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Teachers, booksellers and taxes: reinvestigating the life and activities of Johannes de Garlandia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Pamela Whitcomb
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Extract

Johannes de Garlandia is one of the most important theorists of measurable music during the thirteenth century, yet the study of his writings has always been frustrated by a problematic biographical situation. Not only is the history of manuscript transmission and attribution regarding Johannes de Garlandia's writings complicated, but both Johannes and de Garlandia were popular and common names in medieval Paris, where the theorist is thought to have lived.

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Articles
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 An earlier version of this paper was read at the Spring meeting of the Southwest chapter of the American Musicological Society in April 1996.

2 Yudkin, Jeremy, De Musica Mensurata: The Anonymous of St. Emmeram (Bloomington, 1990), 35, n. 70.Google Scholar

3 The manuscript prefaces the beginning of Johannes de Garlandia's positio with Sed quoniam defectuosa est, ideo positionem, quae Johannis de Garlandia est, subvectimus. The treatise begins with Habito, inquit Johannes, de cognitione planae musicae, and Jerome closes the treatise Haec positio Johannis dicti de Garlandia de musica mensurabili. See Cserba, Simon M., Hieronymus de Moravia O. P.: Tractatus de Musica (Regensburg, 1935), 194 and 229.Google Scholar

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18 Pinegar, Textual and Conceptual Relationships, 10002. James McKinnon refers to Pinegar's revised biography of Johannes de Garlandia in his introductory remarks to the excerpt in English from De musica mensurabili in Strunk's Source Readings in Music History. II: The Early Christian Period and the Latin Middle Ages, ed. James McKinnon (New York, 1998), 113.

19 Many of the documents to be discussed below were examined by Rasch, but he considers them only as part of his argument that John of Garland the grammarian and poet was not also the music theorist. He is not concerned with these citations as evidence about the music theorist himself. See Rasch, Johannes de Garlandia, 1304.

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30 ibid., 273.

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34 ibid., 242. The inscription reads: Iste liber est pauperum magistrorum de Sorbonna ex legato Magistri Petri de Lemovicis quondam socii domus huius, in quo continetur musica fratris Jeronimi. Pretii XX. s(olidorum). Incathenabitur in capella. 64us inter quadruviales. By 1338, it had been moved to the larger of the two libraries of the Sorbonne. The inventory made in that year lists Musica fratris Jeronimi on the twentieth shelf (shelf V, since the shelves were marked with letters), and on the list of books dealing with the quadrivium it was given the shelfmark V.g. See Delisle, Leopold, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothque Nationale (Paris, 1881), III: 77 and 90.Google Scholar

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36 ibid., 267.

37 ibid., 323.

38 However, he may not have yet owned his shop in the period 128595, since he is not listed in the 1292 tax records. He still could have been involved in its production as a scribe or notator (for evidence of his skills in notation, see below) and perhaps apprentice in another shop (see Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses, 276, for evidence of other libraires who began their careers in this way). Pinegar's argument that Johannes de Garlandia was Jerome's source for the manuscript, but not its author, is strengthened by the existence of a librere of the same name. Certainly such a person would have begun to collect a substantial library of useful texts before opening his own shop.

39 Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses, 3089.

40 ibid., 282303; Rouse, Richard H. and Rouse, Mary A., The Commercial Production of Manuscript Books in Late-Thirteenth-Century and Early-Fourteenth-Century Paris, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. Brownrigg, Linda (Los Altos Hills, 1990), 10315.Google Scholar

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43 Reckow, Fritz, Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4 (Wiesbaden, 1967), I: 978.Google Scholar

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45 Pro valore brevis sumuntur tres semibreves, vel quatuor, vel quinque, vel sex, vel septem, vel octo, vel novem, ad quas pertinet unius brevis proportio. Lefferts, Peter M., ReguleRobertus de Handlo and Summaljohannes Hanboys (Lincoln, Nebr., 1991), 11011.Google Scholar

46 Minimas et minoratas agnoscere oportet. Nam minor semibrevis tres minimas valet, brevis valettres minores, ergo brevis movem minimas valebit. Et formari debent ut semibreves minores, seper signum rotundum distinguntur. Lefferts, ibid.

47 Bent, Margaret, A Preliminary Assessment of the Independence of English Trecento Notations, in L'Ars Nova Haliana del Trecento IV: Atti de 3 Congresso internazionale (Certaldo, 1975), 6582.Google Scholar

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51 Post ipsos et in tempore suo fuit quidam Iohannes supradictus, et continuavit modos omnium supradictorum usque ad tempus magistri Franconis Reckow, Der Musiktraktat, 50.

52 Michalsson, , Le Livre 1296, 2289.Google Scholar

53 idem., Le Livre 1297, 21011 and 4023.