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Music in Medieval Manuscripts

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Music In Medieval Manuscripts by Nicolas Bell (Curator of Music Manuscripts at the British Library) is a wondrously illustrated, full-color history of music writing from the earliest surviving recorded works through the fifteenth century. Pages printed on glossy paper show amazing photographs of ancient musical scripts, while the scholarly text meticulously explains the evolution of musical notation rounded out with amazing facts and figures. At 64 pages, Music In Medieval Manuscripts is a brief yet information dense and esthetically gorgeous book, that both music history students and connoisseurs will find immensely fascinating, informative and satisfying.

The British Library has thousands of music-related manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Almost all of them are for singing church music. Writing down non-church music for singing came later, in the 13th and 14th centuries, as with, for example, the Carmina burana and the English round song Sumer is icumen in.

Few medieval musical instruments, other than whistles, are still around. What we know about them comes first from drawings to writings on chants and music for mass, such as in The breviary of Renaud de Bar and The Vespasian psalter. Writing down instrumental music, without any singing parts, also came later, such as with a book on keyboard music from Robertsbridge Abbey in Sussex.

Throughout the Middle Ages the main textbook for music was De institutione musica by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. Boethius wrote about music as one of four mathematical subjects, as theory. But things started changing in the 9th century, with Emperor Charlemagne's program of reforms. The reforms encouraged learning and impacted on music. For example, Aurelian of Rome wrote Musica disciplina. In it he presented music as theory and performance, through the example of plainchant.

Also, music began to be written down. This was to choose one, from the old music forms such as plainchant, as the way the form should be done, and to record new, such as sequences and tropes. It ended up also choosing one, from the many ways of writing music, as the way to write it down.

One way of writing how music sounded was by the letters of the alphabet, from the ancient Greeks. Another was by word syllables, at different heights on the page, as in the Musica enchiriadis. Still another was by neumes, which won out over all others and led to our modern system.

The most important late medieval music manuscript in England was the Old Hall manuscript. It gave composers' names for most pieces, as in a setting of the Gloria by Roy Henry [V]. Names usually weren't given, because musicians generally weren't professionals. They tended to be people of the elite, the church or the countryside, as seen in the drawings in the Luttrell psalter.

Writing down music, seeing music as more than mathematics and theory, and naming composers all brought about our modern view of music as performance by professionals. This is beautifully illustrated, clearly written and logically explained by Nicolas Bell. MUSIC IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS reads particularly well with Michael Shire's THE ILLUMINATED HAGGADAH.

Unlike Carl Parrish's "The Notation of Medieval Music", this is not a technical manual. That book has been claimed to be over-simplified, in which case this one is utterly simplistic. However, it does have a set of beautifully produced colour illustrations, joined by a basic text. This makes it a nice companion to the Parrish book, with its rather dreary monochrome photographs, badly reproduced. It gives a simple chronology of the development of medieval notation, indicating that square notation on the four or five line staff was neither the beginning nor the end of it.
Oh how I wish that books on medieval music did not persist with the concept that the church had an overriding effect on all aural culture, simply because they were the only agency that actually wrote their music down. I cannot know for sure, but I am pretty certain that groups of drunken revellers around the fire at harvest time, or citizens joining in a bit of urban revelry, were not standing around uttering monophonic plainchant, even with rude words. What they were singing or playing we will never know, but there is no reason to believe that it had to be primitive. This book does contain some images of musicians in action, as well as many examples of notation. An attractive introduction.

Dans la bibliotheque des britanniques, il y a des tas de manuscrits du chanter medieval. Il n'y a ni de la musique nonreligieuse a chanter ni de l'instrumentale que plus tard, telles que la Carmina burana, le livre du clavier de l'abbaye anglaise de Robertsbridge, et la ronde anglaise Sumer is icumen in. Dans le livre le plus reconnu aux medievaux, De institutione musica par Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, la musique fait partie des quatre mathematiques de la formation parfaite. Mais apres les reformes d'enseignement par le roi Charlemagne, il s'agit de la musique jouee aussi, telle que le plain-chant de la Musica disciplina par le pionnier Aurelian de Rome, et notee, telle que les neumes, ancetres de la partition. Dans le manuscrit le plus important aux medievaux anglais, dit Old Hall, on reconnaissait les compositeurs, tels que le roi Henri V comme metteur en voie de la Gloria. Alors etudier la musique jouee autant que theorisee; la noter; et en reconnaitre les compositeurs nonprofessionnels de l'eglise, l'elite et la region - voila la musique moderne, soit religieuse ou non, soit instrumentale ou chantee, jouee par des professionnels