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Musicology in the Making 
I appreciate very much your lean study on CB 143. But I have no clue where you got the term “atavistic polyphony” from. Could you illuminate me?
Thanks
Hans
Dear Hans,
Thanks for your encouraging comment about CB143!
Regarding the term ‘atavism’: for a more recent use in Anglophone scholarship, you might like to look at Bryan Gillingham’s ‘Atavism and Innovation in a Late Medieval Proser’, in: La Sequenza Medievale, Atti del Convegno Internazionale Milano 7–8 aprile 1984, ed. by Agostino Ziino, Lucca 1992, pp. 87–105. Terms with a similarly negative slant abound in the German literature on early polyphony: examples are Arnold Geering’s use of the term ‘retrospektiv’ (‘Retrospektive mehrstimmige Musik in französischen Handschriften des Mittelalters’, in: Miscelánea en homenaje a monseñor Higinio Angles, vol. 1, Barcelona 1958–1961, pp. 307–314), or Jacques Handschin’s concept of ‘Rückständigkeit’ (‘Peripheres’, in: Mitteilungen der schweizerischen musikforschenden Gesellschaft 2 (1935), pp. 24–32).
Ludwig Finscher’s distinction in relation to later repertoires between art-music and ‘Gebrauchsmusik’ that is merely ‘usuell’ also fits into this kind of narrative (Die Musik des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Laaber 1989; see also the comments on Finscher’s usage in Christian Thomas Leitmeir, Jacobus de Kerle (1531/32–1591): Komponieren im Spannungsfeld von Kirche und Kunst, Turnhout 2009, p. 65).
I hope this clarification is helpful!