Codex Chantilly II

The Chantilly codex is the most sumptuous of the manuscripts transmitting the fascinating polyphonic songs of the late fourteenth-century France in a style known as the “ars subtilior”, the “more subtle art.” In the songs of this period,composers exerted themselves to express ever more complex rhythms, inventing new notational symbols to express them. The expression of the musical rhythm through notation was such a hot-button issue that a number of songs in the manuscript actually take it on as a topic, becoming self-referential essays about musical composition. In addition, the composers of this music worked in the great courts of Europe, and politics and political events invariably made their way into the song repertory.