Torino 6 unica. Un'indagine preliminare sul manoscritto Varia 42/2 della Biblioteca Reale

Turin’s Royal Library preserves an early-14th-century parchment manuscript containing three conducti and thirty-one motets. Six of its items (one conductus and five motets) are unica, yet their verbal texts have never been critically edited thus far. This article provides a full transcription and a comment of the texts, both in Latin and in French; moreover, it offers a preliminary survey on the entire manuscript, summing up the hypotheses surfaced along one century of episodic attention devoted to its content, before and after its only full transcription, published in 1953. The relationship to the two main collections of motets (mss. Bamberg and Montpellier) and to many manuscripts preserving trouvère songs (often with, sometimes without music) is one of the primary focuses; furthermore, the article explores the plurality of models represented in the small collection of conducti and in the large collection of motets, figuring out a possible relationship between them. While no conclusive statement can be made in the absence of a critical edition of all texts and music, some phenomena concerning the unica are highlighted: among these, use of Latin vs French Tenor, presence vs absence of a rhythmic mode in one or all parts, “Petronian” features of the Triplum, use of the same melody in the Tenor of a motet and in one of the upper voices in another, presence vs absence of spots showing voice-exchange (Stimmtausch), number and position of thirds in the resulting harmony.