(b Volpiano, Lombardy; d 1031). Italian monk, monastic reformer and composer, active in France. He was at St Bénigne, Dijon, where he was abbot from 990. His monastic reforms, initiated at Dijon, spread to Italy (they are reflected in a customary of Fruttuaria), and, with the aid of his nephew Jean de Fécamp, to Normandy (Fécamp, Jumièges and Troarn); after the Norman conquest they also spread to England (Winchcomb and Gloucester). These reforms lasted for several centuries: the flyleaves of the Montpellier manuscript (F-MOf H.159) contain a fragmentary tonary that agrees with the complete tonary at the beginning of a 13th-century antiphoner from Fécamp (F-R 245, A 190); and the marginal notes in the same Montpellier manuscript agree with the ordering of the liturgy in a 13th-century noted gradual using staff notation (B-Br II.3824, anc. Fétis 1173) and in the 15th-century customary of St Benignus (F-Dad; see Chomton).
Guillaume's zeal for the performance of the Office was recorded by his biographers. He was probably the composer of the Office of St Benignus sung in those reformed monasteries of which he was patron. He was probably also the originator or instigator of the combination of neumatic and alphabetical notations found in manuscripts from places affected by the reforms. Such a combination had been proposed by Hucbald of St Amand (GerbertS, i, 117) but had not been adopted for the whole repertory. This notation is found, for example, in a famous tonary and gradual (F-MOf H.159; see PalMus, 1st ser., vii, 1901/R; transcr. in Hansen), where alphabetical symbols (probably derived from an Italian model) are used, and special signs (e.g. a letter ‘Γ’ on its side for intervals smaller than a semitone; for illustration, see Notation, fig.14). These special signs are not used in Norman and English manuscripts, although such manuscripts often employ the other aspects of the notation.
G. Chevallier: Le vénérable Guillaume, abbé de St. Bénigne de Dijon: réformateur de l'ordre bénédictin au XIe siècle (Paris, 1875)
L. Chomton: Histoire de l'église Saint-Bénigne de Dijon (Dijon, 1900)
S. Corbin: ‘Valeur et sens de la notation alphabétique à Jumièges et en Normandie’, Jumièges … XIIIe centenaire: Rouen 1954, 913–24; see also RdM, l (1964), 226
M. Huglo: ‘Le tonaire de Saint-Bénigne de Dijon (Montpellier H.159)’, AnnM, iv (1956), 7–18
L. Grodecki: ‘Guillaume de Volpiano et l'expansion clunisienne’, Bulletin du Centre d'études romanes, ii (1961), 21–31
B. de Vregille: ‘Le copiste Audebaud de Cluny et la bible de Guillaume de Dijon’, Théologie, lvii (1964), 7–15
H.H. Kaminsky: ‘Zur Gründung von Fruttuaria durch Abt Wilhelm von Dijon’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, lxxvii (1966), 238–67
R. Le Roux: ‘Guillaume de Volpiano: son cursus liturgique au Mont Saint-Michel et dans les abbayes normandes’, Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, i (Paris, 1967), 417–72, esp. 470
M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971), 328–33
N. Bulst: Untersuchungen zu den Klosterreformen Wilhelms von Dijon (962–1031) (Bonn, 1973)
F.E. Hansen, ed.: H.159 Montpellier: Tonary of St. Bénigne of Dijon (Copenhagen, 1974), 19–20
S. Corbin: Die Neumen (Cologne, 1977), 102
J. Froger: ‘Les prétendus quarts de ton dans le chant grégorien et les symboles du MS H.159 de Montpellier’, EG, xvii (1978), 145–79; see also review by M. Huglo, Scriptorium, xxxiv (1980), 43, n.172
A.C. Browne: ‘The a–p System of Letter Notation’, MD, xxxv (1981), 5–54, esp. 14ff and n.34
N. Phillips: ‘Notationen und Notationslehren von Boethius bis zum 12. Jahrhundert’, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, ed. F. Zaminer and T. Ertelt (Darmstadt, 1999), 561–72
MICHEL HUGLO