French Lute Tablature in the 14th Century?

Author(s): Christopher Page

Source: Early Music, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1980), pp. 488-489+491-492
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3126535 .
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 French lute tablature
in the 14th century?
CHRISTOPHER PAGE

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488 EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1980

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This is the first in a series of commentarieson unusual
iconographicmaterial, some of which will notpreviouslyhave
been discussed in print. We invite further contributionsin
orderto encouragea constantre-examinationof notationand
performancepractice.
In recent years much attention has been given to the
earliest known lute tablatures. In 1968 Walter H.
Rubsamen proposed that the French lute tablature in
MS 1144 (olim 1193) of the Biblioteca Oliveriana,
Pesaro, must be regarded as 'the earliest known
French lute tablature; the earliest known manuscript
lute tablature of any nationality, and probably the
oldest available document of lute notation, whether
manuscript or printed'.' Rubsamen dated this tabla-
ture to shortly before 1500, and in response Hans
Tischler drew attention to the German lute tablature
in the Konigstein songbook (now in Berlin), which
was compiled c 1470-3.2 David Fallows has examined
all the sources afresh and in a valuable account does
not call into question the right of the K6nigstein
tablature to be regarded as the earliest known docu-
ment of lute notation.3 My purpose here is to bring
forward a new document which may have a crucial
bearing upon the history of lute tablature as
currently understood, and to invite comment.
The illustration (Berkeley, University of California
Library, MS 774, p. 51) is from a musical treatise ('B')
of four separate sections, and a fragment of a fifth,
dealing with such matters as the Guidonian hand and
musicaficta [treatise 1], discant progressions and tables
of consonances [21, mensuration and ligatures [3],
and intervals, the monochord and related topics [4].5
The first three treatises originally circulated as a
separate work, for on p. 50 B preserves a colophon
recording that these sections were compiled (compilati)
at Paris and completed on 12January 1375.6 Our
illustration belongs to treatise [4] and therefore dates
from after 1375 in the form in which we have it.'
Treatise [4] is distinct from the first three in two
more irportant respects. Firstly, it deals with
speculative matters derived from Boethius and other
writers8 whereas [1-3] form 'a cohesive trilogy of
musicapractica';9 secondly, both the text and diagrams
it contains are littered with errors. I shall advance an
explanation for this state of affairs below,'0 but it is
the diagram at the bottom right of our illustration
that concerns us here. In this section of the text the
author turns to the subject of tetrachords, and the
diagram is preceded by the following explanation:"
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Hiis expletis, ad thetracordatranseamus. Et quia mundialis
armonia quattuor elementis componitur, ecclesiastica in
quattuor litteris fines suos disponit. Hic thetracordum
mercurij depingam quia 4 cordis solum usus est.
[Having explained these things [the 'harmonic body'], let
us pass on to tetrachords. And because the worldly
harmony is composed from four elements, ecclesiastical
[harmony]disposes its limits in four letters. Here I will
draw the tetrachordof Mercury(since it used only four
strings).]
Having briefly discussed the proportions of octave,
fifth and fourth which, expressed in the form
12:9:8:6 comprise the 'harmonic body',12 the author
turns to tetrachords. Because 'worldly harmony' is
partly composed of four elements, so the music of the
church bases its modal system upon four letters, i.e.
d e f g. 'Worldly harmony' is, of course, the Boethian
musica mundana,'3 and at this point the author of B [4]
is preparing to embark upon an account of how
strings were added to the classical cithara. His
material is closely based upon Boethius who, begin-
ning with the tetrachord of Mercury (g-c'-c'-g') then
relates how various legendary and mythical persons
each added a string to the instrument to produce the
octochord, enneachord, decachord and so on, up to
the double octave.14 Our diagram, as a representa-
tion of the tetrachord of Mercury, thus belongs at the
start of the series. There is no diagram in the corre-
sponding part of Boethius' De Musica (Friedlein
edition, p. 206).
Oliver Ellsworth offers no explanation of the
figure at the bottom right of our illustration. In his
opinion it is inexplicable, and thus he resorts to the
hypothesis of scribal error since there are numerous
inconsistencies in this part of B.'5 However, there
may be some significance in the fact that the finals of
the church modes [defg],'6 which our author has
mentioned, appear among the letters on the top line
of the diagram. It is also to be remarked that the
lowest notes of the plagal modes also appear
[A B c d].
mode final of authentic form lowest pitch of
plagal form
1 Dorian d A
2 Phrygian e B
3 Lydian f c
4 Mixolydian g d
Thus the letters on the top line of the Berkeley
diagram can be arranged in an interlocking figure,
EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1980 489
perhaps as an illustration of how 'ecclesiastical
[harmony]' disposes its limits in four letters.
a f d c e
What of the letters in rows 2-4? Again, there may
be some significance in the fact that if we join them
up as follows: a f d c e g b
g treatise produces, by an internal and head-letter
we produce g-c-c-g which might be the tetrachord of
Mercury (g-c'-c'-g' in Helmholtz notation)."
Yet there is a far more interesting line of inter-
pretation to consider, for the diagram is strongly
reminiscent of French lute tablature.18 As far as I can
discern, the as at the beginning of each line are in-
explicable in terms of the text which accompanies the
diagram, though they are powerfully suggestive of
French tablature where a denotes open strings.
If we assume a fully chromatic fretting for the top
row in our figure, then we produce the following
rather less than convincing result:
Manuscript a b c d e f g a f d c e g b
Relative
pitch C' C#D D#E F F
Though something may perhaps be made of our
diagram if we assume a diatonic fretting and take the
letters as both pitch and tablature letters (i.e. take the
open string as tuned to a), with the following result:
Manuscript a b c d e f g a f d c e g b
Relative
A B
CB D E F G
pitch
Of course, if we assume a diatonic fretting, we will
produce a diatonic result; perhaps this seems a some-
what random set of pitches.
We must exercise caution at this point. Even if we
accept that this diagram is connected with the history
of French lute tablature, it is not necessarily itself a
piece of lute tablature, or even a piece of tablature at
all. Maybe we are looking at a diagram which merely
echoes a system then in use, and which has somehow
become involved with B.
Is it possible that a system of French lute tablature
was in use more than a century earlier than is gener-
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ally assumed? The case of German organ tablature
shows that a gap of approximately a century between
surviving documents of a tablature system is not
without parallel. This German tablature appears in
the Robertsbridge Codex which is of uncertain date,
but is generally placed in the first half of the 14th
century (sometimes as early as c 1325),~9 and does not
appear again, as far as I am aware, until the Ludolf
Wilkin tablature of 1431.20
B is generally dated, on palaeographical grounds,
to the 14th century, but I have argued elsewhere21
that a more precise dating may be possible for
treatise [4]. A set of verses at the opening of the
acrostic, the name IOHHAN VAIANT, which, if it is a
genuine name, surely refers to Johannes Vaillant,
well known as a composer and master of a Parisian
music school. Ursula Giinther has done a great deal
of research on this composer, and it currently
appears that Vaillant died in 1361.22 However, I wish
quite simply to make this document known, not to
answer-or even necessarily to raise-all the
questions that it poses.23 I hope this will inspire a re-
examination of the problem of the 'earliest lute
tablature'.
'Walter H. Rubsamen, 'The Earliest French Lute Tablature',
JAMS 21 (1968), pp. 286-99.
2 Hans Tischler 'The Earliest Lute Tablature?', JAMS 27 (1974),
pp. 100-3.
3 David Fallows, '15th-Century Tablatures for Plucked Instru-
ments: a Summary, a Revision and a Suggestion', LSJ 19 (1977),
pp. 7-33.
4 The manuscriptwas acquired by the 19th-centurybibliophile Sir
Thomas Phillipps from an unknown source-see A. N. L. Munby,
Phillipps Studies, 5 vols (Cambridge 1951-60), 3, p. 156, and
CatalogusLibrorum Manuscriptorum in BibliothecaThomaePhillippsBart
AD 1837, MS 4450. The manuscript was sold by Sotheby's on 30
November 1965, but a copy was deposited in the British Library-
Registerof Microfilms and otherPhotocopies in the Departmentof Manu-
scriptsBritishLibrary,List and Index Society, Special Series 9 (1976)
m/775 (2). There is a description and inventory of the manuscript
in R. L. Crocker, 'A new source for medieval music theory', Acta
Musicologica,39 (1967), pp. 161-71. See also Margaret Bent, 'A
postscript on the Berkeley theory MS', ActaMusicologica, 40 (1968),
p. 175. The manuscript is edited, translated and interpreted in
Oliver Bryant Ellsworth, The BerkeleyManuscript(olim Phillipps
4450): A Compendiumof FourteenthCenturyMusic Theory,D.Phil
dissertation (Universityof California, 1969) UMI no. 7013044.
5 Crocker,op cit.
6
I am most grateful to John Emerson of the University of
California, Berkeley,for sending me a facsimile of these lines. They
run as follows (italicized letters indicate expansion of manuscript
contractions): ' . . per/hoc sit finis huius libri com/pilati parisius
Anno a/natiuitate domini. M . CCCo / Septuagesimo quinto/die
duodecima mensis/ Ianuarij.'
7 Ellsworth,op cit, p. 1. Furtheron the date, see below.
8 The author mentions his sources in a passage that may be seen at
EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1980 491
 the top left of the illustration. Ignatius, Gregory, Ambrose, and
things 'of others' (aliorumque) are mentioned. Boethius is named
later, together with a mysterious Jacobus de Montibus (Ellsworth,
op cit, p. 77-8).
9 Ellsworth,op cit, p. 2.
N. P. MANDER LTD 10 See note 22.
" The text given here is based upon the facsimile. The translation
is my own.
Pipe OrganBuilders 12 Thus 12:6 is the octave, 12:8 is the fifth and 12:9 is the fourth.
According to Boethius, the ultimate source of this account, the
weights of the hammers heard by Pythagoras were in the propor-
tions 12:9:8:6-G. Friedlein ed., Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini
Boetii ... De Institutione Musica Libri Quinque (Leipzig, 1867 R
Frankfurt-a-M, 1966), pp. 196f.
'" Friedlein, op cit, pp. 187f.
14 ibid,
pp. 205f.
11 Ellsworth, op cit, pp. 170f and especially pp. 183-4. It should be
noted that these letters also appear on the strings of a harp in the
Noel Mander manuscript. See Page, 'Fourteenth-century Instruments and their
Tunings: a Treatise by Jean Vaillant ?', GSJ 33 (1980), pl. 4.
16 The modal
finales and lowest notes of the plagal modes are
offers written here in Helmholtz notation to show their relative pitch.
17 The Mercurian tetrachord is explained by Boethius (Friedlein,
An organ in the shape of a harpsichord, op cit, pp. 205-6).
18
For an introduction to this system see W. Apel, The Notation of
originally a claviorganum. Organ entirely PolyphonicMusic 900-1600 (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 64f.
original (Samuel Green, organ maker to 19 British Library MS Add 28550. For the early dating see, for
instance, Apel, op cit, p. 22, however it is possible that the source
George III) 6 stops. Offers in excess of dates from appreciably later, perhaps c 1375. The music is printed
?9,000 will be considered. A real museum in W. Apel ed., 'Keyboard Music of the 14th and 15th centuries',
piece, and a fine musical instrument. Corpusof Early KeyboardMusic, 1 (1963), pp. 1-9.
20 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS Theol. lat. quart. 290. The music is

printed in Apel, op cit, pp. 15-18.

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21
See Page, 'Fourteenth-Century Instruments'.
22 See Ursula Giinther, 'Johannes Vaillant', in H. Becker and R.
Gerlach eds., Speculum Musicae Artis: Festgabefur Heinrich Husmann
zum 60. Geburtstag(Munich, 1970), pp. 171-85. Perhaps the copy of
treatise [4] in B derives from a hasty and careless student tran-
script made at Vaillant's Parisian music school?
23 One would like to know, for example, whether the diagram can
be connected with any figures transmitted from Greek musical
theory.

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492 EARLY MUSIC OCTOBER 1980

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