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Ars Antiqua [Ars Veterum, Ars Vetus]

(Lat.: ‘old art’)
Gordon A. Anderson and Edward H. Roesner

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.01356
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

A term used by a group of writers, mostly active in Paris in the early

14th century, to distinguish the polyphony and notation of the
immediate past from the new practice of their own time, the Ars
Nova (Ars Modernorum), especially that associated with Philippe de
Vitry, Johannes de Muris and their circle in the 1310s and 20s. (The
word ‘ars’, as understood in the Middle Ages, translates the Greek
word technē, a ‘technique’ or ‘craft’, and has no aesthetic
connotations.)

Among music theorists, the champion of the Ars Antiqua was

Jacobus of Liège, who in his encyclopedic Speculum musice (1320s)
upheld the authority of Franco of Cologne, Magister Lambertus
(whom he called ‘Aristotle’) and Petrus de Cruce, and while
criticizing the moderns defined the main virtues of the old practice:
(1) modern composers wrote only motets and chansons, neglecting
other genres such as organum, conductus and hocket (CSM, iii/7, p.
89); (2) modern composers used a multiplicity of imperfect
mensurations alongside perfect ones in their work, whereas the old
practice, following Franco and Lambertus, adhered exclusively to
perfection (CSM, iii/7, pp.86–8); (3) the moderns divided semibreves
into smaller values, perfect and imperfect groups of minims and
semiminims, whereas the followers of the Ars Antiqua divided breves
only into semibreves in perfect mensuration, holding that the
semibreve was indivisible (CSM, iii/7, pp.35–6, 51–3); (4) as a
consequence, paradoxically, the rhythmic language used by the
moderns was much more limited and inflexible than that of the
adherents to the old practice (CSM, iii/7, pp.38–9); (5) the moderns
engaged in a great deal of experimentation with notation, resulting
in an inconsistent practice, whereas the followers of Franco had a
clear and established tradition for notating their music (CSM, iii/7,
pp.51–3); (6) the moderns indulged too much in quirky and
capricious rhythmic movement,musica lasciva, while the followers of
the old practice kept within the confines of a more restrained musica
modesta (CSM, iii/1, p.60). From this it is evident that the Ars
Antiqua is the musical practice of the latter half of the 13th century,
preserved most comprehensively in manuscripts such as F-MOf
H196, D-BAs Lit.115, and I-Tr Vari 42, and described by the
theorists mentioned above, the many commentaries, abbreviationes,
and compendia based on Franco's Ars cantus mensurabilis, and the
De musica of Johannes de Grocheio. Such manuscripts as B-Br

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 19606 and F-Pn fr.146 (the Roman de Fauvel), both from the
second decade of the 14th century, are transitional in a sense,
containing works in both Ars Antiqua and Ars Nova.

The definition of the term ‘Ars Antiqua’ is often extended now to

include the music of the Notre Dame period and its main composers,
Leoninus and Perotinus. The genres that Jacobus praised and the
rhythmic idiom he discussed developed from this earlier tradition;
and indeed, the repertories of organum and conductus belong
properly to that tradition rather than to the period with which he
was concerned. In this more comprehensive definition, then, the Ars
Antiqua includes two large historical periods, the Notre Dame
school, dating from about 1160 to about 1250 and preserved in
manuscripts such as I-Fl Plut.29.1, D-W 628,D-W 1099, and
E-Mn 20486, and the period from about 1250 to about 1320,
specifically referred to by Jacobus. The former is characterized by
liturgical polyphony with Latin texts and by modal rhythm and an
emerging mensural notation; the latter is dominated by controlled
mensural rhythm and a developed notation, and by the genre of the
motet, above all the French motet, but it also saw the beginning of a
written tradition of instrumental music and secular polyphonic song.
The earlier genres of conductus and organum were extensively
reworked in the light of the changed aesthetic that came with
mensural rhythm; it is undoubtedly through such modernized
versions that Jacobus knew the earlier repertory. Whatever merits
the expanded definition of the Ars Antiqua may have, a distinctly
new period, an Ars Nova, did emerge in the 1310s and 20s. While
many of the innovations of the Ars Nova were indeed radical, many
others represent extensions of the earlier practice; thus Philippe de
Vitry expressly based his rhythmic system on the Ars Vetus of
Franco. Sensitivity to these changes and expansions of Ars Antiqua
practices on the part of modern and more conservative musicians
alike doubtless moulded the rather polemical distinction Jacobus
drew between the two artes.

See also Ars Nova; Sources, MS, §IV , Sources, MS, §V ,

Sources, MS, §VII; and Theory, theorists

Bibliography
MGG1 (H. BESSELER)

MGG1 (‘Notre-Dame-Epoche’, H. HUSMANN)

MGG2 (W. FROBENIUS)

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 R. BRAGARD, ed.: Jacobi leodiensis speculum musicae, CSM, 3
(1955–73)

L. SCHRADE: ‘The Chronology of the Ars nova in France’, L'Ars Nova:

Wégimont 1955, 37–62

F.J. SMITH: Jacobi leodiensis speculum musicae: a Commentary

(Brooklyn, NY, 1966–83)

M. HUGLO: ‘De Francon de Cologne à Jacques de Liège’, RBM , 34–

35 (1980–81), 44–60

M. HAAS: ‘Studien zur mittelalterlichen Musiklehre I: eine Übersicht

über die Musiklehre im Kontext der Philosophie des 13. und frühen
14. Jahrhunderts’,Forum musicologicum, 3 (1982), 323–456

R. EBERLEIN: ‘Ars antiqua: Harmonik und Datierung’, AMw , 43

(1986), 1–16

S. PINEGAR: Textual and Contextual Relationships among Theoretical

Writings on Measurable Music of the Thirteenth and Early
Fourteenth Centuries (diss., Columbia U., 1991)
See also
Sweden, §I, 1: Art music: To 1600
Jacobus of Liège
Leoninus
Motet, §I, 1: Middle Ages, France, Ars Antiqua.
Paris, §I, 3: To 1450: Music theory
Perotinus

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