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A Treatise on Musicians from ?c. 1400: The Tractatulus de differentiis et gradibus cantorum by Arnulf de St Ghislain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Christopher Page
Christopher Page*
Affiliation:
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
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Extract

The historian John Keegan was one of the first to ask the simple yet searching question: what actually happens in combat? It is well known that English footsoldiers received a charge by French knights at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, but what took place when men and horses collided? Keegan gives his answers in The Face of Battle, and it may be time for musicologists to modulate the sonorous questions that he poses there for their own purposes. What actually happened, for example, when a motet by Johannes Ciconia was performed in northern Italy c 1400? When friends and associates gathered together to hear such music, what was the nature of their various musical aptitudes and interests? Did women participate in the performances? What was the role of instrumentalists? Some of these questions, no doubt, will never find an answer; there are no medieval chronicles devoted to musical gatherings as there are chronicles – and many other writings – devoted to battles like Agincourt. None the less, literary and iconographical sources are among those which may still have something to reveal about ‘the face of performance’ (to coin a phrase after Keegan's own), and the purpose of this article is to examine the contents of one that has been unjustly neglected: the Tractatulus de differentiis et gradibus cantorum by Arnulf de St Ghislain. This brief treatise classifies the kinds of musicians who performed or admired polyphonic music and is therefore quite exceptional among the works loosely classified as medieval music theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 117 , Issue 1 , 1992 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1992

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References

I am most grateful to Dr David Fallows, who first drew the treatise by Arnulf de St Ghislain to my attention and who read an earlier version of this article, to Roy Gibson and to Dr Daniel Leech-Wilkinson I owe a special debt of gratitude to Prof BonnieJ Blackburn and to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for many helpful comments and correctionsGoogle Scholar

1 Keegan, John, The Face of Battle (London, 1976)Google Scholar

2 There are almost no bibliographical or biographical sources pertaining to Arnulf de St Ghislain Those that do exist (such as the Biographie nationale de Belgique, i (Brussels, 1866), s v ‘Arnulphe de Saint-Ghislain’) are manifestly based on Gerbert's text alone Among the most reliable of the materials deriving from Gerbert's text is the discussion, with translation, of one section of the Tractatulus in Hugo Riemann, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, trans Raymond H Haggh (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1962), 184 The entry ‘Arnulph of St Gilles’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980) leaves something to be desired, as does the entry ‘Arnulf von S Gillen’ in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel, 1939–51, hereafter MGG) See below, note 5Google Scholar

3 See van Overstraeten, Daniel, ‘Du hameau à la ville Saint-Ghislain du Xe au XIVe siècle’, Autour de la ville en Hainaut Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire offerts à Jean Dughoille et à René Sansen (Ath, 1986), 175–83Google Scholar

4 The case is complicated by the tendency for the names Arnulf and Arnoul (the former being etymologically distinct from the latter) to be confounded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries See, for example, Table chronologique des chartes et diplômes imprimés concernant l'histoire de la Belgique, ed Alphonse Wauters, i (Brussels, 1866), 523 For the extraordinary frequency of the name Arnoul in the Low Countries during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (with variants Arnols, Arnut, Amu, Arnulf and others) see Chronique et geste de Jean des Preis dit d'Outremeuse, ed Stanislas Bormans, introductory volume (Brussels, 1887), 38–41Google Scholar

5 There has been much confusion about the manuscript which contains Arnulfs treatise It is certain that Gerbert used (and knew) only one manuscript of the Tractatulus and that the manuscript in question is the one employed here, St Paul im Lavanttal, Archiv des Benediktinerstiftes, MS 264/4 For Gerbert's account of the manuscript see Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica, ed Martin Gerbert, 3 vols (St Blasien, 1784), iii, 189–90 The identification is beyond doubt, not only because of the congruence between Gerbert's text (allowing for errors of transcription) and the manuscript text, but also because a substantial amount of Gerbert's third volume is derived from the St Paul manuscript and printed by him in the order in which the items occur there It has repeatedly been claimed in the modern literature that this manuscript has been lost (see, for example, the article ‘Arnulf von S Gillen’ in MGG and the article Eustacius Leodiensis' in The New Grove Dictionary), so it is pleasing to be able to report that it is still housed in the Archiv des Benediktinerstiftes where it has surely been since the late eighteenth century Gerbert (Scriptores, iii, 189) says that the manuscript had been sent to him from Paris, and this led L Royer to suggest that Bibliothèque nationale MS lat 7370, already long mislaid in 1913, might be the book in question (‘Catalogue des écrits des théoriciens de la musique conservés dans le fonds latin des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale’, L'année musicale, 3 (1913), 206–46 (p 222)) This was only a guess (whose quality cannot now be judged) but it apparently led Hu̇schen to declare in his MGG entry on Arnulf that there are two manuscripts of Arnulf's treatise, the St Paul manuscript and MS lat 7370 This is a simple error of simple origin There is only one known source of Arnulf's treatise For further, brief information on the date and provenance of the manuscript, with bibliography, see Page, Christopher, The Summa musice A Thirteenth-Century Manual for Singers (Cambridge, 1991), 1Google Scholar

6 Intercedente prolationis gracia melioris (‘with the intercession of the pleasantness of a more pleasing performance‘) It is clearly very uncertain whether a pun is intendedGoogle Scholar

7 See, for example, the remarks of Jacques de Liège in Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed Roger Bragard, 7 vols, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 3 (American Institute of Musicology, 1955–72), vii, 22–4 For an example in a plainchant treatise see Page, The Summa musice, 144Google Scholar

8 Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boetii De institutione musica libri quinque, ed Gottfried Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867, repr 1966), i, 34 Translation in Calvin M Bower, Fundamentals of Music Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (New Haven and London, 1989), 50–1Google Scholar

9 For an account of these developments see Page, Christopher, ‘Musicus and cantor’, The Everyman Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed David Fallows and Tess Knighton (forthcoming), for a wealth of documents see the entry by Erich Reimer, ‘Musicus-cantor’, in the Handworterbuch der musikalischen TerminologieGoogle Scholar

10 See Page, , The Summa musice, 67 (the definition of the musicus) and 128 ‘they who cannot sing a chant without books are speedily brought to grief in that they seem to become dumb and know nothing of chant when the books are elsewhere or are not ready’Google Scholar

11 Text from Ernst Rohloff, Die Quellenhandschriften zum Musikiraktat des Johannes de Grocheio (Leipzig, 1972), 138 Compare the remarks of Jacques de Liège in Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed Bragard, vii, 23Google Scholar

12 I am grateful to Dr Daniel Leech-Wilkinson for his comments upon Arnulf's use of the term organizantesGoogle Scholar

13 For a discussion of medieval instrumental traditions and their relation to literate musical techniques see Page, Christopher, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (London, 1987), passimGoogle Scholar

14 Pseudo Ovidius De vetula, ed Paul Klopsch (Leiden and Cologne, 1967), 196 'quicquid vel musica scribit / vel didicere manus auditu indice cacto / pulsu vel tractu vel flatuGoogle Scholar

15 De musica, Scriptores, ed Gerbert, ii, 289 The whole of this section of Engelbert's treatise merits comparison with Arnulf's TractatulusGoogle Scholar

16 For the remarks of Johannes Gallicus see the Ritus canendi velustissimus et novus, Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, ed Edmond de Coussemaker, 4 vols (Paris, 1864–76, repr 1963), iv, 303–4, also edited in Johannes Gallicus ‘Ritus canendi‘, ed Albert Seay, 2 vols (Colorado Springs, 1981), i, 10 For the comments of Conrad of Zabern see Die Musiktraktate Conrads von Zabern, ed Karl Werner Gumpel (Wiesbaden, 1956), 186Google Scholar

17 As early as the 1280s the theorists remark upon the ability of instruments to exceed the human voice in agility See, for example, the comments of Anonymous IV in Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4, ed Fritz Reckow, 2 vols (Wiesbaden, 1967), i, 39 and 45Google Scholar

18 Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed Bragard, vii, 94–5Google Scholar

19 For some of the thirteenth-century manuals of confession which discuss musicians see Page, Christopher, The Owl and the Nightingale Musical Life and Ideas in France, 1100–1300 (London, 1990), passim, but especially pp 19–29Google Scholar

20 The phrase is from the Penitential (c 1216) of Thomas Chobham, see Thomae de Chobham Summa Confessorum, ed F Broomfield (Paris and Louvain, 1968), 291Google Scholar

21 Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed Bragard, vii, 95Google Scholar

22 Ut in plerisque cum cantoribus gratius garriendo concordent (‘so that in most things [musicians lacking in musical art but keen to learn] may be of one mind with accomplished musicians by conversing with them in a more pleasant fashion‘) See note J to the translation, however, it is possible that Arnulf is referring to the wish of these untrained musicians to sing with the experts rather than to converse with themGoogle Scholar

23 Arnulf's use of the verb plebesco (‘to become notorious‘) sanctions the assertion that this kind of behaviour was on the increaseGoogle Scholar

24 See, for example, Motets of French Provenance, ed Frank Ll Harrison, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 5 (Monaco, 1968), xi ‘This type of piece would generally have had as listeners an intimate company of cognoscenti’ This remark is based upon the famous comment about the milieu of the motet in Paris c 1300 by Johannes de Grocheio, but Grocheio is not always observing contemporary conditions, he is often describing how, in his judgment, things ought to be See Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, 148Google Scholar

25 Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed. Bragard, vii, 95Google Scholar

26 The definition is from the Somme rural (1395) of Jean Boutillier, Bailli de Tournai pour le nombre de xxvi se fait tourbe et multitude Cited in Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française, 10 vols (Paris, 1880–1902, repr New York, 1961), vii, col 748Google Scholar

27 For details see Williams, Sarah Jane, ‘The Lady, the Lyrics and the Letters’, Early Music, 5 (1977), 462–8 I am most grateful to Dr Daniel Leech-Wilkinson for allowing me to consult his forthcoming study of the Voir dit and its lettersGoogle Scholar

28 Page, Christopher, ‘Polyphony before 1400’, Performance Practice, ed Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie, 2 vols. (London, 1989), i, 79Google Scholar

29 Compare the comments of Jacques de Liège in Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed Bragard, vii, 25 ‘Et quid valet subtilitas ubi perit utilitas?’ (‘And what is the good of subtlety if one loses usefulness thereby?’)Google Scholar

30 Arnulf is careful to emphasize that ‘the ear and eye of a trained man declare a practical musician worthy of praise‘Google Scholar

31 Pirrotta, Compare Nino, ‘Ricercare and Variations on O rosa bella’. Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1984), 145 ‘In a letter [apparently written in January 1429] addressed to Leonardo Giustinian, Ambrogio Traversari blandly but resolutely inverts, in order to praise his friend, one of the fundamental assumptions of scholastic musical culture, that the musicus’ knowledge was superior to the cantor's practical skills ’ I owe this reference to Dr David FallowsGoogle Scholar

32 Compare the comment of Jacques de Liège in Jacobi Leodiensis Speculum musice, ed Bragard, vi, 202 ‘Qui igitur ignorat planum [cantum] frustra tendit ad mensuratum’ (‘He who is ignorant of plainchant will proceed without profit to measured [music]‘)Google Scholar

33 See Brown, Howard Mayer, record review in Early Music, 15 (1987), 278, David Fallows, ‘Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400–1475’, Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, ed Stanley Boorman (Cambridge, 1983), 109–59, Lawrence Earp, ‘Texting in 15th-Century French Chansons A Look Ahead from the Fourteenth Century’, Early Music, 19 (1991), 194–210, Christopher Page, ‘Machaut's “Pupil” Deschamps on the Performance of Music’, Early Music, 5 (1977), 484–91, idem, ‘The Performance of Songs in Late Medieval France’, Early Music, 10 (1982), 441–50, idem, ‘The English A cappella Heresy’, The Everyman Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music (forthcoming), Dennis Slavin, ‘In Support of “Heresy” Manuscript Evidence for the A cappella Performance of Early 15th-Century Songs’, Early Music, 19 (1991), 178–90, Craig Wright, ‘Voices and Instruments in the Art Music of Northern France during the 15th Century A Conspectus’, Report of the Twelfth Congress [of the International Musicological Society] Berkeley 1977, ed Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade (Kassel, 1981), 643–9Google Scholar

34 For an example of such a reference to the authority of (unspecified) approbati magistri see the treatise of Anonymous I (De musica antiqua et nova) in Coussemaker, Scriptorum, iii. 349Google Scholar

35 Sanders, Ernest, ‘Consonance and Rhythm in the Organum of the 12th and 13th Centuries’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 33 (1980), 264–86 (p 271, note 25)Google Scholar

  1. a

    a ‘To gnaw - indeed to devour - musical consonances with a hungry bite’ renders musicales aclamen consonantias avido morsu rodere et venus devorare Rodere (‘to gnaw’) is a pungent verb in medieval Latin, often associated with violent and gnawing envy, see, for example, Hans Walther, Die lateinische Sprichworter (Gottingen, 1982-6), 12753 (Invidia rodit), 12801 (Inindus odit se, rodens alios pent ipse) and 22314 (Pravus homo rodit) The verb devorare is more violent still and has animalistic associations, deeply coloured by its many appearances in scripture Compare Genesis xxxvn 33 and xliv 28 (bestia devoramt). Exodus x 12 and Deuteronomy xxvui 38 (where devoro denotes the action of locusts) It also conveys the destructive rapacity of fire (Numbers xvi 39, Deuteronomy, v 25 and ix 3)

  2. b

    b ‘As they lead the singing’ is a somewhat literal translation of Arnulfs precentando, but his insistence upon the way in which these inept musicians of the first category leap up to take control of any performance that they attend suggests that a translation adhering to the literal sense of precento (‘to sing before, in front’) may be advisable

  3. c

    c ‘Singing their parts in the reverse of the way in which they should’ renders organizantesque per antifrasin The participle organizantes presumably implies some kind of polyphonic practice, although it might be rendered more loosely as ‘putting their music together’ or something of that kind Antiphrasis is the use of a word in a sense that is the opposite of its proper sense or which conflicts with it (such use of rhetorical and grammatical terminology to create a vocabulary for describing musical phenomena associated with no technical vocabulary of their own is very common in medieval music theory and continues in this passage with the terms cachephaton and barbarismum) If it does indeed refer to polyphony, then organizantesque per antifrasin may have a technically precise meaning, that meaning can be guessed at (the performance of a polyphonic part at the wrong octave - an abuse described by some theorists?) but not established

  4. d

    d Quemadmodum puram segetem zizania suffocat succrescens In a passage characterized by virulent language this is the most virulent of all The reference is to the second parable of the sower in Matthew xiii 24-32 where the weed is spread on the field by the inimicus and the weeds are eventually burned in fires which foreshadow the fate of those who stifle the good crop

  5. e

    e Pennde clamitat avidius, given the context and diction of this passage, which relates how unschooled musicians try to take charge of the ‘throng’ (turba) it is tempting to hear in this use of clamitat an echo of Proverbs i 21 in capite turbarum clamitat

  6. f

    f Quos suis pedibus conculcare non pudet auro preciosiores armonicas Musice margaritas Matthew vii 6 Nolite mutatis margaritas vestras ante porcos ne forte conculcent eas pedibus suis The image of the pearl trodden beneath the feet of swine, which sustains the bestial imagery of this section, is not m the least stale in medieval scriptural commentary (see, for example, the Glossa ordinaria, Patrologia latina, ed Jacques Paul Migne, 221 vols (Pans, 1844-64), cxiv, col 108) In the commentary tradition it is not merely the beauty, purity and value of the pearl which contribute to the image but also the way it lies hidden (in absconditio latet) and must be prised from the shell (apertis conchis eruitur) By alluding to Matthew's passage Arnulf emphasizes not only the great value of advanced musical learning but also the great difficulty of acquiring it

  7. g

    g The panther was believed to possess a sweetness of breath which enraptured and drew all other animals Compare Baudouin de Condé Tout ensement con la pantere / Cui les bestes swent et tracent/. Por la douce alarne qu'il porte (Adolf Tobler and Erhard Lommatzsch, Altfranzosisches Worterbuch (Berlin, 1925-), s v pantere)

  8. h

    h ‘The bee buzzes’ renders apis argumentai The sense of the verb may seem, at first sight, somewhat strained in this context, but argutus (‘clear-sounding, murmuring, melodious’) is used of insects in classical Latin

  9. i

    i Florum et spicarum musicahum messis manipulos colhgentes quos possunt Here the diction owes much to Leviticus xxin 10, no doubt a deliberate echo since in that passage God speaks to the Hebrews who are soon to enter the Promised Land and who are enjoined to gather manipulos spicarum when they come there, by implication, musicians of this category thirst after the company of those who are both naturally gifted and thoroughly trained in the art as the Hebrews thirsted after Israel.

  10. j

    j ‘Conversing’ translates garriendo, from gamo, ‘to chatter, prate or talk’ However, at line 78 the closely related form gamtat clearly means ‘to sing’, and we are perhaps to understand that musicians of this second category study so that they may sing with trained musicians and not simply converse with them

  11. k

    k ‘Perform’ renders tradunt, from trado, whose meanings include ‘to hand over, to deliver, to transmit, to teach’, but at line 67 primaria traditione dissona clearly means ‘dissonant at first hearing/performance’, whence the translation ‘perform’ here It is possible, however, that Arnulf is referring to the diffusion of these instrumental compositions, in which case a translation such as ‘hand down’ or ‘disseminate’ would be advisable

  12. l

    l ‘Recollect’ translates recordantur, from the deponent verb recordar (‘to recollect, call to mind’) The Revised Medieval Latin Word List, ed R E Latham (London, 1965), s v recorder, gives two instances of this verb in the sense ‘to record’ (citations from 1198 and the fifteenth century) This passage may therefore refer to the production of notated copies of instrumental compositions, but it may be doubted whether Arnulf wishes us to understand that musicians of this category were familiar with musical notation

  13. m

    m ‘For it is the ear and eye practical terms’ This passage renders a somewhat obscure section in the Latin (lines 50-2)

  14. n

    n ‘Sweetens’ renders docescat, which would appear to be a form of dulcescat heavily influenced by the orthography (and perhaps the pronunciation) of Middle French douce

  15. o

    o ‘Faculty, action and turn of mind’ renders poteniia, actu et habitu, which is terminology of a scholastic and ambitious kind For Aquinas, for example, these terms form a closely related group in which, crudely speaking, poientia (‘faculty’) denotes the power to accomplish something, actus (‘action’) denotes action, while habitus (‘turn of mind’) is a disposition to act well or badly (A Lexicon of St Thomas Aquinas, ed Roy J Deferrari, Sister M Inviolata Barry and Ignatius McGuinness (Baltimore, Maryland. 1948), s v actus, habitus and potentia)