No Cypriot music from the early Middle Ages has survived, and conjectures as to musical activity on the island depend on scattered hints in literary and historical sources and on inferences drawn from more certain knowledge about other aspects of Cypriot life and culture (see Hoppin, ‘The Cypriot–French Repertory’, 1957). Early in the 15th century, however, the island witnessed the creation of a large and representative corpus of late medieval music. All the pieces are transmitted anonymously, and none appears in any manuscript other than I-Tn J.II.9. Nevertheless, the repertory clearly stems from the royal court of Cyprus and brings the island to temporary prominence in the history of music.
Cyprus became an outpost of French culture in the later Middle Ages; it had been under Byzantine rule until the end of the 12th century, but Richard the Lionheart seized it in 1191 during the third crusade and sold it to the Knights Templar, who put it in the charge of French barons with Guy de Lusignan at their head. Within a few years, this branch of what was an illustrious French family became hereditary kings and began the period of Frankish rule that lasted until 1489. Establishment of the Lusignan dynasty brought with it a return of Cyprus to the ‘bosom of the Roman church’. This return did not wholly suppress the Byzantine rite, but it required the importation of clerics from the West and made their liturgy and music the dominant form of religious life.
Evidence of French influence on Cyprus still survives in cathedrals, churches and monasteries, as well as a number of artefacts, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries. The music of the time was more ephemeral. Only from the latter half of the 14th century does slight evidence survive. A polyphonic Kyrie in the repertory of Avignon (F-APT 16bis, ed. in CMM, xxix, 20, and PMFC, xxiii a, 64–5) bears the word ‘Chipre’ (see Chipre). A list of composers in the text of a motet (F-CH 564, no.108) includes one or possibly two men from Cyprus. Minstrels accompanied Peter I, King of Cyprus, in his travels throughout Europe in the 1360s. Machaut told the story of those travels in his narrative poem La prise d'Alexandrie, which bears ample witness to Peter’s love of music. Among the ‘familiars’ of Peter's court were clerks, chaplains and singers from the dioceses of Cambrai, Tournai, Arras and Liège. And in Venice, according to the Florentine historian Villani, Peter bestowed a laurel wreath on Landini for his organ playing. After Peter's assassination in 1369 his chancellor, Philippe de Mézières, returned to the West with a dramatized musical Office for the Presentation of the Virgin, which Philippe had seen in Cyprus and had himself translated from the Greek.
Suggestive as these bits of evidence may be, they scarcely foreshadow a sudden flowering of musical activity during the reign of King Janus (1398–1432). More than to Janus, that flowering must probably be credited to his second wife, Charlotte de Bourbon, who went to Cyprus in 1411. According to the Cypriot chronicler Makhairas, Charlotte arrived with a retinue of some 60 people, of whose names only 19 are known. Among them, however, is a group of men, including two priests, who probably formed the nucleus of Charlotte’s private chapel. One of these was Gilet Velut: compositions attributed to him are found in the continental manuscripts GB-Ob Can.misc.213, I-Bc Q15 and I-TRmp 87, suggesting he was active on the European mainland after spending time in Cyprus in the years immediately after 1411. The other musician can be identified with Jean Hanelle, who, like Velut, had been a petit vicaire at Cambrai Cathedral in 1410–11. Both were apparently recruited from Cambrai as young men into the service of Charlotte of Bourbon. Unlike Velut, Hanelle stayed in Cyprus for a considerable part of his career. He eventually became master of the royal chapel; this is shown by Savoyard court documents from 1434 and 1436. Yet another singer with demonstrable ties to Cyprus was Jehan Augustin du Passaige, who appears in the service of the King of Cyprus by 1433, but had returned to the chapel of the dukes of Burgundy by 1436. According to Tinctoris, Jehan's son, Philippus de Passagio, a singer at the Burgundian court between 1462 and 1477, was born while Jehan was in Cyprus.
The manuscript I-Tn J.II.9 provides a tangible witness to these musical activities. It is arranged in five large sections: a plainchant collection of two rhymed Offices and six mass cycles (see illustration); 17 polyphonic mass movements (three Glorias and seven Gloria–Credo pairs); 33 Latin and eight French motets; 102 ballades; 43 rondeaux and 21 virelais. A polyphonic mass cycle, complete except for the Agnus Dei, was later inserted between the sections containing the ballades and the rondeaux and virelais. The polyphonic sections of the manuscript were copied by several scribes working under the supervision of a single notator who also prepared the texts for the section devoted to rondeaux and virelais and provided additions and corrections to the remainder of the volume; moreover, there is evidence to suggest that the chant fascicle at the beginning of the manuscript was copied by the same team of scribes.
The dating, origins and early history of the manuscript remain unclear. Tradition (since Besseler) has it that it was copied in Cyprus and taken to Savoy in connection with the wedding of Anne of Lusignan, but there is little solid evidence to support this theory. The manuscript shows distinctive Italian features in its text scripts and illuminations; the style of the latter would seem to date from around 1430. A crest depicted on f.1r also appears to be of Italian origin, although its owner is unknown (the identification proposed by Besseler is spurious). The possibility must therefore be entertained that I-Tn J.II.9 was prepared for an Italian patron, most likely one with close ties to Cyprus, in about 1425–35, perhaps on the Continent. The manuscript seems to have found its way to Savoy at a relatively early stage. The added mass cycle, which appears to have been copied by a Savoyard, is evidence of this; in addition, by 1498 the manuscript was listed in a Savoyard inventory. It is possible that the manuscript was compiled under the supervision of Hanelle himself; this would be consistent both with Hanelle's documented movements on the Continent during the 1430s and with a significant Cypriot presence in Italy and Savoy from the late 1420s to the mid-15th century. It seems likely that the manuscript conceals within its anonymous repertory a considerable number of works by Hanelle and possibly Velut. This would explain the stylistic homogeneity of the repertory, which has been repeatedly remarked on.
The most likely explanation for the unusual inclusion of plainchant in an otherwise polyphonic repertory is that it originated in Cyprus, probably in the first two decades of the 15th century. This is known to be true of the Office of St Hilarion with which the manuscript opens. At King Janus's request, the schismatic pope John XXIII approved the Office and sanctioned its performance in a bull dated 23 November 1413. With several relics of St Anne preserved in Cypriot churches, her Office in all likelihood was also a native product; it might be related to the birth (1419) or the nameday celebrations of Anne of Lusignan, daughter of King Janus and Charlotte of Bourbon. Cypriot origins may also be assumed for the plainchant mass cycles, as their melodies appear nowhere else. Three of them are complete, even including the Credo; three consist only of Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. Each cycle is written in a single mode, and they thus become the earliest known examples of unified plainchant masses.
The polyphonic mass movements contribute a valuable addition to the repertory of Gloria–Credo pairs. In addition to being unified by mode, metre and style, the pairs provide characteristic examples of the three different styles of contemporary mass movement in western Europe: two in motet style with text in the two upper voices; two with text in all four voices; three in three-part song style with text only in the upper voice. The added mass cycle is unusual in having all its movements based on part or all of the same tenor melody while retaining archaisms in the style of the upper voices. Still unidentified, the tenor melody is in triple metre, with regular rhythms and a clear phrase structure that suggest secular origin (ex.1). Wherever or whenever this cycle was composed, it must be one of the first tenor masses. It is conceivable that this mass is a product of the Savoyard court chapel; it may have been composed during the 1430s, when English compositional techniques, including the use of a tenor as a unifying device, first appeared on the Continent to a significant extent.
The most important aspects of the 41 motets are the use of four-part writing in all but three pieces, the appearance of isorhythm in all but one, and the concentration on sacred texts. Even a majority of the French texts praise the Virgin Mary, and only two seem to be entirely secular; their texts were partly erased, perhaps to be replaced with a sacred contrafacta. Eight Latin motets (nos.23–30) with texts that trope the ‘Great Antiphons’ for the Magnificat constitute a unique series of pieces composed as a unit; they would have been performed, one each day, in the week preceding Christmas. The texts of motet 12 establish a connection with earlier continental music by using the same poetic forms and rhymes as the texts of the motet Impudenter/Virtutibus, attributed to Philippe de Vitry. Similarly, the triplum text of motet 39 (Mon mal en bien/Toustens) is based on the triplum of the anonymous setting Mon chant en plaint/Qui doloreus, transmitted in the 14th-century manuscripts I-IV 115, F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 and GB-DRc C.I.20. Three motets (nos.6, 8 and 17) name King Janus and thus confirm that the repertory originated in the first decades of the 15th century in Cyprus. Motet 8 (Gemma florens/Hec est dies) appears to refer to the birth of Janus and Charlotte's heir, John II of Lusignan, in 1418.
The French songs are so similar in general style that they may be discussed together. Only 16 of the 166 pieces depart from normal three-part writing with text in the upper voice. One ballade has two upper parts with different texts; two-voice writing appears in four virelais and nine rondeaux, two of which have the text in both voices; one virelai has the text in all three voices; and the final rondeau is a four-voice canon.
In their rhythmic style the secular songs display a wider range than any other group of pieces. Some are scarcely more complex than the late works of Machaut. A few rival the complexities of late 14th-century Ars Subtilior style (see Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior). From these few, Wolf and Apel picked their illustrations of the Cypriot manuscript and caused it to be ranked undeservedly with such monuments of ‘mannered’ notation as the Chantilly and Modena manuscripts (F-CH 564 and I-MOe α.M.5,24). Only ‘displacement syncopation’ and the simpler proportions (3:2 and 4:3) occur with any frequency. Relative rhythmic simplicity characterizes the majority of songs in the manuscript, and the use of semiminims (semiquavers in transcription) and the presence of textless passages in the upper voice show that the Cyprus pieces differ in no way from exactly contemporary continental songs.
The repertory of I-Tn J.II.9 thus proves to be much more than a record of musical activity at a remote provincial court. By its quality, its stylistic range and its reflection of a variety of current practices it provides a comprehensive and unique survey of the state of music in the decades between 1411 and about 1440. Furthermore, its copying and early history offer invaluable clues to the cultural and political interaction among Cyprus, the Italian peninsula, Savoy and Europe in general during the early decades of the 15th century.
R.H. Hoppin, ed.: The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, J.II.9, CMM, xxi (1960–63)
R.H. Hoppin, ed.: Cypriot Plainchant of the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale J.II.9: a Facsimile Edition with Commentary, MSD, xix (1968)
K. Kügle, I. Data and A. Ziino, eds.: Il codice J.II.9 (Torino, Biblioteca nazionale universitaria) (Lucca, 1999) [facs.]
K. Young: ‘Philippe de Mézières’ Dramatic Office for the Presentation of the Virgin’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxvi (1911), 181–234
H. Besseler: ‘Studien zur Musik des Mittelalters, i: Neue Quellen des 14. und beginnenden 15. Jahrhunderts’, AMw, vii (1925), 167–252
R.H. Hoppin: The Motets of the Early Fifteenth-Century Manuscript J.II.9. in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin (diss., Harvard U., 1952)
R.H. Hoppin: ‘The Cypriot–French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, J.II.9’, MD, xi (1957), 79–125
R.H. Hoppin: ‘A Fifteenth-Century “Christmas Oratorio”’, Essays on Music in Honor of Archibald Thompson Davison (Cambridge, MA, 1957), 41–9
G. Feese: The Polyphonic Ballades in the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale J.II.9 (diss., U. of Iowa, 1959)
R.H. Hoppin: ‘Reflections on the Origin of the Cyclic Mass’, Liber amicorum Charles van den Borren (Antwerp, 1964), 85–92
R.H. Hoppin: ‘Exultantes collaudemus: a Sequence for Saint Hylarion’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 392–405
P.R. Kaye: The ‘Contenance angloise’ in Perspective: a Study of Consonance and Dissonance in Continental Music, c. 1380–1440 (New York and London, 1989), 177–221
The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino J.II.9: Paphos 1992 [MSD, xlv (1995)]
J.M. Allsen: Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet, 1400–1440 (diss., U. of Wisconsin, Madison, 1992)
K.N. Moll: Structural Determinants in Polyphony for the Mass Ordinary from French and Related Sources (ca.1320–1410 (diss., Stanford U., 1995)
RICHARD H. HOPPIN/KARL KUEGLE