The Ivrea Codex is a parchment

Parchment

Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned; therefore, it is very...

 manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 containing a significant body of 14th century French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 polyphonic

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 music.

The codex contains motets, Mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

 movements, and a handful of virelai

Virelai

A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three formes fixes and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.A virelai is similar to a rondeau...

s, chaces, and ballade

Ballade (musical form)

A ballade refers to a one-movement musical piece with lyrical and dramatic narrative qualities.- Medieval ballades :The term ballade was used to describe one type of musical setting of French poetry common in the 14th and 15th centuries...

s, composed in the middle of the 14th century. The notation

Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...

 is characteristic of the Ars Nova

Ars nova

Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages: more particularly, in the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel and the death of the composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377...

 period. The manuscript is missing at least one gathering of Mass movements.

The provenance of the codex is disputed. It was long thought to have been compiled in Avignon

Avignon

Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...

, the seat of the French Papacy

Western Schism

The Western Schism or Papal Schism was a split within the Catholic Church from 1378 to 1417. Two men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope. Driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement, the schism was ended by the Council of Constance . The simultaneous claims to the papal chair...

 around 1370. However, the musically important court of Gaston Fébus has also been suggested. Most recently, however,
Karl Kügle has asserted that the source was made in Ivrea

Ivrea

Ivrea is a town and comune of the province of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Situated on the road leading to the Aosta Valley , it straddles the Dora Baltea and is regarded as the centre of the Canavese area. Ivrea lies in a basin that, in prehistoric times, formed a great lake...

 itself, by musicians connected to the Savoy

Savoy

Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....

ard court (possibly Jehan Pellicier), in the 1380s or 1390s. None of these three interpretations has become universally accepted.

All of the music in the codex is anonymous, but attributions have been made on the basis of concordances to Philippe de Vitry

Philippe de Vitry

Philippe de Vitry was a French composer, music theorist and poet. He was an accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, and may also have been the author of the Ars Nova treatise...

, Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....

, Magister Heinricus, Bararipton, Depansis, Matheus de Sancto Johanne, Orles, Sortes, and Loys. One piece attributed to Chipre is probably of Cypriot

Music of Cyprus

The music of Cyprus includes a variety of classical, folk and popular genres. Cypriot folk music is similar to the folk music of Greece, and includes dances like sousta, syrtos, Kalamatianos, zeimbekiko, and Rebetika.-Medieval music:...

 provenance. Kügle notes that ars subtilior

Ars subtilior

Ars subtilior is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory...

-style compositions are absent from the source; however, sources without ars subtilior compositions far outnumber those containing these pieces, so it is hard to read particular significance into this statement.