( score here, recording here: try to follow along!) Some of these pieces also experimented with chromatic notes, undermining much of the sense of traditional modal structure: see for example Solage’s “Fumeux fume par fumée” (A smoker smokes smokily). Phillipe de Caserta’s “Par le grant senz,” for example, has simultaneous lines in 2/4 and 6/8, triplets, and frequent meter changes. One particularly confusing style has been nicknamed the Ars subtilior (loosely, “the complicated art”), which often uses confusing and elaborate rhythms that require tremendous skill to execute accurately. There was also, per the theoretical treatises, a greater use of thirds and sixths as acceptable harmonies-the musicians of the time called them “imperfect consonances,” language that is indirectly echoed in modern descriptions of the fourth, fifth, and octave as “perfect intervals” and the third and sixth as consonances which are not in the perfect category.Īs one might imagine, some of these early musicians clearly enjoyed the opportunity to notate highly complex rhythms. It also provides a coherent, if complex system for notating beats, divisions, subdivisions, tuplets (such as the triplet), meter changes, and syncopations.Īrs Nova notation also includes a far greater use of sharp and flat notes, as you can see from this score of Guillame de Machaut’s song “ Rose, liz, printemps, verdure.” While such notes had probably been in use for centuries (remember musica ficta), they seem to occur more frequently and to be more clearly notated in Ars Nova pieces.

Thus Ars Nova notation is at the root of modern concepts of simple and compound meter. The system allowed musicians to write down four basic meters, equivalent to 9/8 (three beats divided in three), 3/4 (three beats divided in two), 6/8 (two beats divided in three), and 2/4 (two beats divided in two). 1316) also reflect the new style.Īrs Nova notation was the first wide-spread style to use meter signatures in the modern sense. The motets preserved in the allegorical story Roman de Fauvel (c. 1320) and Philippe de Vitry’s Ars Nova (c. Yet the innovations of the Ars Nova don’t seem to have the same intricate connection with Church music or liturgical practice: The style is named after theory treatises, including Johannes de Muris’ Ars novae musicae (c.

European notation, as we have seen, was closely tied to the music of the Catholic Church and to the development of polyphony (which had led to the emergence of rhythmic notation in the first place). This lesson provides a quick overview of the style described as the “Ars Nova” (new art), which saw the emergence of a new style of rhythmic notation and new musical practices.

Ars nova meaning