The Interpretation of Unusual Mensuration Signs in the Notation of the 'Ars subtilior'

Abstract

Music researchers have for some time regarded Johannes Ciconia's 'Sus une fontayne' as an extraordinary example of musical cornposition from the years around 1400. For more than thirty years now we have known that this polyphonic virelai contains citations of the text and music of three compositions of the late fourteenth-century composer Philipoctus de Caserta. Recently, several scholars including Yolanda Plumley and Anne Stone have offered significant contributions to the discussion of citations in 'Sus une fontayne. Plumley investigates the process of intertextuality in this and several other works from the fourteenth century as a means of contextualising composers and their activity, But for the purposes of this paper, I focus on Stone's recent contribution to the scholarship surrounding 'Sus une fontayne'.