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cantus firmus

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cantus firmus

In music, any familiar melody employed in counterpoint as a reference for the invention of an accompanying melody.

In early music, multiple parts were composed one at a time, each referring to the cantus firmus, but not to any other, with sometimes strange harmonic results, for example the final cadence E minor–G major–F major.



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Moreover, the composer has chosen as a cantus firmus the first fou r words and the first fourteen notes of the Introit of the Mass of the Dedication of a Church, Terr bills est locus iste, which he disposes in quasi-canonic fashion in the two lower voices in two groups of seven notes.
His abiding interest in cantus firmus technique might at first come as something of a surprise to those familiar with the mid-century compositional practice of Adrian Willaert and other masters who attended increasingly to the semantic and syntactic valences of texts rather than the manipulation of contrapuntal relationships per se.
 
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