A study of the cantus firmus treatment in the magnificat and Salve Regina of Matthaus Pipelare
Date
1976
Authors
Hosking, John Byron
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Abstract
This thesis is a study of the cantus firmus technique employed by the Flemish composer Matthaeus Pipelare (fl. 1500) in his single settings of the Marian canticle Magnificat and antiphon Salve Regina. Introductory material describes the composer's life, along with historical backgrounds to the Magnificat and Salve Regina settings. Contemporary settings of these two texts were examined, and their history itself traced, as a prelude to examining Pipelare's works. Having discovered that the only modern edition of both these works, a product of a doctoral dissteration by Ronald Cross in 1966 on Pipelare and his music, was quite unreliable as a transcription, recourse was made to the original manuscripts themselves on microfilm: Jena, Universitäts-Bibliothek MS Chorbuch, ff. 31ᵛ- 37ʳ (Magnificat) and Müchen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS 34, ff. 25ᵛ-29 (Salve Regina), both films from the University of Toronto library. A second manuscript source for the Magnificat, Leipzig, Karl Marx Universitäts-Bibliothek MS Thom. 49, was unfortunately unobtainable, while a 1544 print of Georg Rhau containing this same work was available in a modern edition. Thus both works have been completely transcribed and edited from an original source in order to have an accurate reading. In the course of transcribing the Salve Regina, the interesting feature of the presence of a canonic voice-part, indicated but not written out in the manuscripts, emerged; the canon has been resolved and a fifth voice-part added to complete Pipelare's setting. This voice is of great importance as it usually carries as second statement of the cantus firmus due to it being the comes of the tenor voice which is the dux of the canon, as well as completing the polyphonic structure of the music. Further, the plainsong used as the cantus firmus has been traced in an attempt to discover the sixteenth-century form of the change which was used by Pipelare, since the chant repertoire has been restored since the sixteenth century of its early medieval form which often varies significantly from the form which was available to Pipelare and his contemporaries. The cantus firmus treatment by Pipelare has then been examined in view of it being the central structural element in the two works.