During the fourteenth century, the church was recieving widespread accusations of corruption. The Roman de Fauvel was the venue for the voice of musicians and poets about this corruption. The Roman de Fauvel is a satirical poem written by Gervais du Bus in 1310. The main character of du Bus' poem is a horse named Fauvel. Fauvel was given his name by taking the first letters of the seven sins accused of the church: Flaterie, Averice, Vilanie, Variete (fickleness), Envie, and Laschete (cowardice). Music, however, was not added to the Fauvel until 1316, by Chaillou de Pesstain. Pesstain introduced 167 pieces of music to the Fauvel. Among these 167 compositions, some date back to the twelvth century, placed where appropriate within the context of the poem, while others were newly composed at the time of Pesstain's work. Many of these newly composed pieces are Ars Nova (New Art), and accredited to Phillipe de Vitry, who also happened to be the founder of ars nova.
Ars Nova, simply put, is the French style of music in the fourteenth century. But there are many finer points to this style. Sanders, a musicologist, states that the essential features of an ars nova motet are: "a superstructure of two voices moving predominantly in semibreves and minims over a slow tenor." (Leech-Wilkinson, 29) The top voices, duplum and triplum (and possibly quadruplum), move mostly in a quick rhythm, with structured phrasing, over a slower moving tenor, bottom voice. A larger, regular phrase structure is created by the overlap of that of the top voices over that of the tenor's talea. Talea is a regular rhythmic pattern held by the tenor, that is repeated over and over throughout the motet.
Through the help of the talea, another important aspect of the ars nova comes accross: the mixing of duple (a two beat feel) and triple (a three beat feel) meters. This process of changing meter was known as coloring. The term coloring originated from de Vitry's use of a different colored ink to write the shift in meters. This shifting of meters creates an important aspect of the motet's structure. Color is another involved part of the ars nova. Color is the repitition of a sequence of pitches. The combination of color and talea is known as isorhythm. Now that the ars nova is understood, we can look at a couple of ars nova motets that are found in the Roman de Fauvel from the list of many.
In Scariotis/Jure, the composer was deliberate in setting each couplet of the top two voices as seperate phrases ending with a rest. To the first three phrases of the motetus voice, there are five phrases of the triplum squeezed in, to make up for the triplum's extra lines. But after these first few phrases, the two voices join together. In the motet La mesnie/J'ai fait, the triplum and motetus are not brought together until halfway through the work. But when they come together, they do so on "two lines that seem to embody the essence of the texts: the triplum "vous servant sans contredit" ("serving you without objection," i.e. one phrase fitting in exactly with the other?) and the motetus "nequetant tout sanz delay" ("notwithstanding all, without delay," i.e. without overlap?)" (Leech-Wilkinson, 292). A thought is that this coming together on these two lines is done so for symbolic purposes.(Leech, 299) Afterwards, the motet is ended with a more regular phrase structure.
Ars nova motets are found in the Roman de Fauvel simply because, at the time when music was added to the Fauvel, the ars nova style of composition was in full force. So, naturally, any newly composed motets that Chaillou de Pesstain added, would have been in this predominant style. But to us, a greater importance is placed on the occurance of ars nova in the Roman de Fauvel: the Roman de Fauvel is a collection of motets, including many of ars nova, that has actually survived the years for musicologists to study today.