(b Bavaria, mid-11th century; d Michelsberg, 17 Jan 1103). Theorist and compiler. He was presumably a lay priest before entering the Benedictine Michelsberg Abbey in Bamberg, an abbey that possessed a rich library (Lehmann, pp.348ff). Heimo of St James of Bamberg declared himself to be his disciple. The date of his death is recorded in the Chronicle which he had begun to compile. He bequeathed a number of books to his monastery, including books of chant and musical theory.
Frutolfus was above all a compiler; he collected texts from the Michelsberg library and presumably himself copied the extracts that he was later to include in his own works. We know his handwriting from two autograph manuscripts: his Chronicle of the World (D-KA 505), and the De divinis officiis (BAs Lit.134, Ed.V 13). This latter work consists of passages taken from the works of Amalarius of Metz, Hrabanus Maurus and Pseudo-Alcuin's De divinis officiis (10th century).
Frutolfus's musical treatises are likewise compilations which owe much to his predecessors, in particular to Boethius and to Berno of Reichenau. His treatise, preserved only in one early manuscript (Mbs Clm 14965b), entitled Breviarium (i.e. ‘abridgment’) is comparable to the anonymous Breviarium which gives a résumé of the Epistola de harmonica institutione by Regino of Prüm. Frutolfus discussed the origins and names of the pitches (following the Greek terminology of Boethius), the monochord, the proportions that govern consonances, tetrachords, modes, intervals and names of notes. The final chapters are made up of borrowings from verse texts by known authors (Hermannus Contractus, Henricus of Augsburg etc.) and also by anonymous writers.
The theoretical treatise is followed by a tonary in verse, which is an abridged version of the full tonary, and a number of shorter texts (measurement of the monochord, table of neumes, Guidonian hand, measurement of organ pipes, measurement of bells). The tonary that closes the Munich manuscript is complete, each tone being preceded by theoretical remarks taken from the Breviarium. Pieces from the chant repertory are then listed and classified according to their final differentia; the whole repertory, apart from hymns, is included. Sequences from the Mass and Great Responsories from the nocturnal Office are also included, even though in principle a tonary should contain only antiphons. This enormous work was never recopied in its entirety, though the abridged verse tonary had greater success, for it was transcribed into 12 south German manuscripts.
C. Vivell: ‘Vom unedierten Tonarius des Mönches Frutolf’, SIMG, xiv (1912–13), 463–84
C. Vivell, ed.: Frutolfi Breviarium de musica et tonarius (Vienna, 1919), 217–18
M. Manitius: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, iii (Munich, 1931/R), 350ff
V.L. Kennedy: ‘The “De divinis Officiis” of Ms. Bamberg Lit.134’, Ephemerides liturgicae, lii (1938), 312–26
P. Lehmann: Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, iii/3 (Munich, 1939), 360
B. Stäblein: ‘Frutolf von Michaelsberg als Musiker’, Fränkische Blätter für Geschichtsforschung und Heimatspflege, v (1953), 57–60
M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971), 15, 283–6
J. Smits van Waesberghe, ed.: Bernonis Augiensis Abbatis de arte musica disputationes traditae, ii (Buren, 1979), 12–14
M. Bernhard: ‘Zur Überlieferung des 11. Kapitels in Frutolfs “Breviarium”’, Quellen und Studien zur Musiktheorie des Mittelalters (Munich, 1990), 37–67
MICHEL HUGLO