with the melismas. There are occasional correspondences between texted and melismatic passages and a few repetitions from one melisma to another. More important than these, however, are the repetitions that govern the internal structure of the melismas. The conclusion to the second strophe of Seminavit Grecia (ex.7) is typical. Two phrases, of proportionately different lengths, are each subject to immediate restatement, one with voice-exchange, the other with a partially new counterpoint in the duplum. (The figure in bars 158–9 is what Anonymous IV meant by an organum-like cadence.) Equally characteristic is a passage from the end of Rex eterne glorie (ex.8): here there are no clear breaks in the texture, and the repetition – varied, sequential and quasi-canonic – is continuous.
Melismas, by definition ornamental, may be enriched and enlivened by a variety of devices. From time to time a short passage in organum purum is introduced for purposes of climax. An anonymous theorist, thought by some to have been associated with St Martial, described this practice (ed. in AnnM, v, 1957, p.33). He warned against using it too extensively lest the basic note-against-note texture be destroyed. Brief hockets and rhythmic diminutions (Johannes de Garlandia’s ‘colores’) heighten intensity, as do fragmentary changes of mode (if we read the notation correctly).
The conductus is a vocal composition; there is nothing to substantiate the theory sometimes put forward that the melismas were, of necessity, performed on instruments. Singers accustomed to the soloistic chants of Mass and Office would have found no difficulty with the wordless melodies. It does seem likely, however, that the medieval fondness for mixed timbres was expressed, under certain circumstances, in an instrumental doubling of the voices.
The monophonic conductus from Notre Dame are highly problematical. The notation is even more ambiguous than that of the polyphonic pieces, and the failure of the theorists to include them in the discussions on rhythm raises serious doubts as to whether they were modally conceived. Some of the songs appear without their texts in the context of larger polyphonic pieces; it is not certain whether the modal rhythm of the latter is applicable to the monophonic songs.
The Wolfenbüttel manuscript D-W 1099 (c1275) testifies to the decline of the conductus in favour of the motet. The latest of three major sources of Notre Dame polyphony, it contains over 200 motets but only 29 conductus. Theorists of the late 13th century, Franco of Cologne and the St Emmeram Anonymous, and the early 14th century, Walter Odington, Johannes de Grocheio and Jacques de Liège, continued to speak as if at first hand about the genre. Significantly, however, Jacques lamented the fact that the moderns showed no interest in it. As far as France was concerned, the tradition was dead, recollected by the few Notre Dame songs interpolated into the satirical Roman de Fauvel (F-Pn fr.146) around 1316.
Outside France the situation varies. A large manuscript copied in the early 14th century for the monastery of Las Huelgas (Burgos) shows a retrospective link with the Parisian repertory. Considerably more than half of its 35 conductus are found in one or more of the older, Notre Dame sources. Evidence of independent or continuing activity in Spain is lacking.
German interest in the conductus, awakened in the 13th century, continued long after the French had abandoned the genre. The manuscript of the Carmina burana (D-Mbs Clm 4660), from the latter part of the century, has nine Notre Dame songs, four without music, five for one voice. The Weingarten manuscript of similar date (D-Sl HB I Asc.95) contains songs from both the Aquitanian and the Parisian repertories; with few exceptions, these appear in monophonic form. A large number of later manuscripts, among them D-EN 314 and Mu 156 (14th century) and GB-Lbl Add.27630 and D-Bsb Cod ger.8°190 (15th century), continued to include conductus, some borrowed from older sources, some original, some monophonic, some for two voices.
Two strains of activity are discernible in England: one, represented by the elder Wolfenbüttel manuscript and by the text manuscript GB-Ob Rawl.poet.C510, is inseparable from the Notre Dame tradition; the other shows the same combination of materials and influences as the German school. Manuscripts of the 12th, 13th and early 14th centuries, nearly all reduced to fragments, have compositions borrowed from both the great French repertories, together with songs of English origin. The majority are simple settings for two and three voices.
Italy presents a very different situation. The conductus, like the motet, appears to have been rejected completely. Certainly the genre as such never took root there. Handschin’s suggestion that its influence lives on in the vernacular songs of the 14th century, however, is both attractive and plausible. The spirit of the Italian song, with its single text, its combination of syllabic and melismatic textures, and its elegant refinement, both rhythmic and contrapuntal, is exactly that of the most highly valued Notre Dame conductus.
See also Discant; Motet, §I, 1; Organum; Sources, MS, §IV, 3.
U. Chevalier, ed.: Prosolarium ecclesiae aniciensis, Bibliothèque liturgique, v (Paris, 1894)
H. Villetard: Office de Pierre de Corbeil, Bibliothèque musicologique, iv (Paris, 1907)
H. Anglès: El códex musical de Las Huelgas (Barcelona, 1931)
P. Wagner: Die Gesänge der Jakobusliturgie zu Santiago de Compostela aus dem sog. Codex Calixtinus (Fribourg, 1931)
F. Gennrich: Lateinische Liedkontrafaktur: eine Auswahl lateinischer Conductus mit ihren volkssprachigen Vorbildern (Darmstadt, 1956)
N. Greenberg, ed.: The Play of Daniel (New York, 1959)
J. Knapp, ed.: Thirty-Five Conductus for Two and Three Voices, Collegium musicum, vi (New Haven, CT, 1965)
F. Reckow, ed.: Der Musiktraktat des Anonymous 4, i (Wiesbaden, 1967)
W. Arlt: Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung (Cologne, 1970)
G.A. Anderson, ed.: Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: Opera omnia, Gesamtausgaben/Institute of Mediaeval Music, Collected Works, x (Henryville, PA, 1979–)
R. Falck: The Notre Dame Conductus: a Study of the Repertory (Henryville, PA, 1981)
B. Gillingham: ‘Saint Martial Polyphony: a Catalogue Raisonné’, Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981) in memoriam, ed. LA. Dittmer (Henryville, PA, 1984), 211–63
For facsimiles and catalogues of MS sources see Sources, ms, §IV..
MGG2(A. Traub)
L. Delisle: ‘Discours prononcé à l’assemblée générale de la Société de l’histoire de la France’, Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1885), 100–39
H.E. Wooldridge: ‘Discant or Measured Music’, The Polyphonic Period, OHM, i/1 (1901, rev.2/1929/R by P.C. Buck)
F. Gennrich: ‘Internationale mittelalterliche Melodien’, ZMw, xi (1928–9), 259–96, 321–41
H. Spanke: ‘Die Londoner St. Martial Conductus Handschrift’, Butlletí de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, viii (1928–32), 280–301
H. Spanke: ‘St. Martial-Studien’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, liv (1930–31), 282–317, 385–422; lvi (1932–3), 450–78
J. Handschin: ‘A Monument of English Mediaeval Polyphony: the Manuscript Wolfenbüttel 677’, MT, lxxiii (1932), 510–13; lxxiv (1933), 697–704
Y. Rokseth: ‘Le contrepoint double vers 1248’, Mélanges de musicologie offerts à M. Lionel de la Laurencie (Paris, 1933), 5–13
E. Gröninger: Repertoire-Untersuchungen zum mehrstimmigen Notre Dame-Conductus (Regensburg, 1939)
A. Geering: Die Organa und mehrstimmigen Conductus in den Handschriften des deutschen Sprachgebietes vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert (Berne, 1952)
J. Handschin: ‘Zur Frage der Conductus-Rhythmik’, AcM, xxiv (1952), 113–30
H. Husmann: ‘Zur Grundlegung der musikalischen Rhythmik des mittellateinischen Liedes’, AMw, ix (1952), 3–26
M.F. Bukofzer: ‘Interrelations between Conductus and Clausula’, AnnM, i (1953), 65–103
L. Schrade: ‘Political Compositions in French Music of the 12th and 13th Centuries’, AnnM, i (1953), 9–63
H. Husmann: ‘Das System der modalen Rhythmik’, AMw, xi (1954), 1–38
D. Norberg: Introduction à l’étude de la versification latine médiévale (Stockholm, 1958)
J. Chailley: L’école musicale de Saint Martial de Limoges jusqu’à la fin du XIe siècle (Paris, 1960)
R. Weakland: ‘The Rhythmic Modes and Medieval Latin Drama’, JAMS, xiv (1961), 131–46
B. Stäblein: ‘Modale Rhythmen im Saint-Martial-Repertoire?’, Festschrift Friedrich Blume, ed. A.A. Abert and W. Pfannkuch (Kassel, 1963), 340–62
R. Steiner: Some Monophonic Songs of the Tenth Fascicle of the Manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Pluteus 29.1 (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1963)
F.Ll. Harrison: ‘Benedicamus, Conductus, Carol: a Newly-Discovered Source’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 35–48
F. Reckow: Der Musiktraktat des Anonymous 4, ii: Interpretation der Organum purum-Lehre (Wiesbaden, 1967)
L. Treitler: The Aquitanian Repertories of Sacred Monody in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (diss., Princeton U., 1967)
S. Fuller: Aquitanian Polyphony of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1969)
G.A. Anderson: ‘A Troped Offertorium-Conductus of the 13th Century’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 96–100
S.A. Fuller: ‘Hidden Polyphony: a Reappraisal’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 169–92
G.A. Anderson: ‘Thirteenth-Century Conductus: Obiter Dicta’, MQ, lviii (1972), 349–64
G.A. Anderson: ‘Notre Dame and Related Conductus: a Catalogue Raisonné’, MMA, vi (1972), 153–229; vii (1973), 1–81
G.A. Anderson: ‘The Rhythm of cum littera Sections of Polyphonic Conductus in Mensural Sources’, JAMS, xxvi (1973), 288–304
F. Reckow: ‘Conductus’ (1973), HMT
J. Stenzl: ‘Eine unbekannte Notre Dame-Quelle: Die Solothurner Fragmente’, Mf, xxvi (1973), 311–21
G.A. Anderson: ‘Nove Geniture: Three Variant Polyphonic Settings of a Notre Dame Conductus’, SMA, ix (1975), 8–18
G.A. Anderson: ‘The Rhythm of the Monophonic Conductus in the Florence Manuscript as Indicated in Parallel Sources in Mensural Notation’, JAMS, XXI (1978), 480–89
J. Knapp: ‘Musical Declamation and Poetic Rhythm in an Early Layer of Notre Dame Conductus’, JAMS, xxxii (1979), 383–407
R.E. Voogt: Repetition and Structure in the Three- and Four-Part Conductus of the Notre Dame School (diss., Ohio State U., 1982)
E.F. Flindell: ‘Conductus in the Later Ars Antiqua’, Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981) in memoriam, ed. L.A. Dittmer (Henryville, PA, 1984), 505–30
E.H. Sanders: ‘Style and Technique in Datable Polyphonic Notre Dame Conductus’, Gordon Athol Anderson (1929–1981) in memoriam, ed. L.A. Dittmer (Henryville, PA, 1984), 505–30
H. Tischler: ‘Gordon Athol Anderson’s Conductus Edition and the Rhythm of Conductus’, ibid., 561–73
E.H. Sanders: ‘Conductus and Modal Rhythm’, JAMS, xxxviii (1985), 439–69
J. Stevens: Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge, 1986)
R. Stelzle: Der musikalische Satz der Notre Dame Conductus (Tutzing, 1988)
B. Gillingham: ‘A New Etiology and Etymology for the Conductus’, MQ, lxxv (1991), 59–73