ABSTRACT
It is something of a cliché to describe ars nova motets as musico-poetic objects, or to pay lip-service to the inclusion of the mot in their generic designation. But examples such as Colla/Bona bring the depth of the cross-medial connections into sharp relief. It is not simply a case of main themes linking the tenor’s text or liturgical context with the upper-voice texts. Rather, text design and formal design are intimately connected, and talea, which under its modern name of “isorhythm” has often been characterized as a purely musical, structuralist tool, is better understood as stemming instead from textual and conceptual impulses. And in this supremely musico-poetic genre, the formal has important implications for the semantic: if a tenor melody was selected after all of these texts had been written, and after many formal decisions had been made, then interpreting the upper-voice texts primarily through the semantic and liturgical lens of the tenor begins to look like a precarious exercise. This is not to exclude the possibility that the liturgical context of a given tenor can fruitfully speak to the upper-voice texts. Tenors may well have been chosen because their texts, dimensions, and liturgical contexts were suited to the motet. But the revised compositional order proposed here does stand at odds with Anne Robertson’s claim that “the liturgy serves as … the starting point” in motet creation. 1 I suggest instead that the starting point of Machaut’s motets was the intricate poetry of their upper voices—poetry that is in harmony with his courtly poetic output.
