English musical term of the 15th and 16th centuries. The evidence suggests that a square is a bottom part derived from a polyphonic composition of the late 14th century onwards in order to be used (usually via monophonic storage) in a later composition. The source need not be sacred, but all known later uses of the derived material are in sacred compositions. No further refinements to this definition are available. Compositions using squares may place the borrowed material at any pitch, in any voice part. The square may migrate between parts, be presented literally, or appear with considerable rhythmic and melodic elaboration. The number of voice parts is variable, and the compositions include keyboard settings. Baillie confined the term to the Mass Ordinary, but this now seems to have been too cautious. The style and compositional technique of such compositions cover a wide range.
Archival references between 1463 and 1564 permit a further broadening of the term. ‘Sqwarenote’ was taught (along with plainsong, polyphony and techniques that imply quasi-improvisation or rudimentary composition) and sung; squares were copied (in one case into graduals, in another ‘upon’ the eight tones); books of squarenote (including an ‘old’ one in 1465) are in some cases identified as polyphonic, or as being in sets (perhaps meaning partbooks), and compositional references include a mass ‘de squarenote’. The principal references come from Durham, Wells, Worcester, Warwick, Louth, Oxford, Cambridge and London, particularly St Paul’s Cathedral (the presumed provenance of the Gyffard books, see below), where they continue to be associated with post-Reformation rites and English words.
Three masses in the Marian Gyffard books (GB-Lbl Add.17802–5), one by William Whytbroke and two by William Mundy, are described there as ‘apon the square’. In these masses each movement is based on a different cantus firmus, although all three use the same Credo melody, and Mundy’s second mass shares its Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus cantus firmi with Whytbroke’s. These cantus firmi are hence assumed to be the squares on which the masses are composed. All three Kyrie squares, and one of the two Sanctus squares, are found in a monophonic collection of such isolated tenor parts on the flyleaves of a Sarum gradual (GB-Lbl Lansdowne 462) which is in turn assumed to be a collection of squares such as those attested by archival evidence. Other smaller repositories of such tenors establish a modest network of concordances and extend the repertory of potential squares. In many cases, further concordances for these tenors also exist in polyphonic works composed nearer 1400 (in the Old Hall Manuscript and elsewhere) and in one case in a French-texted ballade (Or me veut) which had a busy career on the Continent and is ascribed in one source to Dufay. Even where concordances have not survived, it can sometimes be demonstrated that the source of a square must have been a discant setting of a Sanctus chant (sometimes with migrant cantus firmus) or a strict faburden tenor to a non-Ordinary chant. In some cases no monophonic stage has survived, but direct concordances exist between 15th-century bottom parts and 16th-century settings. The repertory of squares is therefore likely to increase as further concordances come to light, since any bottom part is potentially available for use in this way.
Other polyphonic compositions based on such cantus firmi of the late (or even mid-) 15th century to the mid- (or even late) 16th are therefore assumed also to be composed on squares, and other cantus firmi used in related compositions (as in the set of seven Lady masses by Nicholas Ludford) are presumed to be further squares. Evidence suggests that the early Tudor practice of composition on the faburden of a chant rather than on the chant itself should be included within the procedure of composition on squares, since some such ‘faburdens’ are in fact bottom parts of non-faburden settings in discant style (e.g. Magnificat settings on the first tone which may relate to the archival reference, above, to the eight tones), and since faburdens occur in company with squares of various derivations apparently for use in composition or impromptu techniques. Squares were sometimes described in association with their parent compositions, and it is clear that their subsequent use was not always confined to the same text or genre. These procedures suggest far-reaching analogies with continental techniques and with the use to which some melodies were put, though no actual links with authenticated squares have appeared. The term should probably be confined to English cases related as above until there is reason to extend it. It may even be necessary to regard the term merely as a local name for a much more widespread range of compositional approaches.
HarrisonMMB
M.F. Bukofzer: ‘A Polyphonic Basse Dance of the Renaissance’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 190–216
H. Baillie: ‘Squares’, AcM, xxxii (1960), 178–93
J.D. Bergsagel: ‘An Introduction to Ludford’, MD, xiv (1960), 105–30
J.D. Bergsagel: ‘On the Performance of Ludford’s alternatim Masses’, MD, xvi (1962), 35–55
F. Ll. Harrison: ‘Faburden in Practice’, MD, xvi (1962), 11–34
R. Bowers: Choral Institutions within the English Church: their Constitution and Development, 1340–1500 (diss., U. of East Anglia, 1975)
MARGARET BENT