Summa Musice
A Thirteenth-Century Manual for Singers

Christopher Page's 1991 book provides an edition of the Latin text taken from the only surviving original copy, together with an English translation.

Christopher Page (Edited by)

9780521036023, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 May 2007

296 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

"...provides a refreshing view of medieval sacred music." Choral Journal

How did medieval musicians learn to perform? How did they compose? What was their sense of the history and purpose of music? The Summa musice, a treatise on practical music from c.1200, sheds light on all these questions. It is a manual for young singers who are learning Gregorian chant for the first time, and provides a compact but comprehensive introduction to notation, performance and composition, written in a mixture of Latin prose and verse. More than that, however, it is also an introduction to medieval culture: what educated people believed to be worth knowing about music, how they reasoned when they discussed musical questions, the nature of musical thought and how it was expressed. Christopher Page's 1991 book provides an edition of the Latin text taken from the only surviving original copy, together with an English translation. Both texts are copiously annotated and introduced by an authoritative and illuminating editorial commentary.

Preface
Abbreviations
Intervallic notation in the Summa musice
1. The authorship of the treatise
2. The scope and character of the treatise
3. Sources and metrics
4. The text and the edition
Summa musice: the translation
Summa musice: the text
Textual notes and rejected readings
Sources, parallels, citations and allusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Annotated catalogue of chants
Index auctorum.

Subject Areas: Music: styles & genres [AVG]