The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut

Just as our society delights in citations, quotations, and allusions in myriad contexts, not least in popular song, late medieval poets and composers knew well that such references could greatly enrich their own works. In The Art of the Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut, author Yolanda Plumley explores the penchant for borrowing in chansons and lyrics from fourteenth-century France, uncovering a practice integral to the experiments in form, genre, and style that ushered in a new school of lyric.Working across disciplinary boundaries, Plumley traces creative appropriations in the burgeoning "fixed forms" of this new tradition to build a more intimate understanding of the shared experience of poetry and music in the generations leading up to, and including, Guillaume de Machaut. Exploring familiar and less studied collections of songs as well as lyrics without music, this book sheds valuable light on the poetic and musical knowledge of authors and their audiences, and on how poets and composers devised their works and engaged their readers or listeners. It presents fresh insights into when and in which milieus the classic Ars nova polyphonic chanson took root and flourished, and into the artistic networks of which Machaut formed a part. As Plumley reveals, old songs lingered alongside the new in the collective imagination well beyond what the written sources imply, reminding us of the continued importance of memory and orality in this age of increasing literacy. The first detailed study of citational practice in the French fourteenth-century song-writing tradition, The Art of Grafted Song will appeal to students and scholars of medieval French music and literature, cultural historians, and others interested in the historical and social context of music and poetry in the late Middle Ages.

Table of Contents:
Preface with Acknowledgements i Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Part One: Citation, Genre, and Experiments in Song in the early Fourteenth Century 23 1. Cantilena entata: Etymologies and the Grafted Song ca. 1300 24 2. Grafting song in Paris: The Lyric Works of Jehannot de Lescurel 60 3. Experimental Song-Writing in the Roman de Fauvel 92 Part Two: Performing Citation in Court and City: The Rise of the Fixed Forms 121 4. Performing Nonsense at Court: Watriquet de Couvin's Fastras 122 5. Citation and Ritual at the Puys of Valenciennes and Paris 154 6. Jehan de le Mote and the Rise of the Ballade 204 7. Citing the Classics: Mythological Ballades by Le Mote, Vitry, and Campion 246 Part Three: Machaut and the Art of Grafted Song 271 8. Machaut's Heritage: Tracing Citations in his Lyrics and Songs 272 9. Self-Citation and Lyric Process in La Loange des dames 317 10. The Dynamics of Duplication: Staging Debate in Machaut's Voir Dit 344 Epilogue 401 Bibliography 420

About the Author :
Yolanda Plumley is Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Exeter. She has published widely on late medieval music and its cultural context and is author of The Grammar of Fourteenth-Century Melody (New York and London, 1996) and (with Anne Stone) of Codex Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly, MS 564 (Turnhout, 2008), and co-editor of three volumes of essays on late medieval and Renaissance culture.

Review :
"Yolanda Plumley's The Art of Grafted Song is a tour de force of musical and literary analysis. Throughout the book, the musical descriptions and analyses are clear and illuminating. This will be essential reading for scholars of medieval French music and poetry alike, and will shape the discussion of late medieval lyric poetry for many years to come." --Maureen Boulton, University of Notre Dame, H-France Review "[T]his book is brimming with intertextual discoveries, deepening our knowledge of the wellspring of lyric material referenced in fourteenth-century song. ... The Art of Grafted Song reveals in greater detail than any account to date the endurance and centrality of grafting and citational procedures between the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century repertories. The fascinating musical and poetic landscape Plumley has uncovered contributes to an emerging body of literature that has challenged earlier representations of the ars nova as a break from past traditions." --Speculum "The Art of Grafted Song gathers an impressive amount of evidence to argue conclusively that citation and allusion were central to the formes fixes, especially in the rondeau and ballade, during the first three quarters of the fourteenth century...The book's rich level of detail invites repeated reading...Ultimately The Art of Grafted Song will surely effect a productive blurring of lines-between court and mercantile cultures, between borrowing and echoing, between citation and allusion, between poets, composers, and audiences, and between song and poetry."--Journal of the American Musicological Society