| Music as a liberal art vs music as a practical craft |
| Though
the modern world considers music a 'sounding art' involving melodies, rhythms,
and harmonies, the medieval thinker classified music as a mathematical discipline,
part of the quadrivium, along with geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy.
The intellectual study of music--speculative music theory--was a study of
proportions, whereas aspects of actual performed music treated music as
a craft. This bias can be traced back to Boethius (ca. 480-ca. 524) and
Martianus Capella (fl. ?early 5th century), whose treatises served as textbooks
for much of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, a body of music theory addressing
issues such as mode and, later, rhythm developed. Throughout the Middle Ages, monasteries and abbeys nurtured music, preserving the quadrivial treatises alongside practical musical sources. The ninth-century library at Reichenau, for instance, boasted copies of works by Augustine, Isidorus, Cassiodorus, and Boethius, as well as ten antiphoners containing music for the Divine Office (see Carpenter, p. 17). St. Gall, too, had a vibrant intellectual life as well as an active musical scriptorium which produced a large number of chant manuscripts in a distinctive musical script. The monastery of St. Martial housed a rich collection of manuscripts containing monophonic and polyphonic additions to the liturgy dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. Significant sources also survive from Santiago de Compostela (the Codex Calixtinus which contains music brought by pilgrims to the shrine of St. James), from St. Denis (a royal abbey in France) and from Las Huelgas (a women's convent in Spain with a flourishing choir school where the women evidently performed polyphony). Indeed, most monasteries of any size housed at least a few choirbooks containing the chants for either mass or office. |
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