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OVERVIEW AND HISTORY Musically the productions of the ''ars subtilior'' are highly refined, complex, difficult to sing, and probably were produced, sung and enjoyed by a small audience of specialists and connoisseurs. Hoppin suggests the superlative ''ars subtilissima'', saying, "not until the twentieth century did music again reach the most subtle refinements and rhythmic complexities of the manneristic style." They are almost exclusively Secular Songs , and have as their subject matter love, war, chivalry, and stories from classical antiquity; there are even some Song s written in praise of public figures (for example Antipope Clement VII ). Daniel Albright (2004, p.10) compares Avant-garde and Modernist Music of the 20th Century 's "emphasis on generating music through technical experiment" to the precedent set by the ars subtilior movement's "autonomous delight in extending the kingdom of sound." He cites Baude Cordier's Perpetual Canon '' Tout Par Compas '' (All by compass am I composed), notated on a circular staff. Albright contrasts this motivation with "expressive urgency" and "obedience to rules of craft" and, indeed, ''ars subtilior'' was coined to avoid the negative connotations of the terms ''manneristic style'' and '''''mannered notation'''''. However, many of the devices first used by the ''ars subtilior'' composers became standard Compositional Technique s in the Renaissance , indicating that some of their music must have been widely known and distributed, i.e. it was not merely a dead-end artistic movement, even though subsequent music sounds nothing like it. The center of activity of the style was Avignon at the end of the Babylonian Captivity and during the Great Schism ( 1378 – 1417 ), the time during which the Western Church had a pope both in Rome and in Avignon. The town on the Rhône had developed into an active cultural center, and produced the most significant surviving body of secular song of the late fourteenth century. From Avignon the style spread into northern Spain and as far as Cyprus (which was a French cultural outpost at the time); in addition, a handful of Italian composers such as Zacara Da Teramo composed in a manneristic style related to the ''ars subtilior''. NOTATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS One of the techniques of the ''ars subtilior'' involved using red notes, or "coloration"; these red notes indicated a reduction of note values by one third. For instance, a three bar passage if written entirely in red notes would only be two bars long. If a "perfect" passage would be written in red notes it would become syncopated; this syncopation was considered a Hemiola (see example 1). Triplets occurred when an "imperfect" passage was transcribed into red notes (see example 2).
Composers in the ''ars subtilior'' style often wrote their manuscripts themselves in unusual and expressive shapes. In addition to the circular canon by Baude Cordier, a piece by Jacob Senleches , ''La Harpe de melodie'', is written in the shape of a harp; this and other examples of the unusual notational style of the ''ars subtilior'' are preserved in the Chantilly Codex , the primary source for this music, and also the Modena Codex . Composers in Ars Subtilior Style
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