Counterpoint During the Fourteenth Century

The rondeau by Adam de la Halle given in Example 3-9 has a simpler texture than most music of its time. As we get into fourteenth-century music we find much that is quite elaborate. The composition of music with complicated textures and rhythms freed from the constraints of the rhythmic modes was made possible by advances in notation. About 1325 Philippe de Vitry dealt with these notational innovations in a treatise entitled Ars Nova (“The New Art”) and this term has come to be used in reference to the entire fourteenth century.