ABSTRACT
This discovery has several ramifications. Most obviously, it confirms the identification of the composer Pietrequin as the singer Pietrequin Bonnel. If, moreover, Pietrequin did in fact notate the music of "Qu'en dictez vous," this piece would amplify our meager store of musical autographs from the late fifteenth century, joining a pair of works by Pietrequin's Florentine colleague Heinrich Isaac in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Mus. ms. 4002 I, and, perhaps, some compositions by Franchinus Gafurius in the choirbooks made under his supervision for the cathedral of Milan.4 "Qu'en dictez vous" also sheds a small amount of new light on the relationships between composer's intentions, scribal habits, and singers' prerogatives at the time of its creation. The fact that Pietrequin leaves the piece without accidentals and indicates the alignment of words and music in only the most general way surely lends support to the view that responsibility for the familiar problems of musica ficta and text placement lies just as often with the composer as with the copyist. Pietrequin at least would appear to have felt that his performers could sort out the few adjustments to pitch content that his piece seems to require and achieve a satisfactory correlation between words and music; indeed, he may even have regarded these matters as the performers' concern in the first place, not his. 5
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z88 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Apart from all else, the appearance of Pietrequin's hand in Florence 2794 raises questions about the manuscript itself and his relationship to it.6 Although Florence 2794 clearly originated in French or Burgundian territory at some time in the late fifteenth century, its exact provenance and date have remained elusive.7 Accordingly, we cannot determine just where or when Pietrequin would have made his contribution to the volume. We can, however, almost definitely rule out the Florentine phase of his career. "Qu'en dictez vous" belongs to a series of works written by several different scribes in the last gatherings of Florence 2794;8 it falls in the middle of a gathering, which no doubt means that Pietrequin entered it as part of the series, not as an addition made subsequently to fill a gap left by the other scribes. Its entry, therefore, must have preceded that of the compositions on the remaining pages. Two of these later pieces, occupying folios 69 • -7 I, show the music hand of a scribe who figures prominently in the earliest portion of the manuscript. Unless this scribe traveled to Italy and took Florence 2 794 with him-something that we have no reason to assume-Pietrequin could not have copied "Qu'en dictez vous" in Florence.9
