Johannes de Garlandia [Johannes
Gallicus]
(fl c1270–1320). French theorist. His name has been
associated since the end of the 13th century with two important treatises, one
of which was the starting-point for nearly all treatments of mensural notation
in the second half of the 13th century; but it now appears that the authorship
of the original treatises was anonymous and that Johannes de Garlandia merely
revised and updated one or both of them.
1. Identification.
2. ‘De plana musica’.
3. ‘De mensurabili
musica’.
4. Historical
position.
REBECCA A. BALTZER
Johannes de Garlandia
1. Identification.
To
judge from the way his name was cited in later sources, Johannes de Garlandia
was apparently a magister in the University of Paris, whose surname was
derived from the clos de Garlande, an area of the Left Bank where many masters
and students lived. Hieronymus de Moravia, the late 13th-century compiler who
transmitted the revised version of the treatise on mensural music, also called
him Johannes Gallicus, indicating that he was French. Although several scholars
(notably Waite) have sought to identify him with the English poet and
grammarian Johannes de Garlandia (c1190–c1272), who taught in
Paris in the second quarter of the 13th century, almost all recent scholarship
(beginning with Reimer and Rasch) has rejected this idea. It now seems probable
that the theorist was not active before the 1270s, as postulated by Huglo
(1986) and others.
Although
the earliest source of De plana musica and De mensurabili musica
is a Parisian manuscript copied about 1260 (I-Rvat lat.5325), no author
is named in this or any other source of the original versions of the treatises,
and the earliest citations of De mensurabili musica, by Anonymus 4 (CoussemakerS,
i) and the Sowa or St Emmeram anonymus, are also nameless. The name of Johannes
de Garlandia is first associated with the treatises towards the end of the 13th
century by Hieronymus de Moravia, who incorporated into his own compilation a
revised version of De mensurabili musica; in consequence Pinegar has
suggested very persuasively that Johannes de Garlandia was not the original
author or compiler of either treatise but rather the person who revised the
text for Hieronymus. Whitcomb has made a circumstantial case for identifying
him with Jehan de Garlandia, a bookseller (librarius) on the rue des
Parchemeniers, who appears in Parisian tax records and other documents between
1296 and 1319. Johannes de Garlandia himself (as distinct from the anonymous
author of the original treatises) would thus have been contemporaneous with the
other writers or compilers of substantial treatises on mensural music in the
latter decades of the 13th century – Lambertus, Anonymus 4, the St Emmeram
anonymus, Franco of Cologne and Hieronymus de Moravia – as had long been
suspected by Reckow.
Johannes de Garlandia
2. ‘De plana musica’.
The
original version of De mensurabili musica begins ‘Habito de ipsa plana
musica …’ (Having treated of plainchant …), and in the earliest manuscript (I-Rvat
lat.5325, c1260) the mensural treatise is immediately preceded by a
version of an anonymous treatise on plainchant that was later attributed to
Johannes de Garlandia and has been given the modern title De plana musica.
Meyer has argued that the discrepant texts that survive represent a coherent
doctrine, but one that originated as an oral teaching rather than a written
treatise. He has edited four manuscript versions from the 13th to the 15th
centuries as different reportationes, or written accounts by others, of
the same doctrine; none refers to Johannes de Garlandia. The earliest reportatio
is that of Rvat lat.5325. A more complete reportatio, in the late
13th-century F-Pn lat.18514, directly follows a glossed copy of
Boethius's De institutione musica. The third reportatio is found
in the 14th-century I-Rvat Reg.lat.1146, while the fourth, of
15th-century Italian origin (Rvat Barb.lat.307), survives as prefatory
material to the Ars nova attributed to Philippe de Vitry (cf Plantinga;
Reaney, Gilles and Maillard). But the earliest attribution of this teaching to
Johannes de Garlandia is indirect, coming from mentions by Hieronymus de
Moravia (Tractatus de musica, chap.1), Johannes de Grocheio and Guy de
Saint-Denis (Tractatus de tonis, c1315; cf Reimer, 1972, i, 6–9).
Later in the 14th century, there was no hesitation in crediting this material
to Johannes de Garlandia, to judge from the compendium entitled Introductio
musicae planae secundum magistrum Johannem de Garlandia. It is not
impossible that this compilation is indeed Johannes de Garlandia's work, made
on the basis of the De plana musica tradition (see §3(iii) below for the
revision of De mensurabili musica).
The
various reportationes of De plana musica vary in completeness and
order of topics, but the most logically presented (F-Pn lat.18514)
begins with general statements about the classification of music, including its
position within the scheme of knowledge, its definitions and division into musica
mundana, musica humana and musica instrumentalis, and the
diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic genera of melody. Next comes an explanation
of numerical proportion in the abstract, which is then applied to the musical
intervals and the division of the monochord. It continues with the pitches of
the gamut or scale, the hexachord system, the staff, B
and B, and mutation. Then follows the portion of this
work that was subsequently most renowned: the positing of 13 intervals in
music, from the unison to the octave, with full explanations and examples of
each. According to the secondary evidence of the treatise of Lambertus, the Introductio
musicae planae secundum magistrum Johannem de Garlandia, and Guy de
Saint-Denis, the teaching of De plana musica must have concluded with a
discussion of the church modes, but this is not found in the extant reportationes.
Johannes de Garlandia
3. ‘De mensurabili musica’.
The
anonymous original version of De mensurabili musica is the first
treatise to give full-scale treatment to the rhythmic element of music and its
notation, and this work is also the earliest comprehensive theoretical
discussion of the polyphony of the Notre Dame epoch, in which rhythm for the
first time became a major factor. (Although the far briefer anonymous Discantus
positio vulgaris apparently originated in the 1230s, it survives only in
the updated redaction preserved by Hieronymus de Moravia.) De mensurabili
musica was the point of departure for almost all subsequent treatments of
mensural theory in the 13th century, whether their authors were of conservative
or more radical mind; in basic concepts, the order and treatment of topics, and
even specific wording, these later discussions give clear evidence of the
immense and fundamental influence of this treatise. This may well be one reason
why the name of Johannes de Garlandia became associated with De mensurabili
musica and several later compendia as an authority figure on musica
practica, both polyphony and plainchant – such a seminal treatise on the
notation of rhythm needed attribution.
With
an approach that hints at a scholastic background, De mensurabili musica
systematizes musical practice into a fully rationalized and methodical
presentation. Not surprisingly, this sometimes leads to modifications and
improvements upon earlier traditional procedures as found in the practical
polyphonic sources, for, like all good theorists, the author both prescribed as
well as described. He began by defining musica mensurabilis as organum
in the general sense: all measured music, subdivided according to the rhythmic
relations between the parts into discant, copula and organum in the special
sense. Because discant, defined as the simultaneous sounding of different
melodies according to mode and the equivalence of one to another, is fully
measured in both parts, almost half the treatise is devoted to rhythmic matters
before taking up the three species of polyphony in turn.
(i) Rhythm.
In
its consideration of rhythm, De mensurabili musica launches immediately
into a discussion of the six Rhythmic modes, explaining their rhythmic patterns and
giving musical examples of each. The next topic covers the form of single notes
and of ligatures, including rules for reading the rhythm of ligatures. This
information is then applied to the notation of the different rhythmic modes,
both perfect and imperfect, with single-line examples showing the pattern of
ligatures for each. Continuing its logical progression, the treatise next
defines rests or pauses and their notation; included are the recta brevis,
the longa, the finis punctorum, the divisio modorum, the divisio
sillabarum and the suspiratio.
While
the primary purpose of De mensurabili musica was to give a full
theoretical systematization of modal rhythm as it had developed in the music of
the Notre Dame composers, the author's very concern for thoroughness led him to
introduce innovations and improvements upon traditional practice – improvements
designed to clarify certain ambiguities. It was this treatise that introduced signs
of different length to specify rests of different durations, and its basic
formulation became standard when it was adopted by Franco of Cologne; only
Lambertus suggested a different system. It was also apparently this treatise
that first introduced a graphic distinction in single notes between the
‘correct’ long (of two tempora), the duplex long, the plicated long, the
‘correct’ breve, the plicated breve and the semibreve. Equally significant, it
was De mensurabili musica that introduced the concept of propriety and
perfection in ligatures, an idea that ultimately proved of far-reaching
importance for the whole mensural system (see Notation,
§III, 3).
As
the treatise explains, the propriety of a ligature involves the shape of its
beginning. A normal ligature is written ‘with propriety’ and its rhythm is thus
read normally. However, if the beginning is written abnormally, it is either
‘without propriety’, indicating a complete reversal of its normal rhythmic values,
or ‘with opposite propriety’, indicating a compression of durational value so
that all notes before the final one total the length of a breve. Use of
ligatures without propriety applies solely to the first two modes and should
take place only when special clarification is needed. In the modal theory of De
mensurabili musica the perfection or imperfection of a ligature has no
direct effect upon its rhythm (as it does in later mensural theory) but refers
only to the completeness or incompleteness of the ligature. If a syllable
change, pitch repetition or the like causes a ligature to be split in two, it
is thereby made ‘imperfect’ and must be mentally reassembled for proper
rhythmic interpretation.
These
three major innovations with which De mensurabili musicasupplied modal
theory, made purely in the interest of resolving ambiguities, ultimately
rendered the theory itself unnecessary. If single notes, rests and ligatures
were able to acquire more specific rhythmic values that depended less and less
on context, strict adherence to the six rhythmic paradigms of the modal system
became less and less necessary. The two other chief innovators in 13th-century
rhythmic theory, Lambertus and Franco, came to growing realization of this fact
as they built on the foundation of De mensurabili musica. Among the
practical sources, the notational ideas of De mensurabili musica(together
with some from Lambertus) are reflected to a substantial degree only in the
Bamberg motet manuscript (D-BAs Ed.IV.6), which may in fact be directly
contemporary with the treatise.
(ii) Polyphony.
The
classification of consonant and dissonant intervals in De mensurabili musica,
which follows the treatment of rhythm and its notation, became one of the
treatise's most widely disseminated theoretical concepts. Of the six consonant
intervals, the ‘perfect’ consonances are the unison and the octave; the
‘imperfect’ consonances are the major and minor 3rds; and the ‘medial’
consonances (those ‘between’ perfect and imperfect) are the 5th and the 4th.
The seven dissonant intervals are similarly divided: ‘perfect’ dissonances are
the semitone, the tritone and the major 7th; ‘imperfect’ dissonances are the
major 6th and minor 7th; and ‘medial’ dissonances are the whole tone and the
minor 6th. The succeeding discussion supports this classification with the
numerical ratios for the intervals, indicating that the most consonant
intervals have the simplest proportions.
The
last three chapters of the treatise are devoted to the three species of musica
mensurabilis – Discant, Copula and Organum. Discant receives the bulk of
the author's attention, for that lengthy treatment amounts to one-third of the
work, whereas discussion of copula and organum is very brief. In the chapter on
discant, each rhythmic mode is shown in contrapuntal combination with itself
and with each of the other five modes; some of the resulting combinations are
completely unknown in the practical sources. This discussion is liberally
illustrated with two-part examples apparently composed directly for inclusion
in the treatise. The Vatican manuscript breaks off near the end of this
chapter, and in his critical edition Reimer reconstructed the following two
chapters (12 and 13) based on the revised version in Hieronymus de Moravia and
quotations from the original version in the St Emmeram anonymus and Anonymus 4.
The
brief comments on copula describe it as ‘between discant and organum’. The
substance of these remarks indicates that if discant is characterized by strict
modal rhythm in both parts, copula is marked by modal rhythm in the upper voice
over a sustained (organal) note in the tenor; organum is distinguished by
sustained notes in the tenor and a rhythm not strictly modal (modus non
rectus) in the upper part. Organum thus not being measured in the regular
way that discant and copula are, the treatise offers three somewhat
contradictory rules for distinguishing longs and breves in this species: longs
in the upper voice are recognizable because they are consonant with the tenor,
because they are notated as longs, or because they are heard before a long rest
or before a perfect consonance. The only mention of three-voice organum (organum
cum alio) is to distinguish it from the two-voice variety (organum per
se), as the two upper voices of a three-voice organum proceed in a
discanting relationship using modal rhythm.
(iii) Revision.
In
the revised version of the treatise attributed by Hieronymus de Moravia to
Johannes de Garlandia, which Reimer distinguished by the title De musica
mensurabili positio, the first two chapters differ significantly from the
beginning of the anonymous De mensurabili musica in its two earlier
manuscript sources (I-Rvat lat.5325; B-BRs 528, also from
13th-century Paris). In Johannes de Garlandia's revision, the rhythmic modes
are first described as the ‘six ancient modes’ (sex modos antiquos);
there is no mention of organum; and some of the technical terms indicate that
this version must postdate the treatises of Lambertus and Franco. Additional
new material (forming chapters 14–16) at the end of the work discusses
three-voice composition (tripla), musical ‘color’ and vocal
ornamentation, and four-voice composition (quadrupla), the latter with a
passing reference to the works of Magister Perotinus.
Johannes de Garlandia
4. Historical position.
The
combined traditions of all the manuscripts containing ‘Garlandian’ material
seem to imply that with a copy of Boethius's speculative treatise together with
the anonymous De plana musica and De mensurabili musica, a
university student in Paris about 1260–80 would have had all the written music
theory he needed to make him a musicus. Testimony about the teachings,
now attributed to Johannes de Garlandia, continues in the 14th century not only
from Guy de Saint-Denis (c1315) but also from the Englishmen Roger
Caperon (Commentum super cantum) and Robert de Handlo (Regule,
1326). Caperon called Johannes de Garlandia his revered teacher, and Handlo
cited him for ideas about the division of the semibreve into minims. Although
the latter treatment clearly pertains to early 14th-century notational theory,
if Johannes de Garlandia was actually a contemporary of Hieronymus de Moravia,
rather than a mid-13th-century theorist, it is entirely plausible that he
should have participated in the developments leading to the Ars Nova. A
subsequent hint of this possibility is the incorporation of part of the Introductio
musicae planae secundum magistrum Johannem de Garlandia into the Ars
contrapunctus secundum Philippum de Vitriaco (CoussemakerS, iii,
23–7) and the ascription of the latter treatise in one manuscript source to Johannes
de Garlandia (which led Coussemaker to edit yet another, anonymous version
under Garlandia's name: Optima introductio in contrapunctum pro rudibus,
ibid., 12–13).
The
complicated transmission and derivative sources of the Garlandian treatises led
Coussemaker, Riemann and others to postulate both an older (13th-century) and a
younger (14th-century) music theorist named Johannes de Garlandia. It now seems
more likely that only one person bore this name, whose career in Paris spanned
the last decades of the 13th century and the first decades of the 14th; on the
other hand, the most important writings associated with Johannes de Garlandia, De
plana musica and De mensurabili musica, were probably the work of
another, nameless author active about the middle of the 13th century. The
tremendous accomplishment of this anonymous theorist in systematizing the
rhythmic modes and their notation should not be underestimated merely because
these matters quickly underwent change and modification. The whole mensural system,
and indeed the development of late-medieval polyphony itself, would not have
been possible without the systematic formulation of the theory of Notre Dame
polyphony in De mensurabili musica.
WRITINGS
probably anonymous, c1240–60
De plana
musica, 4 versions; 1 ed. in CSM, viii (1964), 13–21, Eng. trans. in Plantinga;
all ed. C. Meyer, Musica plana Johannis de Garlandia
(Baden-Baden, 1998), 3–62
De
mensurabili musica; CoussemakerS, i, 175–82;
ed. E. Reimer (Wiesbaden, 1972); Eng. trans. S. Birnbaum (Colorado
Springs, CO, 1978); partial Eng. trans. in StrunkSR2, ii, 113–16
probably compiled or revised by johannes de garlandia, c1270–1300
Introductio
musicae planae secundum magistrum Johannem de Garlandia; CoussemakerS, i, 157–75;
ed. C. Meyer, Musica plana Johannis de Garlandia
(Baden-Baden, 1998), 63–97
De musica
mensurabili positio; CoussemakerS, i, 97–117;
ed. S.M. Cserba, Hieronymus de Moravia O.P.: Tractatus de
musica (Regensburg, 1935), 194–230; Eng. trans. in
Larkowski
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MGG1 (H. Hüschen)
W.G. Waite: The Rhythm
of Twelfth-Century Polyphony: its Theory and Practice
(New Haven, CT, 1954)
W.G. Waite: ‘Johannes de Garlandia, Poet and Musician’, Speculum, xxxv (1960), 179–95
L. Plantinga: ‘Philippe de Vitry's Ars Nova: a Translation’, JMT, v (1961), 204–23
R. Crocker: ‘Discant, Counterpoint, and Harmony’, JAMS, xv (1962), 1–21
G. Reaney: ‘The Question of Authorship in the Medieval Treatises on Music’, MD, xviii (1964), 7–17
G. Reaney, A.Gilles and J. Maillard: Introduction
to Philippi de Vitriaco Ars nova, CSM, viii (1964)
F. Reckow: Der
Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4 (Wiesbaden, 1967)
F. Reckow: ‘Proprietas und perfectio’, AcM, xxxix (1967), 115–43
R. Stevenson: ‘A Neglected “Johannes de Garlandia” Manuscript (1486) in South America’, Notes, xxiv (1967–8), 9–17
F.A. Gallo: ‘Tra Giovanni di Garlandia e Filippo da Vitry’,
MD, xxiii (1969), 13–20
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Garlandia en de ontwikkeling van de voor-Franconische notatie (Brooklyn, NY, 1969)
[with Eng. and Ger. summaries]
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to Johannes de Garlandia: De mensurabili musica
(Wiesbaden, 1972)
G.A. Anderson: ‘Johannes de Garlandia and the Simultaneous Use of Mixed Rhythmic Modes’,MMA, viii (1975), 11–31
B.R. Antley: The Rhythm
of Medieval Music: a Study in the Relationship of Stress and Quantity and a
Theory of Reconstruction with a Translation of John of Garland's ‘De
mensurabili musica’ (diss., Florida State U., 1977)
C.S. Larkowski: The ‘De
musica mensurabili positio’ of Johannes de Garlandia: Translation and
Commentary (diss., Michigan State U., 1977)
J. Yudkin: ‘The Copula according to Johannes de Garlandia’, MD, xxxiv (1980), 67–84
S. Fuller: ‘Theoretical Foundations of Early Organum Theory’, AcM, liii (1981), 52–84
E. Roesner: ‘Johannes de Garlandia on Organum in Speciali’, EMH, ii (1982), 129–60
M. Haas: ‘Die Musiklehre im 13. Jahrhundert von Johannes de Garlandia bis Franco’,Die mittelalterliche Lehre von der
Mehrstimmigkeit, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, ed. F.
Zaminer, v (Darmstadt, 1984),
89–159
M. Huglo: ‘La notation franconienne: antécédents et devenir’, La notation des musiques polyphoniques aux
XI–XIIIe siècles: Poitiers 1986 [Cahiers de
civilisation médiévale, xxxi/2 (1988)], 123–32
M. Huglo: ‘Bibliographie des éditions et études relatives à la théorie musicale
du Moyen Age (1972–1987)’, AcM, lx (1988), 229–72
M. Huglo: ‘La place du Tractatus de musica dans l'historie de la théorie
musicale du XIIIe siècle: étude codicologique’, Jérome de Moravie: Royaumont 1989, 33–42
[with Eng. summary]
E. Roesner: ‘The Emergence of Musica Mensurabilis’, Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue, ed. E.K. Wolf and E.H. Roesner (Madison, WI, 1990), 41–74
J. Yudkin, ed.: De musica
mensurata: the Anonymous of St. Emmeram (Bloomington, IN,
1990)
S. Pinegar: Textual and
Conceptual Relationships among Theoretical Writings on Measurable Music during
the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (diss.,
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C. Meyer: Introduction
and commentary to Musica plana Johannis de Garlandia (Baden-Baden, 1998)
P. Whitcomb: ‘Teachers, Booksellers, and Taxes: Reinvestigating the Life and
Activities of Johannes de Garlandia’, PMM, viii (1999), 1–13
For further bibliography see Notation.