ABSTRACT
Given the fact that the music signals the name Aman, one might ask whether Mardocheo is being given a special musical treatment in the motet – ‘musical’ in the sense of what in the early fourteenth-century was considered to be music. Sounding musica was thought to be the audible embodiment of number and proportion. This included not only the harmonic relationships but also the temporal ordering of sound.6 Since musica was also thought to rule audible discourse, the numerical and proportional procedures employed in literary composition would be considered, in philosophical terms, to belong causally to music. It would be only natural for poet-musicians like Vitry to make use of them as composers. The case of Floret/Florens is not the only plausible instance of number symbolism in the Vitriacan corpus.
