The ’Ars musica’ Attributed to Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles

169 Pages·2017·3.54 MB·English

by  Christian Meyer

The ‘Ars musica’ Attributed to Magister
Lambertus/Aristoteles
The treatise on musica plana and musica mensurabilis written by
Lambertus/Aristoteles is our main witness to thirteenth-century
musical thought in the decades between the treatises of Johannes
de Garlandia and Franco of Cologne. Most treatises on music of this
century – except for Franco’s treatise on musical notation – survive in
only a single copy; Lambertus’s Ars musica, extant in five sources, is
thus distinguished by a more substantial and long-lasting manuscript
tradition. Unique in its ambitions, this treatise presents both the
rudiments of the practice of liturgical chant and the principles of
polyphonic notation in a dense and rigorous manner like few music
treatises of its time – a conceptual framework characteristic of Parisian
university culture in the thirteenth century.
This new edition of Lambertus’s treatise is the first since Edmond
de Coussemaker’s of 1864. Christian Meyer’s meticulous edition is
displayed on facing pages with Karen Desmond’s English translation,
and the treatise and translation are prefaced by a substantial
introduction to the text and its author by Christian Meyer, translated
by Barbara Haggh-Huglo.
ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION MONOGRAPHS
General Editor: Simon P. Keefe
This series is supported by funds made available to the Royal Musical
Association from the estate of Thurston Dart, former King Edward Professor
of Music at the University of London. The editorial board is the Publications
Committee of the Association.
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Elena Abramov-van Rijk
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Margaret Seares
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Heinrich Schenker and Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata
Nicholas Marston
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Michael Burden
ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION
MONOGRAPHS
27
The ‘Ars musica’
Attributed
to Magister
Lambertus/
Aristoteles
Christian Meyer and Karen Desmond
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2015 Christian Meyer and Karen Desmond
Christian Meyer and Karen Desmond have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this
work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014939820
ISBN 9781472439833 (hbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
Christian Meyer, translated by Barbara Haggh-Huglo
Translator’s Note xxxvii
Karen Desmond
Edition and Translation 1
Christian Meyer, editor, and Karen Desmond, translator
Tabula abbreviationum 1
Sigla codicum et fontium 5
Explicatio abbreviaturarum 5
Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles, ‘Ars musica’
Musica plana 6
Musica mensurabilis 60
Critical and Explanatory Notes 117
Christian Meyer, translated by Barbara Haggh-Huglo
Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles, ‘Ars musica’
Musica plana 117
Musica mensurabilis 119
Indexes 123
Christian Meyer
Liturgical Chants and Polyphonic Compositions 123
Sources and Parallel Readings 124

Acknowledgements
This book would not have seen the light of day had it not been for
the assistance and generosity of Prof. Barbara Haggh-Huglo, who
initiated the project to publish my edition, translated my French
texts, ensured coordination between the collaborators and editors,
and took responsibility for the proofreading. I am equally grateful to
Dr. Michael Bernhard for his meticulous rereading of my edition and
to Dr. Karen Desmond for agreeing to translate the Latin texts, her
attentive and critical examination of them, and her fine translation. I
also wish to express my thanks to Prof. Mark Everist for his abundant
enthusiasm for the project and his advice as we prepared our proposal,
and to Mr. Vincent Besson, who engraved the musical examples of the
Musica mensurabilis, the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance
(UMR 7323 of the CNRS) at the Université François-Rabelais in Tours,
and its director, Dr. Philippe Vendrix. Finally, special thanks go to
Kayleigh Huelin of Ashgate Publishing for her patient and vigilant
attention during the preparation of this book for publication.
Christian Meyer
I am very grateful to Dr. Leofranc Holford-Strevens who graciously
and generously provided assistance and advice regarding the
translation of several tricky passages of Lambertus’s treatise: in
particular, his invaluable interpretation of the passages that open the
Musica plana and Musica mensurabilis and the verses that close each
half of the treatise. I would also like to thank Dr. Christian Meyer and
Prof. Barbara Haggh-Huglo for their careful reading and rereading
of my translation and their prompt and perceptive comments and
suggestions at every stage of the project.
Karen Desmond

Introduction
Christian Meyer
The treatise on music presented here in a new edition occupies a
unique place in the history of music theory of the last third of the
thirteenth century.1 Whereas most music treatises written at this time
survive in only a single copy, with the exception of Franco’s work on
musical notation written circa 1280, this treatise is distinguished by
a relatively substantial and long-lasting manuscript tradition, with
two complete copies, one probably accomplished in Paris around
1280 (P1) and the other in Italy near the end of the fifteenth century
(Si), and three incomplete copies, the first a manuscript copied in
Germany or in Flanders at the beginning of the fourteenth century
(P2) that includes only the first part of the treatise, then the copy that
Johannes Heerwagen (Johannes Hervagius) reproduced – and possibly
reworked – in his monumental edition of the works of Bede published
in Basel in 1563 (Hw), and finally, an almost complete copy of the Musica
mensurabilis of the mid-fourteenth century (Erf). Above all, this treatise
is distinguished by its ambition to set forth a musical ars embracing in
turn the rudiments of liturgical chants and the principles of polyphonic
notation. Furthermore, it maintains, in a dense and consistent manner
like few music treatises of its day, a conceptual framework and rigour
of expression infused by the university culture of the thirteenth
century. Finally, certain aspects of its author’s teaching, in particular
the theory of the nine rhythmic modes, seem to have enjoyed a certain
currency in their time and for a short while thereafter, to judge from the
reservations or criticisms that made it their object.
The first complete edition of the treatise was published in 1864 by
Charles Edmond de Coussemaker in volume one of his Scriptores. He
followed the oldest and most complete manuscript (P1), filling in P1’s
lacuna at the beginning of the treatise from Johannes Heerwagen’s
edition,2 but he intentionally neglected the readings of P23 and knew
nothing of the existence of the manuscript of Siena (Si). Coussemaker
1 A revised edition of the entire treatise was prepared by Gilbert Reaney († 22 March
2008) for the Corpus scriptorum de musica, but never published (Mark Everist, ‘Music and
Theory in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris: The Manuscript Paris, fonds lat. 11266’, Royal
Musical Association Research Chronicle 17 (1981): 42–64, here p. 52, note 1). The treatise
was also a planned dissertation topic submitted around 1980 (Murray H. Ralph, ‘The
Tractatus de musica of Lambertus. Edition, Translation, Commentary’, Ph.D. diss., New
York University), but the dissertation was never completed.
2 The attribution to Bede was rightly eliminated by Casimir Oudin in his edition of the
works of Bede of 1688 (vol. 1, p. 1685, reproduced in Patrologia latina, vol. 90 [1850], col.
76c).
3 Just when the first volume of the Scriptores was published, this (no longer extant)