(Lat.).
(1) A medieval Latin term used from the mid-13th century to the mid-15th to signify embellishment and more specifically repetition; the latter sense accounts for its modern use to designate melodic repetition in the tenors of medieval motets. It first occurs in the De mensurabili musica of Johannes de Garlandia (CoussemakerS, i, 175–82; ed. F. Reimer, 1972, pp.74, 76), in the later addition to it (Reimer, 94–7) and in the treatise by Anonymus 4 (ed. F. Reckow, 1967, pp.22, 46, 82, 84, 88). Anonymus 4 used ‘color’ mostly with reference to Perotinus’s organa, ‘replete with artful musical embellishments’, though he also credited earlier composers, including Leoninus, with the orderly disposal of properly ‘colourful’ phrases (ordines). The term and its meaning originated in rhetoric, as Prosdocimus de Beldemandis pointed out in the early 15th century, associating it specifically with repetition: ‘rhetorical color is called repetition, and the term is applied metaphorically, since just as in rhetorical color there is frequent repetition of the same phrase, in musical color, too, there is frequent repetition’ (CoussemakerS, iii, 226a, 248a).
The earliest known case of the association of ‘color’ with the specific embellishment of repetition occurs in the addition to Garlandia’s treatise. Like Anonymus 4, the author equated color broadly with pulcritudo (Reimer, 74), but the three types of color he described all involve repetition: sonus ordinatus is the elaboration of a large melodic interval from a simple leap to a phrase involving the intervening scale degrees and patterned repetition of certain pitches (ex.1); florificatio is the individual reiteration of successive pitches; repetition of a phrase can involve either an ‘identical phrase’ or a ‘separated phrase’ (this last type turns out to be voice-exchange).
Almost all other known descriptions and definitions of ‘color’ also involve repetition. Anonymus 4, notably, did not mention this, though of course the Perotinian examples he referred to often contain passages embellished by various types of repetition, which was bound to play a prominent ornamental role in the melodically restricted polyphony of the time. Odington mentioned ‘moteti colorati’, in which a phrase in an upper voice is repeated over a given cantus firmus; any resultant dissonance, he said, was excusable (Summa de speculatione musicae, CSM, xiv; ed. F.F. Hammond, 1970).
Most subsequent writers (14th and 15th centuries), beginning with Johannes de Muris, mentioned color (and talea) in connection with the motet. They differed, however, as to the type of reiteration (i.e. rhythmic, melodic or both). In calling repeated statements of the cantus firmus of a motet ‘colores’ modern musicology has been influenced by the definition that was most common, according to Prosdocimus de Beldemandis (CoussemakerS, iii, 227a): color is melodic repetition, as distinct from rhythmic repetition (talea). For a more detailed discussion of the different opinions regarding talea and color, see Talea; see also Isorhythm.
(2) The term was used in a different sense by some 14th- and 15th-century theorists. In 1317 or 1318 Marchetto da Padova (Lucidarium) used it to refer to the beauty of the chromatic genus. Prosdocimus de Beldemandis in his counterpoint treatise of 1412 said that Musica ficta had been invented ‘solely on account of the colouring of some consonance’; and Ugolino of Orvieto in his monochord treatise (mid-15th century) discussed at length, as Marchetto had done, the division of the whole tone into unequal parts ‘with which we perfect the imperfect [intervals] and colour them’.
See also Notation, §III, 3.
ERNEST H. SANDERS (1), MARK LINDLEY (2)