(d ?Elsham, Lincs., 1340). English theorist. His treatise Trianguli et scuti declaratio de proportionibus musice mensurabilis (ed. in CSM, xii, 1966) must have been in circulation before 1372, when the Breviarium ascribed to Willelmus (ed. ibid.), which cites it, was catalogued among the books of the Augustinian friars of York. The most likely candidate for identification with the author is the ‘Johannes de Torkeseye’ who was elected prior of the Augustinian canons at Elsham, north Lincolnshire, on 9 November 1339. He had been a canon at Elsham for some time before his election and remained prior for only a year, as his death occasioned the election of his successor in December 1340. If this identification is correct, it places the treatise perhaps in the 1330s, only a decade or two after the constellation of writings associated with Philippe de Vitry.
Torkesey’s Trianguli et scuti declaratio is short but was very influential in England in the 14th and 15th centuries. It is an exposition of two geometrical figures: a shield-shaped cartouche (scutum) displaying the six principal note-shapes from the simpla (semiminim) through to the larga (maxima), and a triangular array illustrating the available combinations of perfection and imperfection in the mensural hierarchy. Torkesey employed dots above and below as well as to the right of a note to indicate the perfection of values contained within as well as of the note itself. A parallel array of rests, described in the treatise, is not transmitted with it, but both triangles (expanded to the value of the largissima) appear in the Breviarium of Willelmus. The numerous copies of Torkesey’s Declaratio show varying degrees of adaptation; the brief counterpoint text beginning ‘Septem sunt species’ (ed. in Bukofzer, 136–7) is embedded in one of these, but there seems little reason to believe it is actually by Torkesey.
M. Bukofzer: Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons nach den theoretischen Quellen (Strasbourg, 1936)
M. Bent: ‘A Preliminary Assessment of the Independence of English Trecento Notations’, La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letteratura: Siena and Certaldo 1975 [L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, iv (Certaldo, 1978)], 65–82
P.M. Lefferts: The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor, 1986)
P.M. Lefferts, ed.: Robertus de Handlo: Regule [The Rules]; Johannes Hanboys: Summa [The Summa] (Lincoln, NE, 1991), esp. 54–6
RONALD WOODLEY