YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

82 LUMINITA FLOREA
THE SCRIPTOR IN THE LABYRINTH
Ultimately, the function of illustrations found in music theory texts went far beyond
the mere notation: the intellect was instructed, the soul – elated, and the sight – awed
by graphic ‘tours de force’ such as the spectacular maze-shaped ballade En la maison
Dedalus enfermé adorning page 62 of a florilegium of music theory treatises of the
late fourteenth century, now Berkeley, Music Library, MS 744. 22 Above all, this is a
consummate example of late fourteenth-century intricate musical notation, and,
according to Richard Crocker, “seems to be the earliest piece in circular notation”. 23
In accomplishing the task at hand, the scriptor, pictor, and notator of the labyrinth
achieved (and in a brilliant manner, for that matter) the opposite of what Isidore conveyed
in his much-reprised adage, namely, that sounds perish unless held in man’s
memory, for they cannot be written. 24
Yet while the primary function of graphics in this example is to firmly fix
ephemeral sounds on parchment, the cleverness of the scriptor, notator, and pictor
went beyond capturing and making permanent that which is transitory in nature.
The music theory, the compositions, and the drawing of the scores in this manuscript
belong in the ars subtilior tradition, at whose heart Dedalus may be taken to
symbolize the well-versed, innovative, subtle, imaginative artisan. Perhaps one is
faced here with a single person who wrote the text and the noteshapes, and drew the
illustrations, for, as Crocker observes, “[t]he numerous diagrams, the drawings of
instruments, the musical examples, all seem to have been made at the time of writing
the body of the text. Even the two musical pieces… seem to have been part of the
original composition of the manuscript – in other words, not posterior additions.” 25
22 Edited in O.B. ELLSWORTH, The Berkeley Manuscript: University of California Music Library, ms.
744 (olim Phillipps 4450): A New Critical Text and Translation on Facing Pages, with an Introduction,
Annotations, and Indices verborum and nominum et rerum, Lincoln, 1984; for other relevant bibliography,
see RISM B/3/4, p. 144. Ellsworth’s edition does not include the ballade, which had already
been transcribed by Thomas Walker; see R.L. CROCKER, A New Source for Medieval Music Theory,
in Acta musicologica, 39 [1967], p. 169. Images from the manuscript, including the ballade (see Figure
1), have been mounted on the website of the Digital scriptorium. For a digital reproduction of the ballade
and a number of other folios, see .
23 CROCKER, A New Source, p. 166.
24 Isidore of Seville: W.M. LINDSAY ed., Isidori hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive originum libri
XX, Oxford, 1911, 3.13. See also Jacques of Liège: R. BRAGARD ed., [Jacobi Leodiensis] Speculum
musicae, 7 vols., (Corpus scriptorum de musica, 3), [Rome], 1955–1973, 1, p. 19: nisi enim ab homine
in memoria soni teneantur, quia de numero successivorum sunt, labuntur et pereunt. The phrase is
sometimes attributed to St Jerome, as is the case in chapter 4 of the Secundum principale in the Quatuor
principalia: Beatus Jeronimus ad Dardanum de musicis instrumentis dicit quod nisi in hominis memoria
teneantur soni pereunt quia scribi non possunt; see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 90, fol. 11v;
and DE COUSSEMAKER, Scriptorum de musica, 4, p. 207. For St Jerome’s letters, see I. HILBERG
ed., Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistolae, (Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 54–56),
Vienna, 1910–1918.
25 CROCKER, A New Source, p. 162.