(fl c1270). Music theorist. His Tractatus de musica made an important contribution to the theory of measured music between Johannes de Garlandia and Franco of Cologne. All that is known of his life or nationality is that he evidently spent time in Parisian musical circles. Apart from the treatise itself, the only information about him derives from the comments of three other theorists: the St Emmeram or Sowa anonymus, Johannes de Grocheio and Jacobus of Liège. The St Emmeram anonymus, writing in 1279, mentioned Lambertus by name and several times made strenuous objections to his notational ideas. At the end of the 13th century Grocheio mentioned him as an advocate of a system of nine rhythmic modes rather than the six modes of Johannes de Garlandia or the five of Franco of Cologne. Jacobus of Liège in the 14th century cited him three times along with Franco as a respected and eminent authority, but Jacobus referred to him by the name Aristotle rather than Lambertus – an error that probably arose as a result of one anonymous copy of Lambertus’s treatise following a work ascribed to Aristotle. The treatise also circulated under the name of Bede, among whose complete works (Basle, 1563) it was printed as De musica quadrata seu mensurata (ed. in PL, xc, 919–38); as such it was cited by Francisco de Salinas (1577).
Yudkin (1991) has suggested that Lambertus should be identified with the man of that name who was a magister of the University of Paris and dean of St Vincent, Soignies; his will, dated 8 April 1270, names as his executor Robert of Sorbon, canon of Paris and founder of the Collège de Sorbonne. Pinegar has alternatively proposed an identification with Labertus of Auxerre, a Dominican scholar buried at the covent of St Jacques in Paris, but this seems less likely since the tonary included with Lambertus’s treatise shows no Dominican characteristics.
Lambertus’s
Tractatus de musica (ed. in CoussemakerS, i, 251–81; ed. in CSM,
forthcoming) dates from the third quarter of the 13th century, most probably
from the decade 1265–75. As it survives today, the first two-thirds of the
treatise deals with the traditional topics of speculative music and of
practical rudiments needed by performers; this portion may well be a compilatio
not directly connected to Lambertus. After opening with statements on the
definitions, etymology and invention of music, there is a section dealing with
the notes of the gamut, the hexachord system, the staff, B
and B
and mutation. The treatise allows 12
musical intervals from the unison to the octave, deliberately excluding the
tritone. Like Johannes de Garlandia, it subdivides consonant and dissonant
intervals into perfect, medial and imperfect, although this formulation differs
in its details. This section concludes with an explanation of the
ecclesiastical modes and a fairly extensive tonary with musical examples.
The more important last portion of the treatise – the part specifically associated with Lambertus by later theorists – discusses measured music and its notation. Here Lambertus shows himself to be the most important polyphonic theorist between the modal theory associated with Johannes de Garlandia and the mensural theory of Franco of Cologne. His doctrine, though heavily indebted to Garlandian theory, nonetheless reveals a shift in emphasis that prepared the way for the fully mensural system set out by Franco in about 1280. Lambertus’s work indicates that by about 1270 the old modal rhythms and melismatic successions of ligatures were necessarily giving way to mensural techniques in the syllabically texted motet.
After the classification of the categories of musica mensurabilis as discant, ‘hokettus’ and organum, there is an extensive discussion of discant, followed by several paragraphs on hocket (organum is mentioned only in passing). Lambertus did not begin with a discussion of mode and ligature patterns but with an exposition of single note forms: the perfect long, the imperfect long, the brevis recta and brevis altera, the semibrevis major and minor, and later, the duplex long. The most significant innovation proved to be his insistence on the priority of the perfect long of three tempora as the fount and origin of all other note values. Here he directly contradicted earlier modal theory and Johannes de Garlandia, who regarded the long of two tempora as the ‘correct’ long and the basis of the rhythmic system; Lambertus’s perfect long was in Garlandian teaching the long ‘beyond measure’. Lambertus dwelt at length on the concept of perfection and imperfection, explaining how perfections are formed by various combinations of longs and breves and quoting musical examples from the motet repertory. He also specified that the brevis recta divides into three equal or two unequal semibreves.
Lambertus next considered ligatures of two to five notes and their rhythmic interpretations. For him the shape of a ligature, not its position in an additive modal series, was the most significant factor as regards its rhythm; the propriety of a ligature is determined purely by the presence or absence of a descending stroke on the left side. Lambertus was also precise about the length of the symbols for rests of different durations.
His last major topic, presented in poetic form, is a consideration of the Rhythmic modes, of which he is unique in listing nine. In accordance with his concept of the primacy of the perfect long, his 1st mode is Johannes de Garlandia’s 5th, and he stated that all other modes can be resolved or reduced to this mode. His 2nd to 5th modes are equivalent to Garlandia’s 1st to 4th modes and his 7th is Garlandia’s 6th. The 6th, 8th and 9th modes are Lambertus’s additions; all three feature semibreves, and in the motets quoted as musical examples, each semibreve has its own syllable of text. Thus his added modes reflect the new divisive rhythms and more rapid declamation of text fashionable in the motet during the last third of the 13th century.
The dozen or more motets which Lambertus cited are found mostly in the Montpellier and Bamberg manuscripts (F-MO H 196 and D-BAs Ed.IV.6), although several appear also in the La Clayette and Las Huelgas manuscripts (F-Pn fr.13521 and E-BUlh), and other sources, including the musical appendix in the 13th-century manuscript that is the most important source of the Tractatus itself (F-Pn lat.11266). Lambertus’s notational ideas find their best representation in the motets of this short collection appended to his treatise, but his doctrine is also partly reflected in the notation of the Bamberg manuscript. By providing Franco of Cologne with the fruitful concepts of perfection, the perfect long and the imperfect long, Lambertus helped to set the stage for the next several centuries of the mensural system.
HMT (‘Clausula’, S. Schmalzriedt; ‘Conductus’, F. Reckow; ‘Copula’, F. Reckow; ‘Hoquetus’, W. Frobenius; ‘Longa – brevis’, W. Frobenius; ‘Modus (Rhythmuslehre)’, W. Frobenius; ‘Musica falsa/musica ficta’, B. Sydow-Saak; ‘Perfectio’, W. Frobenius; ‘Proprietas (Notationslehre)’, W. Frobenius; ‘Semibrevis’, W. Frobenius)
MGG1 (G. Reaney)
R.L. 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
F. Reckow: ‘Proprietas und perfectio’, AcM, xxxix (1967), 115–43
M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971)
W. Frobenius: ‘Zur Datierung von Francos Ars cantus mensurabilis’, AMw, xxvii (1970), 122–7
G.A. Anderson: ‘Magister Lambertus and Nine Rhythmic Modes’, AcM, xlv (1973), 57–73
G.A. Anderson: ‘The Notation of the Bamberg and Las Huelgas Manuscripts’, MD, xxxii (1978), 19–67
M. Huglo: ‘De Franco de Cologne à Jacques de Liège’, RBM, xxxiv–xxxv (1980–81), 44–60
M. Everist: ‘Music and Theory in late Thirteenth-Century Paris: the Manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds lat.11266’, RMARC, xvii (1981), 52–64
M. Haas: ‘Die Musiklehre im 13. Jahrhundert von Johannes de Garlandia bis Franco’, Die mittelalterliche Lehre von der Mehstimmigkeit, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, ed. F. Zaminer, v (Darmstadt, 1984), 89–159
C.B. Schmitt and D. Knox: Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus: a Guide to Latin Works Falsely Attributed to Aristotle before 1500 (London, 1985), 78, n.89 [‘Speculum musicae’, with list of MSS]
J. Yudkin: ‘The Influence of Aristotle on French University Music Texts’, Music Theory and its Sources: Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Notre Dame, IN, 1987, 173–89
M. Huglo: ‘Bibliographie des éditions et études relatives à la théorie musicale du Moyen Age (1972–1987)’, AcM, lx (1988), 229–72
A. Gilles: ‘De musica plana breve compendium: un témoignage de l'enseignement de Lambertus’, MD, xliii (1989), 33–62
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., Columbia U., 1991)
J. Yudkin: ‘The Anonymous Music Treatise of 1279: Why St Emmeram?’, ML, lxxii (1991), 177–96
J. Dyer: ‘The Clavis in Thirteenth-Century Music Theory’, Cantus Planus VII: Sopron 1995, 195–212
J. Yudkin and T. Scott: ‘Ut hic: Announcing a Study of Musical Examples in the Thirteenth-Century Music Treatises’, Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. G. Boone (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 471–85
REBECCA A. BALTZER