A technique of composition for three voices cultivated in 13th-century England; also, a piece completely composed in this manner.
The technique is rooted in the compositional device known as Voice-exchange (more accurately, phrase-exchange). There were two ways in which 13th-century English composers applied voice-exchange technique to the three-part texture preferred by them. They either restricted it to the two upper voices, supporting it with a repetitive tenor or pes, or they wrote triple voice-exchange, i.e. a melody consisting not of two, but of three fairly concise elements (ex.1), all of which are combined simultaneously.
This procedure, which as horizontal projection of a simple harmonic scheme depends on 3rds, 5ths and octaves as constitutive intervals, was known by the medieval Latin term ‘rondellus’. The only medieval writer to describe it was an Englishman, Walter Odington (c1300):
And when what is sung by one may be sung by everybody in turn, such a tune is called rondellus, i.e. a rotational or rounded melody … Rondelli are to be composed as follows: contrive a melody, as beautiful as possible … To this melody, with or without text, and sung by each, should be fitted one or two others consonant with it. Each thus sings the other’s part [that is, in alternation].
Odington’s music example consists of twice three melodic elements; the first half is melismatic (in effect demonstrating the rondellus technique that occurs in many caudas of English conductus), while only one of the remaining three elements has text, which is therefore sung successively by each of the three voices. This latter procedure is the one that occurs most commonly, though some pieces composed near the end of the century exhibit more complex arrangements, such as that shown in ex.2.
In conductus, voice-exchange and rondellus technique could enliven the melismatic caudas; in one case the evidence seems to indicate that poetry came to be applied to some of these ‘rondellus caudas’. In any event, several English conductus prove that rondellus technique could be employed in texted sections as well as in caudas. The close relationship between rondellus and conductus was recognized by Odington, who pointed out that any polyphonic composition exhibiting all the features of a rondellus except its imitative technique would be a conductus. Voice-exchange over a pes and rondellus technique were also applied in the introductory tropes to the polyphonic settings of the verses and, especially, of the responds (solo portions) of alleluias.
About 100 years before Odington wrote his treatise, Giraldus Cambrensis gave the following report on Welsh music in his Descriptio Kambriae (1194):
When
they make music together, they sing their songs not in unison, as is done
elsewhere, but in parts, with many [simultaneous] modes [modis] and
phrases [modulis], so that in a crowd of singers … you would hear as
many songs and different intervals [discrimina vocum varia] as you could
see heads; yet, they all accord in one consonant [consonantiam; recte?
consonantem] polyphonic song [organicam melodiam], marked by the
enchanting delight of B
[?F major].
The assumption that Giraldus was describing the rondellus is strengthened by the probable provenance of those English sources that for the first time transmit pieces exhibiting rondellus technique. While they postdate the Descriptio by five or more decades, some of them seem to have originated in localities 30 to 60 km east of Wales. That rondellus and related techniques were particularly prominent in these areas, from which they spread, and seem to go back at least to the turn of the century is indicated not only by Sumer is icumen in and its presumptive antecedents, but also by a French double motet (Hare, hare, hye/Balaam goudalier/Balaam) which pokes fun at English and Scottish goudaliers (guzzlers of good ale). This composition, dating from the second quarter of the 13th century, is the only continental cantus firmus motet of the time in which the upper voices engage in voice-exchange, a procedure made possible by the unusual selection of a sequence as tenor. This motet is therefore a strong argument for the assumption that the parodied musical practice, abandoned by French composers as a result of their waning interest in conductus and organum, was known as typically and perhaps rather quaintly English at least as early as about 1225.
Apart from the Summer Canon, which can be regarded as a potential multi-part rondellus, there are no rondelli in existence for more than three voices. After 1300 the expansion of the two-voice framework beyond one octave (i.e. the regular acceptance of the 10th or 12th as the largest contrapuntal interval between the outer voices) caused voice-exchange and especially rondellus to become moribund practices. With their individual voice-exchange passages growing ever more lengthy, a number of compositions exhibit a hypertrophy characteristic of many species of art in their late stage. The most expansive complexity is reached by two long compositions in GB-Cgc 543/512, ff.248v–249 and ff.252v–253 (Virgo Maria patrem parit/Virgo Maria flos divina and Tu civium primas/Tu celestium primas). In both pieces signa congruentiae indicate that the second halves of the two voices are to sound together with the first.
Continental rondellus compositions are relatively rare and, apart from involving three voices, their counterpoint as a rule hardly exceeds the level of complexity represented by ex.1 of Voice-exchange. (The identification by Falck of two monophonic compositions in fasc.11 of I-Fl Plut.29.1 as rondelli is untenable.)
In continental medieval treatises ‘rondellus’ was generally used as the Latin term for rondeau.
HarrisonMMB
W. Wiora: ‘Der mittelalterliche Liedkanon’, GfMKB: Lüneburg 1950, 71–5
L.A. Dittmer: ‘An English Discantuum Volumen’, MD, viii (1954), 19–58
L.A. Dittmer: ‘Beiträge zum Studium der Worcester-Fragmente’, Mf, x (1957), 29–39
L.A. Dittmer, ed.: The Worcester Fragments: a Catalogue Raisonné and Transcription, MSD, ii (1957)
E. Apfel: Studien zur Satztechnik der mittelalterlichen englischen Musik (Heidelberg, 1959), chap.1
F.Ll. Harrison: ‘Rota and Rondellus in English Medieval Music’, PRMA, lxxxvi (1959–60), 98–107
E.H. Sanders: ‘Tonal Aspects of 13th-Century English Polyphony’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 19–34
H.H. Eggebrecht and F. Reckow: ‘Das Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie’, AMw, xxv (1968), 241–77
R. Falck: ‘Rondellus, Canon, and Related Types before 1300’, JAMS, xxv (1972), 38–57 [see also JAMS, xxxi (1978), 170–73]
F. Reckow: ‘Rondellus/rondeau, rota’ (1972), HMT
E.H. Sanders, ed.: English Music of the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries, PMFC, xiv (1979)
M. Bent: ‘Rota versatilis: Towards a Reconstruction’, Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: a Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. I. Bent (London, 1981), 65–98
ERNEST H. SANDERS