Music As We Know It

There is scarce information about many famous composers of medieval music. Sometimes musicologists and historians know nothing at all except for the name of a famous music creator and a couple of lines telling about the influence and greatness of a certain maestro.

The situation could have been even worse if we did not find invaluable medieval manuscripts that contain music pieces confirming the status of a medieval composer. One of these manuscripts is called the Chantilly Codex. As a web analyst and music specialist I can’t help admiring the thoroughness of the manuscript. It contains around 112 polyphonic pieces written mostly by famous French composers of the late medieval period ranging from the middle of 14th century up to the beginning of the 15th century. Specialists usually define the style of the music as ars subtilior. 

The Chantilly Codex allowed us to see how complex and experimental music was developed at that period. It represents practically all music styles including ballades, rondeaus and motets. It also told us about famous composers whose name is impossible to establish, there are just nicknames based on cryptic anagrams and palindromes.

One of the famous composers whose only piece was published in the codex was Borlet. Yet, there is a gnawing suspicion that this name is just the anagram of a French composer who serviced Martin V of Aragon in 1409. This does not make the research any easier, because that French composer’s name is also hard to decode. History brought to us more of his cryptic anagrams like Trebol, Triboll and Trebol from other contemporary sources. Could this be one and the same individual? We still don’t have an affirmative answer. The only existing theory is that all these nicknames might simply tell us one and the same first name of the mysterious composer -  “Robert”.

There are six pieces under the name Trebor in the Chantilly Codex. They show us that this famous composer served in European courts because he in his creations he describe historical events of that medieval period. One of his pieces tells us about the reign of the count of Foix, another about the invasion of Aragon kingdom the island of Sardinia in 1388.

Trebor was very influential and other contemporary sources cross-reference this as a fact. Among them are famous Avignon composers Grimace and Franciscus Andrieu who quote some of his music creations in their own works.

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