(Lat.: ‘a cutting’).
A medieval term usually understood to denote a freely invented rhythmic configuration, several statements of which constitute the note values of the tenor of an isorhythmic motet (or of its first section, if diminution is later applied to the tenor).
While medieval writers were far from unanimous in their use of ‘talea’ and ‘color’, modern musicology has been influenced by the definitions that Johannes de Muris, the first to mention talea (c1340), ascribed to ‘some musicians’: ‘A configuration of pitches and its repetitions are called “color”; a rhythmic configuration and its repetitions are called “talea”’ (CoussemakerS, iii, 58b; cf also 99a). Even more precise are the statements of the anonymous author (late 14th century) of an Ars cantus mensurabilis (Anonymous V of CoussemakerS, iii, 397b): ‘When the same note shapes [i.e. rhythms] are repeated, but with different pitches, this is called “talla” … When the same pitches are repeated, but with different note shapes, that is “color”’.
While most medieval writers defined ‘talea’ as a process of repetition, for the anonymous author of the Notitia del valore (late 14th century) it denoted the entity (‘cutting’) to be repeated, which the composer devised by ‘dividing [cutting] the tenor into parts’. He therefore referred to two particular motet tenors as ‘a tre taglie di valore’ (CSM, v, 57). This meaning is consistent with the original sense of the word, and has been adopted by musicologists (the modern usage of ‘color’ is analogous). It is possible that the large strophes produced by the lengthy taleae of isorhythmic motet tenors account for the appearance of the term, by analogy with the rhetorical term ‘taille’.
The differences in medieval opinions are more apparent in the definitions of color (evidently the older term) than in those of talea. ‘Color’ as the more generic term meant any process of repetition, including purely rhythmic reiteration. Hence Johannes de Muris began his definitions with the statement that ‘color in music is the rhythmic identity of a section (passage) repeated several times in the same voice part’. Since rhythmic recurrence is the governing structural principle affecting, to varying degrees, all the voices of an isorhythmic motet, ‘color’ was the obvious traditional term to apply to it. Only in the tenor does melodic repetition play a role, and even there a subordinate one. Johannes therefore added that while the difference between color and talea ‘applied to a good many motet tenors, it does not apply to the upper voices [ipsis motettis]’, where only the term ‘color’ is needed. Moreover, the origins of the musical use of ‘color’ are evidently connected with the upper voices of Notre Dame polyphony.
All the medieval authors cited so far wrote in the 14th century. The two 15th-century authors to mention color and talea were Prosdocimus de Beldemandis and Tinctoris. The latter, writing several decades after the demise of the isorhythmic motet, reversed the above definition; he identified color as rhythmic identity and equated talea with both rhythmic and melodic identity in one voice part (CoussemakerS, iv, 180a, 189b). But as early as the beginning of the century Prosdocimus found it necessary in his Tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis to report elaborately on three different understandings of the two terms, for two of which he cited Johannes de Muris as authority. According to the first opinion ‘there is no difference between color and talea; rather, they are the same, and therefore [Johannes de Muris] defined color and not talea in his treatise’ (see the beginning of the latter’s definitions cited in the preceding paragraph). Secondly there is the opinion attributed by Johannes de Muris to ‘some musicians’, which according to Prosdocimus was the most common of the three. The third opinion was the result of intentional compromise: color is identical repetition of rhythms as well as pitches, while talea concerns rhythmic repetition only (CoussemakerS, iii, 225ff). Four years later Prosdocimus again mentioned the third definition, but otherwise simply stated that ‘color or talea in music is the repetition of like rhythms or like pitches’ (CoussemakerS, iii, 247b). The mention of the possibility of repeating the pitches as well as the rhythms of phrases reflects the appearance of isomelic passages in the upper voices of motets written in the early 15th century, especially those by composers resident in northern Italy.
See also Color, §(1); Isorhythm; and Motet, §I.
ERNEST H. SANDERS