(b Swabia, 18 July 1013; d Reichenau, 24 Sept 1054). Benedictine monk, chronicler, writer on scientific subjects (astronomy, arithmetic, music) and composer. Some aspects of his life are recorded with extraordinary precision in a biography written shortly after his death by his pupil, Berthold, and Hermannus himself included a number of detailed references to his family in his well-known world chronicle. As a young child Hermannus was crippled by a disease that left him seriously incapacitated in movement and speech for his entire life. He started school at the age of seven, probably at Reichenau, but did not profess until he was about 30, on the advice (according to Berthold) of his abbot, Berno, who was also a renowned musician.
It seems clear from the range and quality of his accomplishments (which also included clock- and musical instrument maker) that he was a man of exceptional mental capacity and resolution. At the same time, many accounts of his life and personality are feverishly exaggerated in tone and probably legendary. This makes difficult the determination of authenticity of a number of writings, in particular of his musical compositions. Of 22 compositions mentioned or discussed by Oesch, seven are immediately characterized as false ascriptions, with two others considered quite doubtful. A further three have only inner (i.e. stylistic) criteria in support of Hermannus's authorship. In fact, only two works have excellent credentials: the sequence Grates, honos, hierarchia, and an Office for St Afra, Gloriosa et beatissima. Four other Offices mentioned by Berthold have disappeared without trace. Although the most venerable ascriptions to Hermannus – the Marian antiphons Alma Redemptoris mater and Salve regina – have been taken away by most recent scholarship, the true authorship is still, and possibly will be for ever, the subject of controversy. Under the circumstances it is impractical to characterize Hermannus's compositional style or technique.
Musica, his single work on theory (a supposed second work, on the monochord, is probably the same work under a different title) presents no such problems. There are only two manuscript sources with no serious difficulties in establishing the text. Like all of Hermannus's scientific works, it is specialized, not general in treatment. He had no intention of dealing with the whole of music, as it was conceived by his time, or even a large area of it. His focus was on the central concern of 11th-century Germanic speculative theory: the relationship of the species of 4th, 5th and octave to the ecclesiastical modes. He assumed his readers to be thoroughly versed in the monochord, and the prevailing mode of exposition is strictly logical. It is thus not an essay for beginners. At the same time, Hermannus went to some trouble to insist that his speculative theories be put into practice in the singing of sacred music. This is consistent with an attitude uncharacteristic of his time: that of conceiving the ideal musicus as a person who not only can think but also can compose and sing expertly.
Hermannus is renowned for a unique system of interval notation using both Greek and Roman letters. It plays no part in his major work, but is associated with two didactic songs for the learning of intervals, Ter tria iunctorum and Ter terni sunt modi. These, along with the poem which serves as a key to the notation, E voces unisonas aequat (see illustration), appear in more than a dozen manuscripts, sometimes also in neumes and standard alphabetical notation. It has been suggested that Hermannus developed this system after an early Byzantine model.
Critical estimates of the value and influence of Hermannus's work as a theorist vary considerably. Where some regard it as a highpoint of medieval theory, others see it as sterile theorizing for the sake of theory. The two views are not, to be sure, mutually exclusive.
W. Brambach, ed.: Hermanni Contracti Musica (Leipzig, 1884)
L. Ellinwood, ed.: Musica Hermanni Contracti (Rochester, NY, 1936) [edn of Lat. text with Eng. trans.]
H. Oesch: Berno und Hermann von Reichenau als Musiktheoretiker (Berne, 1961)
R.L. Crocker: ‘Hermann’s Major Sixth’, JAMS, xxv (1972), 19–37
D. Pesce: The Affinities and Medieval Transposition (Bloomington, IN, 1987), 25–8
LAWRENCE GUSHEE