Composing Imitative Counterpoint around a Cantus Firmus: Two Motets by Heinrich Isaac
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the decades around 1500 composers learned to combine the new style of imitative polyphony with the older practice of basing a work on a cantus firmus. By applying Peter Schubert’s technique of modular analysis and his descriptions of common contrapuntal techniques to Heinrich Isaac's Inviolata integra et casta es Maria and Alma redemptoris mater, we can learn a great deal about compositional process in the period. Inviolata, which features a cantus firmus in strict canon after two measures, consists of two-, three-, and four-voice modules. Moreover, understanding the modular construction of the piece makes it possible to reconstruct the missing contratenor 2 part. In Alma redemptoris mater, which features a tenor cantus firmus that uses both long-note presentation and free paraphrase, Isaac uses four-voice modules, imitative presentation types involving modules, and nonmodular contrapuntal techniques probably derived from improvisatory practices. Understanding and labeling the contrapuntal techniques used in composition of this period allow us to analyze the music with a new precision, and to describe the differences between composers and genres.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it