Where Sight Meets Sound

Emily Zazulia’s Where Sight Meets Sound is a virtuosic investigation of the relationship between music as sound and music as text. At the heart of Zazulia’s study is the corpus of polyphonic motets and cyclic masses of the long fifteenth century that applied various schematic transformations to pre-existing musical material in order to “[complicate] the relationship between what is seen and what is heard” (p. 3). These transformations could be indicated by means of a verbal instruction—for example, “sing without ceasing,” or rather, “omit all the written-out rests in performance”—or by providing alternative mensuration signs, to name but two methods. Contrary to linear conceptions of Western notation’s development from ambiguity to clarity, this repertoire demonstrates that the mental acrobatics required of singers were not necessarily straightforward.Where Sight Meets Sound elucidates late-medieval compositional and aesthetic values, further complicates notions of musical periodicity and teleology, and demonstrates that pre-modern repertoires have much to contribute to the development of a “work concept” in music. Zazulia gainfully draws on methodologies from linguistics, art history, architecture, mathematics, and other fields. In this regard the book exemplifies the benefit of interdisciplinarity in music scholarship, as well as the subtlety with which it must be approached. It is clear from this study that musicians were equally invested in the written-out appearance of music as in its sound; neither is simply a manifestation of the other, but both must be considered if we are to understand what music was during the fifteenth century.Zazulia establishes her chronological scope in the Introduction, writing that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries must be evaluated together “not so much as a coherent period, but because changing our historical ambit yields different, useful perspectives” (p. 17). Throughout the book, she convincingly draws connections across a medieval-Renaissance periodic divide, but also brings to light intraperiod differences. Chapter 1, “Shrinking Songs,” investigates how cantus firmus transformation “became so rooted in the realm of the written—especially since it did not begin that way” (p. 28). Zazulia establishes a history for later cantus firmus transformations by way of Vitry’s motet Colla/Bona copied in 1376 in the Trémoille manuscript (F-Pn naf 23190). Curiously—considering the verbal canons and mensural indications that composers preferred by the mid-fifteenth century—the diminished note values of the tenor’s repetition are written out. Zazulia shows that the use of diminution was the beginning of the severance of a note’s visual appearance from its sonic manifestation, and thereby sets the stage for the following chapters.Chapter 2, “Before There Was Rhythm,” establishes the historical contingency of the modern system of rhythmic notation based on fixed duration. A key concept that emerges from this chapter is the notion of “affordance,” that is, what notation facilitated, even if beyond its intended purpose. For example, in Portio nature/Ida capillorum (attributed to Egidius de Pusieux) each statement of the tenor is to be sung according to a different mensuration, resulting in new rhythms with each iteration without notational changes. This type of transformation is possible only through the “semiotic loophole” built into mensural notation through which the same grapheme can take on different values according to the applied mensuration. Zazulia thereby illuminates links between music theory and composition, showing not only how the system of mensural notation was well suited to the repertoire it inscribed, but also how it stimulated new ways of composing music.In Chapter 3, “The Dangers of False Exceptionalism,” Zazulia takes on a “musicological classic”: Du Fay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores, sung at the dedication of Brunelleschi’s Florentine Duomo in March 1436. At issue is the reinterpretation of the tenor under four different mensurations: o, c, Ø, Ȼ, previously thought to result in sections of 6:4:2:3 relative lengths, and therefore understood as a special construction that echoed the dimensions of the cathedral building or of Solomon’s Temple. Zazulia refutes these earlier theories, which rendered the motet “exceptional,” and exposes the piece’s generic conventionality. She warns of the exoticization of medieval music, often encouraged by editorial procedures of modern editions. As attractive as finding hidden symbolisms might be, Zazulia reminds us that “Brunelleschi had to solve a problem of physics in order to ensure the dome would be structurally sound. Du Fay had to overcome no equivalent technical challenge” (p. 113).Chapter 4, “Signs and Metasigns,” considers the adoption of mensuration signs around 1420. Zazulia categorizes these as “metasigns”: notational elements that provide a framework or context through which “signs” (here, the note shapes) are interpreted. The interaction between signs and metasigns facilitates cantus firmus transformation and what Zazulia refers to as a “transformative impulse”: metasigns, such as mensuration signs or clefs, allow notes to appear unchanged on the page but sound different. After all, a breve in c looks the same as a breve in o; in the Missa Dixerunt discipuli, Eloy d’Amerval cycles through no fewer than sixteen rhythmic permutations by applying different mensuration signs but without changing a single note shape. Mensuration signs also allowed composers to write and notate rhythms in a different mensuration than the notation itself suggested. But since these visually contradictory mensurations were not audible, the ontological consequence is to reinforce the role of notation itself as an essential aspect of music.Chapter 5, “The Same, but Different,” examines “notational fixity,” a practice and underlying value system of maintaining the notational integrity of pre-existing material in new compositions while applying complex manipulations to them. She argues that even when the application of such complex transformations rendered pre-existing material aurally unrecognizable, the visual citation nonetheless remained. Here Zazulia discusses another musicological staple, Du Fay’s Missa Se la face ay pale, based on the tenor of the eponymous chanson. The arrangement of ligatures was maintained in the mass, despite the absence of text to determine it. In another example, Josquin goes so far as to adjust the well-known cantus firmus in his Missa L’homme armé to facilitate various transformations, favoring visual citation even over melodic citation.In Chapter 6, “Small Songs Made Big,” Zazulia investigates the “tinkering culture” surrounding augmentation, and the debates that ensued about how augmentation ought to be done. Here Zazulia elucidates fifteenth-century theories of augmentation (mainly those of Tinctoris and Prosdocimo), brilliantly analyzing pieces accordingly: the Gloria from Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus as exemplifying a substitution method of augmentation is contrasted with DuFay’s Missa se la face ay pale as exemplifying proportional method augmentation. In her analysis of Obrecht’s Missa Je ne demande, Zazulia shows that two methods could co-exist, serving different functions in the same work. Perhaps the greatest strength of this chapter is the analysis of the hitherto misunderstood Missa Gross senen which deploys twelve-fold augmentation. Zazulia discerns the enigmatic mass tenor’s original form and the manner of augmentation applied to it—two levels of augmentation (i.e., minim to breve equivalence) rather than proportional augmentation (i.e., every note is sung three times as long). As Zazulia aptly points out, “Although the Missa Gross senen is apparently unique, it has much to tell us about roads not taken in the fifteenth century” (p. 205).Chapter 7, “The Aesthetics of Transformation,” puts analyses from the preceding chapters into conversation with broader aesthetic concerns of the fifteenth century. Three case studies (Josquin’s Missa Malheur me bat, Obrecht’s Missa L’homme armé, and the anonymous Missa L’ardant desir), which demonstrate extreme cases of notational fixity, illuminate the decisions made when multiple priorities were simultaneously at play. In a final flourish, Zazulia discusses the Missa L’ardant desir, which survives only in resolution of the original canonic notation. Considering the unusual transformations in the Credo and Agnus Dei, such as the previously elusive “Et resurrexit” transformation (“Transpose down a fourth, continue omitting stems, break all ligatures that can be broken . . . and double note values” [Table 7.3]), Zazulia shows that this mass is an example of “true exceptionalism.”In her Conclusion, Zazulia reiterates a central question: “If it all sounds the same in the end, why go to all this effort?” (p. 237) She is not the first to pose this challenge, and she highlights the many critics who have regarded visual elements in notated music as self-indulgent, overly heady, pandering, reputation-building, and “Augenmusik.” But herein lies the key: “composers created musical excess—evidence of creative energy that has no purpose in a world in which musical aesthetics are confined to sound” (p. 247). Because composers did go to all this effort, an assumption that notation only provides reproducibility and permanence to a musical work can no longer stand; the “work” lies as much in its notation as in its sound. Thence derives Zazulia’s proposal of a new analytical category that centers pieces whose primary conceit is the in-performance combination of the aural and the visual.Where Sight Meets Sound demonstrates a deep understanding of a system of notation now unfamiliar to most. It is supported by detailed tables, notated examples, and graphic illustrations, each of which is a mammoth achievement. Zazulia writes for specialists but does not take fundamental concepts for granted. The book’s Introduction and the first three chapters stand out as being particularly advantageous to a graduate syllabus. The throughline of the book is only interrupted by a quibble of formatting—its chapter headings and subheadings. A book of such rigor and density of material would benefit from more descriptive—even if more pedantic—divisions that orient the reader within the exceedingly rich argumentation. In the end, Zazulia’s meticulous research and analysis shows how much work can be—and is yet to be—done in source-centered research, and how even the smallest details that emerge can provide broad insight

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