Musica Albini

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Musica Albini is a music-theoretical work which, together with the tonar of the abbey in Saint-Riquier / Centula, the first surviving source of the early medieval key order, testifies to an early order and systematization of the choral repertoire. Since this tonary, dated shortly before 800, is regarded as a witness for a missing tonary from Aachen, the reference to the author of the Musica Albini seems credible. A timely dating of the Musica Albini to the tonar must be proven. The author would therefore either be the Carolingian scholar Alkuin ("Albinus") or an author in his immediate vicinity at the Carolingian court in Aachen .

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The relatively short text of the Musica Albini was published by Martin Gerbert under the title Flacci Alcuini, seu Albini Musica . The editor used a manuscript from the 16th century that is in the Austrian National Library in Vienna (Cpv 5271). This is in turn a copy of the first eight folios of an older manuscript (Cpv 2269), which is also in the Vienna library. After there were initially doubts about Alkuin’s authorship, Hartmut Möller was able to prove in 1993 through extensive text comparisons, analyzes and the listing of other sources that Alkuin could well be considered as the author of this music theory treatise. In the Vita Alchuini published in 829, Alkuin is mentioned as the author of a book a. a. called for rhethorica, dialektica and musica. Furthermore, this authorship of Alcuin is attested in two old library catalogs. Whether the Alkuin writing on music mentioned in the sources is identical to Musica Albini cannot be proven with these sources, but they strengthen Möller's interpretation, especially since the title of the short treatise in the original source also identifies Alkuin as the author.

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The author refers to the ancient Greek authors (graeca lingua auctorem) and shows that eight keys were in use. There are four basic keys (“authenticum”), which are designated with the Greek ordinal numbers protus, deuterus, tritus and tetrachius. In addition to these original keys, the author refers to four others that are derived from the previous ones (“Plagi”). These are identical to the tone order, which later consisted of eight church tones : I. tone (art): Dorian, II. Tone (art): Hypodoric, III. Tone (art): Phrygian etc.

Of particular importance is the fact that the treatise not only defines the individual tone as the smallest part of music theory, but also the parallel to the letter as the smallest part of linguistic theory and the unit measure (meaning the number one) as the smallest Part of the arithmetic emphasized. Apparently the scholars at the Carolingian court analyzed the melodies and related the individual notes to a system of semitone and whole-tone steps . The concrete pitches of the singing became more and more conscious and were categorized according to their affiliation to individual modes (keys).

Beginning of text according to the Viennese handwriting of Musica Albini (Cpv 2269):

“ [O] CTO TONOS IN MUSICA consistere musicus scire debet, per quos omnis modulatio quasi quodam glutino sibi adhaerere videtur. Tonus est minima pars musicae regulae. "

Translation: “ A musician has to know that there are eight tones [the later so-called church modes] in music, whereby each melody formation as it were as a coherent band [i.e. H. as belonging to a church mode]. Sound is the smallest part of music theory ( musicae regulae ) ”.

Context and reception

The text of the treatise adopted by Aurelian Reomensis appears in the 8th chapter of his Musica Disciplina , written in the first half of the 9th century , here with the heading de tonis octo . This text version agrees almost literally with the source Musica Albini (Cpv 2269). Aurelian also testifies here that Karl, informed by his cantors, found the introduction of four further keys to be necessary in order to do justice to the treasure trove of melodies. Some cantors had given assurances that certain antiphons did not fit into the order of the eight church tones. With this, Aurelian gives an indication of the time of the discussion about the eight or twelve tones and testifies that these questions were discussed in the direct environment of Charlemagne, whom Aurelian calls his "avus" (ancestor, grandfather) at this point. It is hardly surprising that the Musica Disciplina mentions a number of notations ( notas ) of the melodies and specifies specific notations, because an analysis of melodies fits well with Karl's efforts to achieve a uniform vocal practice and is related to the beginning of the musical notation. In the standard work of musicology on the Middle Ages by Hartmut Möller / Rudolf Stephan, the corresponding contexts are listed, because under the rule of the Carolingians there was a real "explosion" in written culture.

The musicologist Möller, already mentioned, commented in detail on Musica Albini in 1993 and brought this treatise into connection with the tonar of the abbey in Saint-Riquier / Centula. Musica Albini and Tonar explain each other, because the Musica Albini lists the keys that the Tonar demonstrates using numerous examples. The preserved manuscript of the tonar was laid out with a view to Easter in the year 800. Charlemagne spent this feast in the company of Alcuins in the Abbey of Saint-Riquier. Angilbert , who was Alcuin's first student, became a lay abbot in this abbey during this time. The close relationships between Saint-Riquier / Centula and Aachen demonstrated by Michel Huglo make people sit up and take notice. For these reasons as well as for other reasons, Möller advocated the thesis that the tone was “to be assigned to the intellectual productivity of the Aachen Academy ”. One can - according to Möller - see this tone in connection with the Musica Albini , in which the eight keys are also classified with the terms protus, deuteros etc. Alkuin could well be the author of both writings and Aachen is to be regarded as the place where these two documents were created.

The musicologist Michel Huglo also used numerous text comparisons of various preserved tones to show the " tone of St. Riquier as a witness for the missing tone of Aachen ". This lost original Aachen copy is to be regarded as an archetype of the Carolingian tonar even before the tone of Saint-Riquier. He assigns the tone of Saint-Riquier to a group of tones, which he calls "Tonaires d'enseignement ou tonaires didactique". These correspond to the “exigences de theoriciens”. This “teaching tonary” thus indicates a collection of examples for music theory lessons rather than a tonary for practical use. In early medieval music theory, music theory was a matter for scholars and took precedence over music practice. The preoccupation with music practice was not part of the musica within the canon of the seven liberal arts , which Alcuin and Charlemagne held in high esteem. The latter confirmed in his Epistola de litteris colendis the great importance of theory over practice, because knowledge comes before action. Since ancient times, the subject musica has dealt exclusively with the research of tonal relationships , tonal systems , the keys including their philosophical meaning .

Huglo mentions the Musica Albini font elsewhere . This comes " without a doubt from the academy of the palace in Aachen ". Huglo writes this in connection with his explanations on the Tonar of Metz, which must have been copied from the older Carolingian Tonar under Bishop Drogan (826-855). After all, the oldest fund of the Gregorian chant prescribed by Charlemagne at the end of the 8th century can be found here. This tonic by Metz frames the list of the corresponding melody beginnings with two short music-theoretical texts in which the terms for the eight tones (keys) are explained. The combination of such practice-oriented and music-theoretical texts was therefore quite common with a tonar from the Carolingian era. Researchers like Lawrence Gushee propose that the text “ de octo tonis ” was originally written in such a larger context. A possible combination of the Musica Albini with the lost original copy of the Carolingian tone would also be a conceivable option, especially since both writings were obviously written in Aachen.

Nancy Phillips advocated the thesis that there were two different traditions of musical notation in the ninth century. One is analytical and related to the individual tone and its connection with the tone system. The other tradition is at the beginning of an extensive history of traditional neumes. The first was intended to " analyze liturgical chants in terms of their interval relationships and / or their modality ". Subsequently, Phillips also counts the Musica Disciplina to this first tradition, which deals with theoretical notations . The question of whether there could be a connection between these early notations from the first half of the 9th century, which were analytically related to the single tone, and the writing Musica Albini ("Tonus est minima pars musicae regulae") or the aforementioned exemplary-analytically designed tone , is controversial.

There are also assessments of the Musica Albini or “ de octo tonis ” treatise in English-language specialist literature . The musicologist Charles M. Atkinson ( Ohio State University ), who specializes in music and music theory of the Middle Ages, summarizes previous research and advocates viewing writing as the earliest Carolingian music treatise. In the most important English-language standard work on the history of music theory, the treatise de octo tonis , which was ascribed to Alcuin, is also dated very early. The script may have been written at the end of the eighth century. All in all, the relevant research literature today shows a broad agreement in the overall assessment of the first Carolingian music treatise.

literature

  • Charles M. Atkinson: Tonus in the Carolingian Era: A Terminal Tension Field. In: Michael Bernhard (Ed.): Sources and studies on the music theory of the Middle Ages , Munich 2001, pp. 19–46. on-line
  • Terence Bailey: De modis musicis: A new edition and explanation. In: Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 61–62 (1977-78), pp. 50–54.
  • David E. Cohen: Notes, scales, and modes in the earlier Middle Ages, in: The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory , edited by Thomas Christensen, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 307-362.
  • Oliver Gerlach: In the labyrinth of the Oktōīchos - On the reconstruction of a medieval improvisation practice in the music of the Eastern and Western Churches, (Diss.) Berlin 2006.
  • Michael Glatthaar: Bernard von Réome and the dating of the Musica disciplina Aurelians , in: Revue bénédictine 121 (2011), pp. 357–381.
  • Lawrence Gushee : The Musica Disciplina of Aurelian of Réôme: A Critical Text and Commentary , Vol.1,2, Thesis - Yale University, 1962/1980.
  • Lawrence Gushee: Avreliani Reomensis Mvsica disciplina Edidit Lawrence Gushee (= CSM021) Rome: American Institute of Musicology 1975.
  • Andrew Hicks: Aurelianus Reomensis - Musica disciplina . In: Ullrich Scheideler / Felix Wörner (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Schriften über Musik , Vol. 1 Music theory from antiquity to the present, Kassel 2017, pp. 40–42.
  • Michel Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyze, comparaison , Paris: Heugel 1971
  • Michel Huglo: Foundations and approaches of medieval music theory from late antiquity to the Ottonian period . In: Thomas Ertelt , Frieder Zaminer (ed.): The theory of unanimous liturgical singing (= history of music theory, vol. 4), Darmstadt 2000, pp. 17-102.
  • Hartmut Möller / Rudolf Stephan (eds.): The music of the Middle Ages (= New Handbook of Musicology, Vol. 2), Laaber 1991.
  • Hartmut Möller: On the question of the music-historical significance of the “academia” at the court of Charlemagne: The Musica Albini . In: Wolf Frobenius; Nicole Schwindt-Gross, Thomas Sick (Eds.), Academy and Music. Appearances and effects of the academy concept in the history of culture and music: institutions, events, publications. Festschrift for Werner Braun on his 65th birthday, at the same time a report on the symposium , Saarbrücken 1993, pp. 269–288.
  • Nancy Phillips: Notations and theories of notation by Boethius up to the 12th century . In: Thomas Ertelt, Frieder Zaminer (ed.): The theory of unanimous liturgical singing (= history of music theory, vol. 4), Darmstadt 2000, pp. 293–623
  • Dieter Torkewitz : The oldest document on the emergence of occidental polyphony - a manuscript from Werden an der Ruhr: Das Düsseldorfer Fragment , Stuttgart 1999.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Möller gives the time of Charlemagne as the dating of the Musica Albini (Möller 1993, p. 272f.); see. the list of the music-theoretical technical terms traditional in the early sources, protus, deuteros, etc., which “ultimately build on the terminology of the tones” (Möller 1993, pp. 280–282).
  2. ↑ Viennese manuscript cpv 2269 online s. Image 9 of 232 ; Digitized Gerbert ; electronic text transmission online ; see. Möller 1993, p. 366; for further text transmission see Möller 1993, p. 276
  3. ↑ Möller 1993
  4. ↑ In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Scriptores in Folio 15,1 (1887), p. 194, line 47 Source online
  5. ^ Library catalog from Fulda from the 9th century, ed. by Gustav Becker, Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui , Bonn 1885, p.31 (chap. 31, no. 20) online ; Book catalog of the chapter of Le Puy from the 11th century, ed. by Léopold Victor Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale , Vol. 2, Paris, 1874, p. 444. online cf. Möller 1993, pp. 273f.
  6. ↑ In the earliest surviving text, which appears in a copy of the Musica Disciplina des Aurelian Reomensis , there is no reference to Alcuin, because it was not customary in the usual compilation process to name the authors of the writings. This version of the Musica Disciplina , written around 900, can be found online in the Bibl. Municipale, Valenciennes, ms. 148, f. 69r, detail
  7. ↑ Here the author obviously refers to the Byzantine system of the Octoechos, whose alleged authorship by John of Damascus cannot be proven. However, this passage may also indicate that Boethius contains references to eight keys. In both cases terminological overlaps can be proven, but hardly any content-related similarities with the early medieval tone system. Gerlach (2006) summarizes that the Latin early medieval reception means "a radical simplification" of a much more complex older music theory.
  8. ↑ A similar conception to the analogy of the letter with the single note sounding in music is represented in the early medieval script " Musica enchiriadis ". For the author of this tract, noting and singing notes can be learned as well as writing and reading letters (“sonos… notare vel canere non minus quam litteras scribere vel legere”). The author of the oldest available version of the “musica enchiriadis” is most likely Abbot Hoger von Werden (Torkewitz 1999). The Werden monastery south of Essen is only about 100 kilometers northeast of Aachen. In view of the overriding importance of Alcuins and his students, the spatial proximity and the correspondence shown here (“ minima pars ” / “ litteras ” / “ sonos ... notare ”), a relationship of whatever nature between these important music theory treatises might well be conceivable. In the “musica enchiriadis” both Dasia symbols (8th chapter) and illustrations of the text syllables in a system of horizontal lines representing the tones with indication of the tone letters A – G are used as a kind of clef. The Dasia symbol would be a realization of the idea of ​​using letter-like symbols in the notation of music, analogous to linguistic theory [" Tamen sicut minima pars Grammaticae littera, sic minima pars Arithmeticae unitas: et quomodo litteris oratio " (quote from the Musica Albini )] .
  9. ↑ cf. Gushee 1975, p. 82.
  10. ↑ Bailey 1977/78, p. 48.
  11. ↑ Möller / Stephan 1991, p. 82.
  12. ^ Tonar of the abbey in Saint-Riquier / Centula online
  13. ↑ Huglo 2000, pp. 83f.
  14. ↑ Möller 1993, p. 285
  15. ↑ Huglo 2000, p. 81.
  16. ↑ Huglo 1971, p. 43 and in somewhat more detail in Huglo 2000, p. 87.
  17. ↑ Huglo 1971, p. 29.
  18. ↑ Julia Becker, Presence, Standardization and Transfer of Knowledge, 2015, Notes 1 and 7
  19. ↑ Huglo 2000, p. 85, note 189.
  20. ^ Tonar von Metz Bibl .: Metz, Bibl. Munic, ms. lat. 351 (ff. 66–75.) online
  21. ↑ Gushee (1975, p. 40) emphasized the special importance of the text " octo tonos in musica " (= " de octo tonis " ), which was dated very early and then passed down many times, in the context of his edition of the Musica Disciplina and considered it possible that, well before Aurelian Reomensis , an author originally intended to explain the eight keys appearing in a tonar. Thus, the Musica Albini or its lost original would not be understood as an independent script, " but as marginal glosses to the headings of the modal divisions of a tonary ". Gushee (1975, p. 21, 39) lists 18 sources in which “ de octo tonis ” or a text based on this source appears, whereby the researcher explicitly did not intend a full text-critical edition of this short text based on these sources. This edition is obviously still considered a research desideratum (cf. Gushee 1975, p. 78). In Paris, for example, there are the following copies of the lost Carolingian original text from the 11th and 12th centuries, which were copied independently of the Musica Disciplina and in a different context: BN, latin 776, f. 147r and immediately afterwards also BN, latin 776, f. 147v ; BN, Latin 1084, f. 159 ; BN latin 7211, f.146r ; BN, latin 7211, f. 17 . In this context, the tract De modis musicae, newly edited and commented on by Bailey in 1977/78, is of importance, in which some passages in the style of the 8th chapter of the Musica disciplina appear at the beginning , which are not mentioned in Gushee (1975). The edition by Bailey is based on a - partly flawed - edition by Martin Gerbert ( Scriptors Vol. I, p. 149 , whereby the original source used by Gerbert, which he incorrectly attributes to Hucbald, was destroyed in a fire in 1870) and the two sources the libraries in Cesana and Oxford (Cesana: Biblioteca Malatestiana [I-CEc], pp. XXVI.1 f. 196v-197; Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 212, f. 39v-40). Bailey (1977/78, p. 48) agrees with Huglos (1971, p. 56) that the terminology used here goes back "to the time of the Emperor Charlemagne himself."
  22. ↑ Huglo sees the origin of the Musica Albini from the Aachen Academy as certain, but also recommends Angilbert to consider the Alcuin student at the Aachen court as an author. Aurelian Reomensis was demonstrably connected with the cantor of the palace chapel. (Review of Möller 1993 by Michel Huglo in: Bulletin codicologique des Scriptorium , 1994 / XLVIII / 2, No. 646, pp. 148f. And Huglo 2000, p. 85 with reference to the edition by Gushee, pp. 78f. And 82 ); see. Möller 1993, pp. 272f.
  23. ↑ Phillips 2000, pp. 299f.
  24. ↑ Atkinson 2001, p. 39f. In this context, the author emphasizes Möller's research and points out details of previous research. The sentence “Tonus est totius ...” appearing in the treatise is taken literally from Cassiodorus. This text by Cassiodorus (Caput V. Libri Cassiodori de artibus ac disciplinis liberalium litterarum De musica, 8th section “ Tonus est ... ) is available online here .
  25. ↑ On the dating of “ de octo tonis ”, the author David E. Cohen writes, the original text “may perhaps date back as far as the late eighth century” (Cohen 2002, p. 310).