(Lat.: ‘what you please’).
A composition in which well-known melodies and texts appear in successive or simultaneous combinations. Generally the quodlibet serves no higher purpose than that of humour or technical virtuosity, and may thus be distinguished from more serious works in which pre-existing material has a constructive or symbolic function.
Wolfgang Schmeltzl first used the term with specific reference to music (Guter seltzamer und künstreicher teutscher Gesang, sonderlich etliche künstliche Quodlibet, Nuremberg, 1544), taking it from the name of an improvised oral examination in German universities, the disputatio de quolibet. Originally the disputation was a serious scholastic exercise at the Sorbonne in Paris during the Middle Ages, but in Germany it became a humorous parody featuring ridiculous lists of items loosely combined under an absurd theme (e.g. objects forgotten by women fleeing from a harem). This general concept was widely accepted in 16th-century German literature, and comical ‘catalogue’ poems of all kinds (such as Priamel) flourished, prompting such definitions of the quodlibet as ‘durcheinandermischmäsch’ (S. Roth, 1571). Fischart (Geschichtsklitterung, 1575) noted the common element of haphazard combination found in the disputation and the musical quodlibet, probably with reference to Schmeltzl, who followed both academic and literary fashion in stressing nonsensical catalogues in his musical quodlibets.
In France ‘quolibet’ referred to witty riddles, and ‘avoir de quolibet’ still means the ability to verbalize quickly a clever, spirited repartee. In this period catalogue poetry was less popular in France than Germany, but lists of ‘fools’ prefaced theatrical sotties, and the lists of dishes and songs in Rabelais’ Pantagruel were notorious. The citation of chansons and hymn lines (Chesnaye, Molinet, Rabelais) prompted appropriate musical references when such poetry was set to music, and both lighthearted inanity and serious or religious symbolism were explored as Renaissance composers sought musical parallels to poetic centonization. Theorists often included quodlibets to illustrate matters such as mensuration, modes and cantus firmus treatment (Tinctoris, Proportionale musices, c1473–4; Glarean, Dodecachordon, 1547; Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, 1558; Zacconi, Prattica di musica, 1622); but it was Praetorius in book 3 of Syntagma musicum (1618) who provided the first systematic definition of the musical quodlibet as a mixture of diverse elements quoted from sacred and secular compositions. He presented three categories which he differentiated on the basis of text treatment. A combination of his sometimes abstruse explanation with analysis of his music examples gives the following types: every voice is a completely different cantus prius factus; every voice is a different patchwork of quoted fragments; one voice is a patchwork of quotations whose text is shared by the other voices.
Parallel types of quodlibet in the Renaissance were the Fricassée (France), Misticanza or messanza (Italy), Ensalada (Spain) and Medley (England). Incatenatura is a term used by modern scholars to refer to the Italian quodlibet; cento, which survives from classical antiquity, refers specifically to poetry made up entirely of lines quoted from other works, or more generally to any artistic technique that relies on patchwork construction, citations, borrowings, formulae etc. (see Centonization). There are also some isolated terms used from the 17th century to the present that are more or less closely related to the quodlibet, such as farrago, rôtibouilli, salatade, fantasia, capriccio, pasticcio, potpourri and miscellany; but this article will discuss only works that fall into one of the three types of quodlibet proper, based on 16th-century German practice: catalogue, successive and simultaneous.
The catalogue quodlibet consists of a freely composed setting of catalogue poetry. Such pieces were rare in the medieval motet, but there is one well-known example, Moriuntur, oriuntur (I-Fl Plut.29.1), in which a list of nonsense syllables serves as a drinking-song. Polytextual motets of the 13th century nevertheless rely heavily on the allegorical or parodistic effects obtained by juxtaposing musical and literary materials drawn from a wide range of genres and registers – sacred and secular alike. A good many of these pieces not only allude to pre-existing tenor melodies from plainchant and chansons, but combine them in ways related to the procedures heard in late examples of the quodlibet. Clearly such works were intended for listeners and readers with a wide range of musical repertories and highly sophisticated skills of interpretation that allowed them to understand the meanings latent in the bricolage of seemingly unrelated materials. The onomatopoeic word-play in the 14th-century Italian caccia also prefigured certain aspects of quodlibet hilarity. The closest early parallel, however, is the monophonic setting of Mon seul plaisir from the late 15th century (F-Pn fr.12744), which is a catalogue of 19 famous chanson refrains (e.g. Comme femme, J'ay pris amours, Ma bouche rit). The melody, which does not quote musical material, appeared in a polyphonic arrangement by Ninot le Petit.
Of the 25 quodlibets in Schmeltzl's publication (see above), 15 belong to this category (e.g. Ein Quodlibet von Eyren by Matthias Greiter and Ein Quodlibet von Nasen by J. Puxstaller; the latter text was also set by Lassus). In 1540 Georg Forster printed two catalogue quodlibets on the theme of Martin’s goose, and series of proverbs were also popular, as in Paul Rivander's Nun höret an (1615). Both Jacob Reiner's Venite exultemus (1581) and Nikolaus Zangius's Er setzt das Gläslein an den Mund (1620) set lists of comical drinking-proverbs, and another catalogue of noses was included in J.M. Gletle's Musica genialis (1675–84). The simplicity of the musical settings suggests that such pieces were written versions of improvised musical entertainment. In the 17th century many German collections of entertainment music included verbal catalogue quodlibets (e.g. those of J.M. Caesar, Gletle and Daniel Speer), and the tradition culminated in the ‘quodlibeticae’ of the Augsburger Tafelkonfekt (1733–46).
In the successive quodlibet one voice consists of a patchwork or cento of short musical and textual quotations while the others form a homophonic accompaniment, which is either without a text or else shares that of the patchwork voice. The most striking medieval parallel to this kind of Renaissance quodlibet is provided by the quotation of chanson lines in the refrain motet and motet enté. At least one out of every 25 motets contains a patchwork of refrains in one voice (e.g. Cele m'a mort/Alleluia and La bele m'ocit/In seculum). From the 13th century onwards Street cries were also frequently included among the borrowed material. In the earliest Renaissance quodlibet, Wer ich eyn Falck, which appears in the Breslauer Codex (late 15th century), the tenor consists of a cento of fragments from German songs, while the remaining three voices have no text. Another anonymous quodlibet with song quotations in the tenor was published in Forster's second volume of German lieder (1540).
Schmeltzl's collection of 25 quodlibets contains six homophonic centos in which a patchwork in the tenor is surrounded by free voices; but the highpoint of the German type was reached in the works of Melchior Franck. Nine of his ten quodlibets (published in the Musikalischer Grillenvertreiber, 1622) are homophonic centos and are more modern in style than earlier examples: the patchwork voice is in the upper part and the quotations are mainly from folksongs. Only two other 17th-century homophonic centos are known, Johann Groh's Bettler Mantel (1612) and Johannes Brassicanus's Was wölln wir aber heben an? In his Musica genialis Gletle included a quodlibet citing popular texts, which may also contain musical quotations. Cento technique continued to provide humorous social entertainment, however, as in the quodlibets of Johann Christenius, Georg Engelmann (i) and Johann Theile, and in the street-cry quodlibets of Daniel Friderici, Jakob Banwart, Kindermann and G.J. Werner. Out of the 21 ‘quodlibeticae’ in the Augsburger Tafelkonfekt two are musical centos: Quodlibeticum curiosum and Salvete hospices. Among the best-known examples from the 18th century are the Hochzeitsquodlibet, in which J.S. Bach collaborated, and Mozart's Gallimathias musicum.
The simultaneous quodlibet consists basically of the polyphonic cento, in which two or more patchwork voices are combined polyphonically, and the cantus firmus quodlibet, in which each voice is a different cantus prius factus. A third subtype, in which a cantus firmus voice is combined with one or more patchwork voices (‘cantus firmus cento’), is less common; there are only four cantus firmus centos in German secular music, three of which are in the Glogauer Liederbuch (c1480; the fourth is a bicinium by Paul Rebhuhn published in 15457). These three are among the first examples of the quodlibet proper in Germany; they combine a voice from O rosa bella by Dunstaple or Bedyngham with a patchwork of German songs (see HAM, nos.80 and 82).
The polyphonic cento involves a more complex technique than the homophonic, since several different patchworks of successive quotations must be combined polyphonically – the more centos the more complicated the combination. Schmeltzl included only three such works and they all bear the inscription ‘Fürt ein jede stymm jr eygen text’; one of these pieces, Ein Guckuck, was reworked by Johannes Eccard (1578). This type of quodlibet corresponds to Praetorius's second category, which he illustrated by referring to a work of Zangius (probably Ich will zu land ausreiten, published in Paul Kauffmann's Musikalischer Zeitvertreiber, 1609). Zangius also wrote two other polyphonic centos: Bistu der Hänsel Schüze (1620) and Ich ging einmal spazieren (1613). Franck's Kessel, multer bilden, originally published as Farrago (1602), brings together many popular songs in masterful six-voice counterpoint.
Juxtaposing several pre-existing melodies, as in the cantus firmus quodlibet, represented in Renaissance thought the ultimate in contrapuntal mastery. Clearly this was the didactic intent that Tinctoris had in mind in his Proportionale, which included a work that used O rosa bella as a cantus, L'homme armé as a tenor and Et Robinet as a bassus. The kind of technical virtuosity required is evident in Greiter's Elselein liebstes Elselein, which appeared in Schmeltzl's collection as an example of a quodlibet composed entirely of quoted melodies; but it may also be seen in contemporary works that quote from two to four simultaneous cantus firmi. Among these are several particularly fine works of Senfl (e.g. Ach Elselein/Es taget), and works by such composers as Jobst vom Brandt, Matthias Eckel, Caspar Othmayr and Matthaeus Le Maistre. Humour is obvious in Othmayr’s drinking-songs and technical virtuosity for its own sake in Greiter’s, but Senfl’s works exude a tender melancholy and represent perhaps a more subtle kind of symbolism than is normally associated with the quodlibet. In such pieces, as in the much larger and older repertory of sacred works using borrowed material for symbolic or purely constructive purposes, the proper boundaries of the quodlibet are difficult to maintain with precision or consistency. In any case, Praetorius limited the category of the cantus firmus quodlibet to works in which every voice is a separate cantus prius factus, citing as an example a motet of Göldel that combines five different chorales; Christenius's Kirchenquodlibet continued this tradition. The most famous cantus firmus quodlibet of all is the final variation of Bach's Goldberg Variations, in which two popular German songs (Kraut und Rüben and Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir g'west) are joined with the harmonic framework of the theme.
In a rather different guise the quodlibet took on a new lease of life in the German (and especially the Viennese) theatre of the first half of the 19th century. The term was used in four distinct senses: for the amalgam of (often non-theatrical) items assembled in book form; for a theatrical entertainment in which a popular artist or artists appeared in a series of excerpts from favourite roles; for a pasticcio in which pre-existing musical numbers were grafted on to a libretto for which they were not originally intended (Rochus Pumpernickel, 1809, text by M. Stegmayer, music arranged by Ignaz von Seyfried and Jakob Haibel, is the most famous example); and lastly, for the potpourri or musical switch. This kind of quodlibet, very popular in Viennese farces and Singspiele between the early 1800s and the 1850s, and probably derived from the same German tradition that enlivened Bach family gatherings and produced J.V. Rathgeber's and G.J. Werner's mid-18th-century examples, consisted of between half a dozen and 50 or more consecutive quotations, usually with altered text; the frequent incongruity of words and music in an unexpected context proved a potent source of parody and entertainment.
Examples of quodlibet-like compositions are not hard to find in 20th-century music. There are a number of works by Ives, for example, in which well-known melodies are combined simultaneously as well as successively (e.g. the last movement of his Symphony no.2); but here, as in 15th- and 16th-century cantus firmus compositions, the dividing line between the serious or symbolic use of borrowed materials and the purely humorous is difficult to draw. There can be little doubt, however, that the essential spirit and form of the genre survives in works such as the Quodlibet of Peter Schickele.
MARIA RIKA MANIATES (with PETER BRANSCOMBE)/RICHARD FREEDMAN
MGG1(K. Gudewill)
PraetoriusSM, iii
RiemannL12
M. Praetorius: Syntagma musicum, iii (Wolfenbüttel, 1618, 2/1619/R)
R. Eitner: ‘ Das deutsche Lied des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts’, MMg, viii (1876), suppl., 1–169; xii (1880), suppl., 1–309
A. Raphael: ‘ Über einige Quodlibete mit dem Cantus firmus “O rosa bella” und über dieses Lied selbst’, MMg, xxxi (1899), 161–79
E. Bienenfeld: ‘Wolfgang Schmeltzl, sein Liederbuch (1544) und das Quodlibet des XVI. Jahrhunderts’, SIMG, vi (1904–5), 80–135
F. Feldmann: ‘ Zwei weltliche Stücke des Breslauer Codex Mf.2016’, ZMw, xiii (1930–31), 252–66
H.J. Moser: Corydon, das ist Geschichte des mehrstimmigen Generalbassliedes und des Quodlibets im deutschen Barock (Brunswick, 1933/R)
M.F. Bukofzer: ‘An Unknown Chansonnier of the 15th Century’, MQ, xxviii ( 1942), 14–49
D. Plamenac: ‘ A Reconstruction of the French Chansonnier in the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville’, MQ, xxxvii (1951), 501–42; xxxviii (1952), 85–117, 245–77
D. Plamenac: ‘ Deux pièces de la Renaissance française tirées de fonds florentins’, RBM, vi (1952), 12–23
F. Lesure and others, eds.: Anthologie de la chanson parisienne au XVIe siècle (Monaco, 1953/R)
F. Lesure: ‘ Eléments populaires dans la chanson française au début du XVIe siècle’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle: Paris 1953, 169–84
H.M. Shire and K.Elliott: ‘La fricassée en Ecosse et ses rapports avec les fêtes de la Renaissance’, Les fêtes de la Renaissance[I]: Royaumont 1955, 335–45
G. Kraft: ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des “Hochzeitsquodlibet” (bwv524)’, BJb 1956, 140–54
J. LaRue: ‘A “Hail and Farewell” Quodlibet Symphony’, ML, xxxvii (1956), 250–59
H.M. Brown: ‘ The chanson rustique: Popular Elements in the 15th- and 16th-Century Chanson’, JAMS, xii (1959), 16–26
K. Petermann: Das Quodlibet: eine Volksliedquelle? (diss., U. of Leipzig, 1960)
H. Albrecht: ‘ Ein quodlibetartiges Magnificat aus der Zwickauer Ratsschulbibliothek’, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler, ed. E. Klemm (Leipzig, 1961), 215–20
C. Gallico, ed.: Un canzoniere musicale italiano del Cinquecento [I-Bc Q21] (Florence, 1961)
K. Gudewill: ‘ Ursprünge und nationale Aspekte des Quodlibets’, IMSCR VIII: New York 1961, i, 30–43 [see also discussion, ibid., ii, 53–7]
P. Gülke: ‘Das Volkslied in der burgundischen Polyphonie des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler, ed. E. Klemm (Leipzig, 1961), 179–202
H.M. Brown: Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA, 1963)
H.M. Brown, ed.: Theatrical Chansons of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA, 1963)
M. Picker: ‘ Newly Discovered Sources for In minen Sin’, JAMS, xvii (1964), 133–43
M.R. Maniates: Combinative Techniques in Franco-Flemish Polyphony: Mannerism in Music from 1450 to 1530 (diss., Columbia U., 1965)
M. Picker: ‘ The Cantus Firmus in Binchois's Files a marier’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 235–6
M. Picker: The Chanson Albums of Marguerite of Austria (Berkeley, 1965)
D. Plamenac: ‘ The Two-Part Quodlibets in the Seville Chansonnier’, The Commonwealth of Music, in Honor of Curt Sachs, ed. G. Reese and R. Brandel (New York, 1965), 163–81
W. Rogge: Das Quodlibet in Deutschland bis Melchior Franck (Wolfenbüttel, 1965)
H. Hewitt: ‘ A chanson rustique of the Early Renaissance: Bon temps’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 376–91
M.R. Maniates: ‘Mannerist Composition in Franco-Flemish Polyphony’, MQ, lii (1966), 17–36
M.R. Maniates: ‘Quodlibet revisum’, AcM, xxxviii (1966), 169–78
W. Elders: Studien zur Symbolik in der Musik der alten Niederländer (Bilthoven, 1968)
H. Deppert and R.Zillhardt: ‘Ein weiteres Quodlibet im Glogauer Liederbuch’, Mf, xxii (1969), 316–18
W. Elders: ‘ Das Symbol in der Musik von Josquin des Prez’, AcM, xli ( 1969), 164–85
M.R. Maniates: ‘Combinative Chansons in the Dijon Chansonnier’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 228–81
M.R. Maniates: ‘Combinative Chansons in the Escorial Chansonnier’, MD, xxix (1975), 61–125
P.J. Branscombe: The Connexions Between Drama and Music in the Viennese Popular Theatre with Special Reference to the Forms of Parody (diss., U. of London, 1976)
M. Everist: ‘ The Refrain Cento: Myth or Motet?’, JRMA, cxiv (1989), 164–88
H. Vanhulst: ‘ La fricassée de Jean de Latre (1564)’, RBM, xlvii ( 1993), 81–90
S. Huot: Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet: the Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony (Stanford, CA, 1997)