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Johannes Ockeghem’s (c. 1410-1497) canonic chanson, known as Prenez sur moi vostre exemple amoureux [Take from me your amorous example] or Fuga trium vocum in Epidiatessaron, post perfectum tempus [Canon for three voices in the fourth above after perfect time], has received considerable attention in music scholarship from the sixteenth century to the present day. In general, those analyses focus on understanding Renaissance theorist Heinrich Glarean’s (1488-1563) designation of the canon as a catholicon—a modal piece able to be transposed to different modes—by interpreting the unique arrangement of hexachordal symbols replacing a clef on its notation. The few analyses that mention modal orientation do so by assigning one of Glarean’s twelve modes to each canonic voice without discussion. In this thesis, I investigate both the notation and the musical structure of Fuga trium vocum to determine the elements that allow the piece its catholicon status.Seeking alternatives to traditional modal theory and contrapuntal studies, several scholars have developed ways of analyzing structure in Medieval and Renaissance music. One of these theories, Cristle Collins Judd’s theory of modal types and Ut, Re, Mi tonalities, serves as the basis for my analysis. After transcribing Fuga trium vocum from the print in Glarean’s treatise, I apply Judd’s theory, which asserts that modal pieces can represent modal types—paradigms of structural superius-tenor relationships based on characteristic melodic intervals—within hexachordal tonalities built on ut, re, and mi, to diatonic transpositions of the piece. Then, I identify structural similarities among the individual voices and the canon transpositions.My analysis using Judd’s theory reveals that the fifth-based construction of Fuga trium vocum’s guide melody persists in the realized canon and creates connections among its transpositions. This emphasis on the fifth—a defining interval of several modes—and modal ambiguity allow Fuga trium vocum to be transposed to different starting pitches with favorable results. A brief analysis of a comparable, but non-catholicon, piece confirms and refines these conclusions. |
