Journal Article

Perfect Beauty

Weiss, Susan Forscher

2019

Overview

Readers of the notational and theoretical treatises of the late fourteenth century experience musical compositions that were both feasts for the eyes and the ears. These examples of Augenmusik—what Richard Taruskin calls \"a phenomenal feat of calligraphy\"—represent a development that Ursula Günther in 1963 labeled the ars subtilior.2 Characterizing this so-called ars subtilior or \"subtler art,\" as it was practiced by \"the Avignon School\" for popes and wealthy aristocratic patrons in parts of southern France and northern Italy, were the concern for the expression of the beauty of musical sound and the lure of notating more sophisticated rhythms, such as those overheard in popular music and dance. Experiments with new note shapes are described in the anonymous Tractatus de diversis figuris, one of a set of musical treatises transcribed in Pavia in 1391 and held in the library of the Visconti family of Milan (now Newberry Library, MS 54.1).3 The prologue labels the style of writing that employs more variety of rhythm as an artem magis subtiliter. In what follows, I will draw connections between some of the ideals of beauty as seen and heard in late-fourteenth-century musical ideas inspired by an ancient rhetorician whose influence warrants investigation.

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: 14th century / Allegory / Allusion / Aristocracy / Authorship / Beauty / Calligraphy / Dance / Dionysius of Halicarnassus / Ears / Ears & hearing / Experiments / Feasting / Greek civilization / Italian literature / Labeling / Libraries / Literary criticism / Literary devices / Literary influences / Literary translation / Multiculturalism & pluralism / Music / Patrons / Poetry / Popes / Popular music / Rhythm / Sonnets / Sound / Writers