The ''Ivrea Codex'' (''Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare, 115'') is a

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared Tanning (leather), untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves and goats. It has been used as a writing medium in West Asia and Europe for more than two millennia. By AD 400 ...

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

containing a significant body of 14th century French

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...

music. The codex contains

motets In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Engl ...

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

movements, and a handful of virelais, chaces, and ballades, composed in the middle of the 14th century. The

notation In linguistics and semiotics, a notation system is a system of graphics or symbols, Character_(symbol), characters and abbreviated Expression (language), expressions, used (for example) in Artistic disciplines, artistic and scientific disciplines ...

is characteristic of the

Ars Nova ''Ars nova'' ()Fallows, David. (2001). "Ars nova". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan. refers to a musical style which flourished in the Kingdom of ...

period. The manuscript is missing at least one gathering of Mass movements. The provenance of the codex is disputed. It was long thought to have been compiled in

Avignon Avignon (, , ; or , ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the Communes of France, commune had a ...

, the seat of the French Papacy, around 1370. However, the musically important court of Gaston Fébus has also been suggested. Most recently, however, Karl Kügle has asserted that the source was made in Ivrea itself, by musicians connected to the

Savoy Savoy (; )  is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south and west and to the Aosta Vall ...

ard court (possibly Jehan Pellicier), in the 1380s or 1390s. None of these three interpretations has become universally accepted. All of the music in the codex is anonymous, but attributions have been made on the basis of concordances to

Philippe de Vitry Philippe de Vitry (31 October 12919 June 1361) was a French composer-poet, bishop and Music theory, music theorist in the style of late medieval music. An accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, he was widely acknowledged as a le ...

Guillaume de Machaut Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to ...

, Magister Heinricus, Bararipton, Depansis, Matheus de Sancto Johanne, Orles, Sortes, and Loys. One piece attributed to Chipre is probably of Cypriot provenance. Kügle notes that '' ars subtilior''-style compositions are absent from the source;Kügle, ''op. cit.'', p. 552. however, sources without ''ars subtilior'' compositions far outnumber those containing these pieces, so it is hard to read particular significance into this statement.

References and further reading

Medieval music manuscript sources Ars nova {{medieval-music-stub