Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volume 10, Issue 19/20, April/November 2002

Estética, Filosofia da Arte

Juízo Estético e Filologia Musical
Em Torno de um Cancioneiro Polifónico do Século XV

The author defines his view of music in the Western classical tradition as an evanescent, phenomenological object dependent both on written parameters and an adequate interpretative framework. For him, this implies, on the one hand, that philological reasoning should not ignore hermeneutics (thus rejecting positivism) and on the other, that an aesthetical judgement of a historical object should aim at historical adequacy (thus rejecting subjectivism). Against current musicological undervaluation of editorial tasks, he proposes to dignify their intellectual reach, demonstrating how philological reasoning and aesthetical judgement converge in the edition of polyphonic music, namely, three songs in MS. 714 of the Oporto Public Library, recently published in facsimile (Porto, Campo das Letras, 2001), newly transcribed in the Appendix. He painstakingly describes the steps that lead to editorial corrections, interpretation of variants, suggestions of musica ficta, and text underlay in Joye’s “Poy che crudel fortuna” and anonymous’ “Hélas!, n’aray-je jamais mieux?”. Then he discusses the technical, aesthetical, and rhetorical significance of implied E-flats in “Fortune, laisse moy la vie”. The conclusion draws the reader’s attention to the fact that a good musical edition depends as much on sound philological reasoning, as on pure musicianship.