![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Medieval discourse about both the theory and practice of music featured much debate about the views of moderni and antiqui from when Guido of Arezzo devised a new way of recording pitch in the early eleventh century to the complaints of Jacobus in the early fourteenth century about new forms of measured music in the ars nova. There was also a shift from a Boethian notion that practical music was a manifestation of cosmic music, towards a more Aristotelian model, that privileged music as sensory experience. That this could have a profound effect on human emotion was articulated by Johannes de Grocheio writing about music c. 1270 and Guy of Saint-Denis soon after 1300 about plainchant. Jacobus, writing in the 1320s, was troubled by this shift in thinking about music not as reflections of transcendent realities, but as sounds of human invention that served to move the soul. He argued that musical patterns should reflect a transcendent harmony that was both cosmic and celestial.
Notes on contributors
Constant J. Mews is director of the Centre for Religious Studies and Professor within the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University. He has published widely on medieval thought, ethics, and religious culture, with particular reference to the writings of Abelard, Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen and their contemporaries, including Abelard and Heloise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) and The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France, 2nd edn (New York: McMillan Palgrave, 2008). His research interests range from the early Middle Ages to late medieval religious and philosophical culture, as well as the interface between music theory and intellectual tradition.
Carol J. Williams as an adjunct research fellow of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies of Monash University has an established academic career in both musicology and history. She is one of the collaborating editors and translators of the Ars Musice of Johannes de Grocheio (Medieval Institute Publications, 2011) and the Tractatus de tonis of Guy of Saint-Denis (Medieval Institute Publications, forthcoming 2017). Solo publications include the essay “Modes and Manipulation: Music, the State, and Emotion” in Ordering Emotions in Europe, 1100-1800 (Brill, 2015), a memorial volume for Philippa Maddern. She is also a performing musician, playing harp and rebec in the early music ensemble, Acord.
Notes
1 Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae, ed. Hertz, Pref., 1: “cuius auctores, |quanto sunt iuniores, tanto perspicaciores, et ingeniis floruisse et diligentia ualuisse omnium iudicio confirmantur eruditissimorum … ”.
2 On the introduction of the term modernus by Cassiodorus and others see, Curtius, European Literature, 254.
3 While no examples of modernitas are recorded in the Brepols Library of Latin Texts, the Corpus Corporum (www.mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/) identifies three authors using the term prior to Salutati, De laboribus Herculis, 1.11.50, 2.5.1, 3.20.47, 49, and 62. These are Berthold of Constance, Annales [1075], PL 147: 359A, speaking of the reforms of Gregory VII as restoring canons and practices that “modernity” had annulled; Suger of Saint-Denis, declaring that neither in “modernity or antiquity had France ever performed more brilliantly” in a victory against Germany, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, 28, 230; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. Migne, PL 155: 868A, referring to “in the modernity of his reign (of Baldwin I)”.
4 On this theme, there have been many studies. See, for example, Tanay, Noting Music, Marking Culture and various articles of hers: “The Transition from the Ars Antiqua”; “The Image of Music and the Bodies of Knowledge”; and “Time and Money”. On the Boethian image in the twelfth century, see the Ph.D. dissertation of Hicks, “Music, Myth, and Metaphysics”.
5 Hartmann comments briefly on this distinction in music theory in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, “‘Modernus’ und ‘Antiquus’”. No other paper in this volume (Antiqui und Moderni) speaks about music.
6 Leodiensis, Speculum musicae, 7: 1.
7 Karen Desmond has produced some important studies of Jacobus and his milieu particularly her Ph.D. Dissertation, “Behind the Mirror” and article “New Light on Jacobus”. Bent argues in Magister Jacobus de Ispania that Jacobus is Jacobus Hispaniae, an illegitimate child of Enrique of Castile, the half-brother of Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I of England, who became an Oxford master and spent significant periods of time on the continent. She argues that the references (often critical) to the practice of chant in certain secular churches of Liège (Book 6) do not imply that he came from Liège. Her hypothesis has been challenged by Wegman, “Jacobus de Ispania and Liège” in which he argues that Hispania is a form of the name of the region of Hesbaye, near Liège.
8 See de Muris, Notitia artis musicae, and de Vitry, Ars Nova. See also Fuller, “A Phantom Treatise of the Fourteenth Century?” and Desmond, “Did Vitry Write”.
9 Hughes, “Franco of Cologne” acknowledges that most authorities date his Ars cantus mensurabilis to around 1260, although observes that some scholars date it to c. 1280.
10 Guy of Saint-Denis, Tractatus de Tonis; a new edition and translation of this text is being prepared by the authors, with C. Jeffreys and J. N. Crossley, for the TEAMS series (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute). References below cite the forthcoming edition as well as that of Sieglinde van de Klundert's 1998 edition. While his Tractatus seems to come from the first decade of the fourteenth century, there are grounds for identifying him with Gui de Châtres, who became treasurer and then abbot of Saint-Denis 1326–1342/43 (when he stepped down on grounds of age) and was born perhaps c. 1270.
11 Guy's involvement in compiling this anthology is discussed in Mews et al., “Guy of Saint-Denis and the Compilation of Texts” http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2008articles/article6.html (accessed 12 May 2017). For editions of the other two “modern” texts in this anthology, see Grocheio, Ars musice, and de Cruce, Tractatus de tonis.
12 The Odyssey 12.39–54, 154–765 and 184–200; Vergil, Aeneid III, 420–32 concerning Scylla, the six-headed monster and Charybdis the whirlpool; and V: 838–842 for a reference to the Sirens, which no longer sing, perhaps because of the successful escape of Odysseus.
13 Plato, The Republic X, 614–21.
14 Macrobius, Commentaria in Somnium Scipionis 2.3.1, 103; Haar, “Music of the Spheres”,
15 Plato, Timaeus, 44.
16 Fulgentius Mythographus, Mitologiarium libri tres 2.8, 48.
17 See, for example, John of Salisbury complaining about male voices as imitating those of sirens in Policraticus 1.6, 48–9; Pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux, Liber de modo bene vivendi. PL 184: 1285C–1286A.
18 Boethius, Philosophiae consolatio 1 prosa 1, 1.
19 Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus, 112–3: “Unde verissime poeta dixit: septem discrimina vocum, quia etsi plures fiant, non est aliarum adiectio sed earundem renovatio et repetitio. Hac nos de causa omnes sonos secundum Boetium et antiquos musicos septem litteris figuravimus, cum moderni quidam nimis incaute quattuor tantum signa posuerint, quintum et quintum videlicet sonum eodem ubique charactere figurantes, cum indubitanter verum sit quod quidam soni a suis quintis omnino discordant nullusque sonus cum suo quinto perfecte concordat. Nulla enim vox cum altera praeter octavam perfecte concordat”.
20 Guido of Arezzo, Epistola ad Michahelem in Regule rithmice, 530–1: “Autem curiosus fuerit, labellum nostrum cui nomen Micrologus est querat; librum quoque Enchiridion quem reverentissimus Oddo abbas luculentissime composuit perlegat. Cuius exemplum in solis figuris sonorum dimisi, quia parvuli condescendi, Boetium in hoc sequens, cuius liber non cantoribus sed solis philosophis utilis est”.
21 Guido of Arezzo, Regule rithmice in Regule rithmice, 348: “Sunt qui addunt in acutis iuxta primam alteram, / sed Gregorio vix placet patri hec lascivia; / at moderni sapientes hanc neque commemorant. / Quamvis ergo apud quosdam ipsa fiat vocula, / apud multos tamen iure dicitur superflua. / Altera vero secunda semper est autentica”.
22 Affligemensis, De musica cum tonario, 59: “Moderni autem subtilius omnia atque sagacius intuentes, quia, ut ait Priscianus, quanto iuniores tanto perspicaciores, viderunt notas illas ad melodiam quamlibet exprimendam non sufficere … ..”.
23 de Zamora, Ars musica, 42: “praesens tempus, ut infra dicetur, nouas considerationes et nouas experientias habuerunt, et prioribus addiderunt, sicut in aliis scientiis satis patet. Siquidem secundum Priscianum in principio Maioris: quanto iuniores, tanto perspicatiores, ut patet etiam [in] antiquis philosophis, deinde in Socrate, deinde in Platone, tandem in Aristotele iuniore tempore Alexandri Magni”.
24 Ibid., 44: “Experientia nouimus, aues ad audiendam melodiam festinanter descendere, ipsam libenter addiscere, discipulas liberaliter erudire”.
25 Bacon, Metaphysica, 5.
26 de Moravia, Tractatus de musica, xi–xiii, for discussion of whether de Moravia might refer to Bohemia or Moray in Scotland, as suggested by Michel Huglo, without deciding the issue.
27 Tractatus de musica 25, 167: “Sed modernorum, ut uidetur, melior est opinio, qui scilicet in tempore armonico motui subjecto successionem ponunt”.
28 Ibid., 168: “Et secundum hoc quantum ad aliquid antiquorum saluatur opinio. Vnde a modernis quidem nomen sed res ipsa non abicitur, sed interdum recipitur, ut potea ostendetur, hoc igitur tempus armonicum est mensura omnium notarum, qua scilicet unaqueue mensuratur nota”.
29 Baltzer argues that he flourished c. 1270–1320 (and is thus distinct from the grammaticus of that name, c. 1190–c. 1270) in her article, “Johannes de Garlandia”. This seems unlikely given that his De musica plana demonstrates no knowledge of Aristotelian texts. It seems much more likely to have been written c. 1230, as argued by Meyer. As Hammond and Roesner note in their Grove discussion “Hieronymus de Moravia”, Jerome must have completed his Tractatus soon after 1271; nothing is to prevent Jerome having written the treatise in the 1260s, just as Humbert of Romans was reforming the Dominican liturgy, and then adding the excerpt from Thomas Aquinas c. 1270/71.
30 Tractatus de musica, Prol., 4, quoting the verse of Guido's Micrologus about the distance between Musici and cantores from John (Cotton) of Affligem, and 9, mentioning Guido within a passage from Hugh of Saint-Victor.
31 Tractatus de musica, 40, in which the text of John Cotton (n. 27 above) is quoted but with the phrase of Priscian omitted.
32 Tractatus de musica, 23–31.
33 Tractatus de musica, 31: “Hic est igitur modus et sentencia Aristotilis dictam opinionem reprobantis. Sed que tantorum uirorum sit uerior opinio, id non temerarie diffinimus, sed nostris maioribus determinanda relinquimus”.
34 In our edition-translation of Grocheio, Ars musice (n. 11 above) we proposed a date of around 1275, rather than 1300, as conventionally claimed. While Grocheio's arguments about the civic benefits of different types of music recall Aristotle’s Politics, the fact that this enthusiast for Aristotle does not explicitly name this work, first referred to by Thomas Aquinas in Paris (c. 1269–1272) in his Summa theologie, suggests that Grocheio may have been writing no later than c. 1270.
35 Grocheio, Ars musice 0.2; he alludes to Aristotle, Physica 3.1.200b12: A proper sensible is something that can be sensed by one of the five senses only. Cf. Aristotle, De anima 2.6.418a15.
36 Grocheio, Ars musice, 0.5.
37 Grocheio, Ars musice 5.6, referring to Aristotle, De caelo 2.9.290b30. Aristotle is not mentioned in the Theorica planetarum Gerardi; see Pedersen, “The Origins of the Theorica planetarum”.
38 Grocheio, Ars musice 6.2.
39 Grocheio, Ars musice 16.1: “Omne autem mensurans prima mensura utitur aut eius virtute operatur, quemadmodum omne movens in virtute primi moventis. Primum enim in unoquoque genere causa est omnium posteriorum. ut in .10o. prime philosophie scriptum est. Prima autem mensura tempus dicitur sive in re fuerit sive secundum intellectum tantum. Est enim tempus mensura motus et est primi motus et primi mobilis et ex consequenti cuiuslibet alterius prout a philosopho subtiliter perscrutatur”. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica 10.1.1052b18, trans. Moerbeke, 196: See also Metaphysica 2.2.994a12, trans. Moerbeke, 44, and Aristotle, Physica 7.1.242a17, trans. James of Venice, 257–8.
40 Grocheio, Ars musice 17.10: “Alii autem istos modos ad .5. per reductionem posuerunt, puta magister Franco. Reductio tamen ut videtur pluralitatem non impedit. Quamquam enim omnis sillogismi ad .4. primos reducuntur: propter hoc non est eorum pluralitas impedita. Et forte qui .6. modos posuerunt melius dixerunt; plurimi enim modernorum adhuc eis utuntur et ad illos omnes suos cantus reducunt. Si vero fuerint tantum .6. sive plures sive pauciores parum differt, quia eadem mensura utrobique reservatur”. He cites Franco of Cologne, Ars cantus mensurabilis 3.1–4, 26–27: “Modus est cognitio soni longis brevibusque temporibus mensurati … Nos autem quinque tantum ponimus, quia ad hos quinque omnes alii reducuntur”.
41 Hentschel, “Der verjagte Dämon”. See also Dyer, “Music, the Passions, and Virtue in Two Quodlibetal Questions”. We are indebted to the author for sharing an advance copy of this work. Catherine Jeffreys explores Peter's impact in “The Exchange of Ideas about Music”.
42 Mews, Crossley, and Williams, “Guy of St Denis on the Tones”.
43 Guy, Tractatus 1.2.6, 2: 23: “Sed istud dictum ultimo magis Pitagoricum vel Platonicum videtur quam Aristotelis opinio vel veritatem consentaneum”.
44 Guy, Tractatus 1.4.1, 2: 38.
45 Ibid., 39.
46 Guy, Tractatus 1.4.2, 2: 40.
47 Ibid., 41.
48 Guy, Tractatus 1.3.20, 2: 35.
49 Guy, Tractatus 1.4.22, 2: 55–6: “Sciendum est autem quod, licet posteriores modernique musici vel cantores qui ecclesiasticos cantus ultimo composuisse videntur, plerumque secundum ordinem octo tonorum processerint, … antiquiores tamen et primi cantores de tali ordine, qui potius ad ornatum quemdam vel decorem quam ad necessitatem divini officii introductus videtur, raro vel numquam videntur curasse, eo forte quod ad mediocritatem ac sobrietatem cantuum vel etiam qualitatem materie, super quam cantus ecclesiasticos fundaverunt, attendere potius videbantur. Sicut enim, ut alibi scribitur, sermones exigendi sunt secundum materiam subiectam”.
50 Aristotle, Ethics 1.3.1094b27: “Sermones inquirendi sunt secundum materiam de qua sunt”.
51 See n. 6 above.
52 Jacobus, Speculum musicae I.8, 1: 29.
53 Ibid., 29–32, alluding to Robert Kilwardby on the place of music, De ortu scientiarum 18–21, 50–60.
54 On Kilwardby, see Thom and Lagerlund, A Companion to the Philosophy and on the Oxford condemnations, Callus, The Oxford Condemnation.
55 See above n. 7.
56 Jacobus, Speculum musicae VI.61, 6: 162; see above n. 22.
57 Muris, Notitia, 67 (see above n. 8).
58 Ibid., 68–9.
59 Docta sanctorum patrum, in A. Richter and A. Friedberg (eds), Corpus iuris canonici (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1922), 1: 1255–7. On this decree see Hucke, “Das Dekret”.