82 LUMINITA FLOREA <strong>THE</strong> SCRIPTOR IN <strong>THE</strong> 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.
VIRTUS SCRIPTORIS: STEPS TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY <strong>OF</strong> ILLUSTRATION BORROWING IN MUSIC <strong>THE</strong>ORY TREATISES Figure 1. The circular labyrinth (the ballade). University of California, Berkeley, Music Library, MS 744, fol. 62r. ( © University of California, Berkeley). 83
Change language