Summa musice: The translation

Summary

[PROLOGUE]

[lines 1–42]

1–10 The fitting and honest entreaty of our friends counts as a command. When I have been urged by such entreaty towards what needs to be compiled, written and taught about the art of music, I have replied that for the most part people appropriately skilled in this art are to be found in any important ecclesiastical foundation, and if I were to presume to teach some trifling thing about music they would perhaps attribute it to my arrogance or to habitual rashness, and the question would be put to me, both in my presence and in my absence, which is sometimes put to the foolish and to the ambitious, namely whether they would call for a better bread than a wheaten loaf and a better drink than wine.

11–19 However, I have frequently noticed so many of my friends and pupils wandering badly in the path – that is to say in those things which are the principles of music, namely the knowledge of intervals which are produced either from equality of pitch or from raising and lowering – I thought that I would try to be a help and source of counsel for their obvious ignorance, principally so that they should be able to sing properly constituted chant in a well informed way, and should receive as much honour when they sing amongst the uninformed as do the most expert.

20–33 The following are the matters which I shall not discuss because they are beyond the power of boys and need a more thorough investigation: whether music be a liberal art or not; the subiectum of music and the distinctive property of that subiectum; how the intervals are founded and established according to the properties of numbers; the consistency of music.