Dyer Joseph Henry - The Scientia artis musice of Hélie Salomon : teaching music in the late thirteenth century

The sole surviving copy of the medieval music treatise, Scientia artis musice, written by Hlie Salomon and dated precisely to the year 1274, is the original manuscript presented to Pope Gregory X. This unique manuscript remained hidden in an ecclesiastical archive at Lyon, the city where the treatise was presented to the pope, until it was discovered in the early seventeenth century and transported to Milan by an agent of Cardinal Federico Borromeo. The treatise is a practical manual devoted to basic concepts: the structure of the tonal system, psalmody, vocal pedagogy, the musical (Guidonian) hand, clefs as indicators of the tone (mode) to which a piece belongs, and practical instruction in the singing of four-voice parallel organum. Although Hlie Salomon denounces whatever he regards as abuses that deviate from traditional practice (condemned as falsa musica), he is not above proposing radical ideas of his own. Found throughout the treatise are many digressions that reveal aspects of how the author thought chant ought to be performed, in particular, free from rhythmic influences derived from the mensural system. Joseph Dyer presents the first complete modern edition of Salomons treatise with an English translation accompanied by a comprehensive introduction and commentary. This edition corrects errors in the 1784 edition of Martin Gerbert, and it includes the music of chants omitted by Gerbert from the tonary. It also makes available for the first time reproductions in colour of the eight illustrations in the treatise that are essential to its understanding.

Joseph Dyer taught music history at the University of Massachusetts Boston until his retirement in 2001. He has published about a hundred articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries on topics relating to the chant and liturgy of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (especially Rome), psalmody, monasticism, performance practice, medieval music theory, and music in the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. He is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists and a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music.

Latin Text with English Translation and Commentary

Joseph Dyer

First published 2018
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ISBN: 978-1-138-28166-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-27100-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra

To Michael Bernhard
on the occasion of his retirement from the
Musikhistorische Kommission of the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences