The Chantilly Codex is a manuscript of medieval music

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

 containing pieces from the style known as the Ars subtilior

Ars subtilior

Ars subtilior is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory...

. It is held in the museum at the Château de Chantilly

Château de Chantilly

The Château de Chantilly is a historic château located in the town of Chantilly, France. It comprises two attached buildings; the Grand Château, destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Petit Château which was built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency...

 in Chantilly, Oise

Chantilly, Oise

Chantilly is a small city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune in the department of Oise.It is in the metropolitan area of Paris 38.4 km...

.

Most of the compositions in the Chantilly Codex date from ca. 1350-1400. There are 112 pieces total, mostly by French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composers, and all of them polyphonic

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

. The codex contains examples of many of the most popular courtly dance styles of its time, such as ballade

Ballade (musical form)

A ballade refers to a one-movement musical piece with lyrical and dramatic narrative qualities.- Medieval ballades :The term ballade was used to describe one type of musical setting of French poetry common in the 14th and 15th centuries...

s, rondeau

Rondeau (music)

The rondeau was a Medieval and early Renaissance musical form, based on the contemporary popular poetic rondeau form. It is distinct from the 18th century rondo, though the terms are likely related...

s, virelai

Virelai

A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three formes fixes and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.A virelai is similar to a rondeau...

s, and isorhythm

Isorhythm

Isorhythm is a musical technique that arranges a fixed pattern of pitches with a repeating rhythmic pattern.-Detail:...

ic motet

Motet

In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...

s. Some of the motets are rhythmically

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

 extremely complex, and are written in intricately exact musical notation

Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...

. Two pieces by Baude Cordier

Baude Cordier

Baude Cordier was a French composer from Rheims; it has been suggested that Cordier was the nom de plume of Baude Fresnel. Cordier's works are considered among the prime examples of ars subtilior...

 were added at a slightly later date at the front of the manuscript, and use unusual shapes to reflect their musical contents. The piece "Belle, Bonne, Sage" (image right) is a play on words on the "Cor" ("heart") in "Cordier".

The Chantilly Codex is known to contain music from the composers Johannes Symonis, Jehan Suzay, Pierre de Molins

Pierre de Molins

Pierre de Molins or Molaines was an early trouvère. He knew either Gace Brulé or the Chastelain de Couci, two of the first-generation trouvères. He was probably a member of a landed family of Épernay, or possibly of a family resident in and around Noyon...

, Goscalch, Solage

Solage

Solage was a French composer. He composed the most pieces in the Chantilly Codex, the principal source of music of the ars subtilior, the manneristic compositional school centered around Avignon at the end of the century.-Life:Nothing is known about his life, beyond what can be inferred from the...

, Baude Cordier

Baude Cordier

Baude Cordier was a French composer from Rheims; it has been suggested that Cordier was the nom de plume of Baude Fresnel. Cordier's works are considered among the prime examples of ars subtilior...

, Grimace

Grimace (composer)

Grimace was a French composer active in the mid-to-late 14th century.Grimace was active in the period of music history known as the ars nova and was probably a contemporary of Guillaume de Machaut, since his compositions lack the complicated rhythms of the Ars subtilior...

, Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....

, Jean Vaillant, Franciscus Andrieu, Cunelier, Trebor

Trebor (composer)

Trebor was a 14th-century composer of polyphonic chansons, active in Navarre and other southwest European courts circa 1380-1400. He may be the same person also called Triboll, Trebol, and Borlet in other contemporaneous sources...

, and Senleches

Jacob Senleches

Jacob Senleches was a Franco-Flemish composer and harpist of the late Middle Ages. He composed in a style commonly known as the ars subtilior....

.

Editions

Most of the 112 pieces are found in Willi Apel, ed., French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century (American Institute of Musicology, 1970)

Selected Recordings

The following recordings include selections from the 112 pieces:

• Ensemble Organum (Marcel Pérès, dir.). Codex Chantilly: Airs de cour du XIVe siècle. Arles: Harmonia Mundi, 1987. CD recording HMC 901252.
• Ensemble P. A. N. Ars Magis Subtiliter: Secular Music of the Chantilly Codex'. San Francisco: New Albion, 1989. CD recording NA 021.
• Medieval Ensemble of London (Peter Davies and Timothy Davies, dir. Ce diabolic chant: Ballades, Rondeaus & Virelais of the Late Fourteenth Century. ) Florilegium Series. London: Éditions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1983. LP recording DSDL 704; Reissued 2007 on L’Oiseau-Lyre CD 475 9119.
• New London Consort (Philip Pickett, dir.). Ars subtilior. Glasgow, Scotland: Linn Records, 1998. CD recording CKD 039.
• De Caelis Codex Chantilly dir. Laurence Brisset. Aeon 2010.