C. Le Jeune’s Dodecahorde

A 16th century composer would typically borrow a monophonic melody as cantus firmus for their new composition. As a rule, no notable changes were made and the borrowed material would remain, at least within the work itself, a “solid melody”. For his polyphonic psalm collection Dodecachorde, Claude Le Jeune chose cantus firmus from the melodies of the Genevan Psalter. They are not always quoted literally. At times, they take a different mode of the polyphonic setting they are founded on or undergo melodic deformations. The choice of the original source and its modal “retouching” are guided by one and the same reason: Dodecachorde is the artistic manifesto of religious tolerance made by a Huguenot composer. Le Jeune tries to combine the declaration of the Protestant melos as an intonational basis of a polyphonic metric psalter and an attempt to fit it in the traditional allmode cycle on a new 12-mode basis

Art · Art history · Humanities · Linguistics · Literature · Melody · Musical · Polyphony · Violin · Computer Science · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy