'Epulemur in azimis' from the manuscript D-TRs 322/1994: An attempted reconstruction in the form of a circular canon

Abstract

One of the forms of late-medieval popular polyphony in Central Europe was the circular canon, which in fifteenth-century theoretical treatises was termeda rotulum.A composition entitled 'Epulemur in azimis’ (fol. 210r) exhibits all the notational peculiarities of a rotulum, but was not interpreted as such because of many ambiguities in the writing of the melodic material. These ambiguities make it almost impossible to correctly coordinate the voices according to the rules of counterpoint. The possibility of a canon occurring in this piece was first hypothesised by Paweł Gancarczyk, who drew my attention to this source and provided crucial materials. The edition included in this article represents an attempt to reconstruct 'Epulemur in azimis’ in the form of a circular canon.

Keywords

• late medieval music
• Central Europe
• rotulum
• circle canon
• devotio moderna