(Lat.: ‘wheel’).
A term used to designate a round in the 13th century (and possibly the 14th). The only differences between the rota and the rondellus are the successive entries of the voices in the former, as against the simultaneous entries in the latter and the necessity for ending it arbitrarily. The difference between rota and canon (the medieval fuga) is more fundamental. The former achieves tonal equipoise through static circularity, while the latter is characterized by dynamic pursuit of an end. It is the difference between chordal homogeneity achieved with a melody whose built-in harmonic potential must be realized through imitative projection, and counterpoint, whose rigidly canonic procedure is not restricted to imitation at the prime.
The singing of rotas in medieval England was doubtless based on a pre-13th-century tradition and must have been practised to a much greater extent than the surviving sources show. These assumptions are justified not only by the fragmentary preservation of the sources, particularly the almost complete absence of manuscripts containing polyphony with vernacular texts, but also by the fact that rounds are rather easily improvised and therefore, unlike motets, were probably not regarded as ars musica requiring notation, unless they were unusually artful. One such composition, the only known piece specifically labelled rota in the manuscript, is the famous setting Sumer is icumen in (for further information and facsimile see Sumer is icumen in). Another, with strophically continuous text, though lacking any designation as a rota, is identifiable as such, because the three successive voice entries are indicated in the manuscript (ed. in PMFC, xiv, 1979, no.35). Baude Cordier’s ‘rode’ (?ronde) Tout par compas (early 15th century) is not so much a round as a French caccia in the quasi-strophic rondeau form; it is therefore sung three times fully as the text indicates, and twice in part. On the other hand, Robert Wilkinson’s setting of Jesus autem transiens – Credo in Deum (c1500) is a true 13-part rota, though not specifically designated as such in its source, the Eton Choirbook. No medieval writer on music reported on the use and meaning of ‘rota’ (Johannes de Grocheo’s discussion of ‘rotunda vel rotundellus’ refers to the rondeau).
HarrisonMMB
W. Wiora: ‘Der mittelalterliche Liedkanon’, GfMKB: Lüneburg 1950, 71–5
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
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
B. Cooper: ‘A Thirteenth-Century Canon Reconstructed’, MR, xlii (1981), 85–90
P.M. Lefferts: The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor, 1986)
ERNEST H. SANDERS