Author: Philip E. Schreur

Publisher/Date: University of Nebraska Press, 1989,0

Format/Condition: New cloth hardcover book in near fine condition: remainder mark on textblock. r, 122 pages

Description: As French and Italian notational practices began to diverge at the beginning of the Ars nova, composers invented new rhythmic symbols—figurae—as their innovations required, and this resulted in a variety of notations that were as confusing to the musician of that day as they are to the modern scholar. In the third quarter of the fourteenth century, a notational system combining elements of the French and Italian systems was put forth in the Tractatus figurarum. Preceding the critical text and translation, an extended introduction explains the musical and intellectual sources of the work.

Greek and Latin Music Theory series aims to establish truly critical texts for the many works of ancient, medieval, and (occasionally) renaissance music theory in Greek and Latin that do not presently exist in critical editions and to provide translations on facing pages with annotations illuminating the content of the treatise. Each volume includes a major introductory essay discussing, as appropriate, the significance of the treatise to its theoretical tradition; the life of its author (or, for anonymous works, the probable authors); the design, sources, and theoretical premises of the treatise; the manuscripts used to establish the text and the actual establishment of the text itself; loci paralleli and quotations; and special considerations involved in the translation. The texts are always based on a full collation of every relevant manuscript— insofar as possible—and the collation is reported in a critical apparatus at the bottom of each text page. The translations are intended to be readable, but at the same time, they attempt to preserve in large measure the consistency, variety, and subtlety of the original. Special care is given to the treatment of technical vocabulary, syntactic subtleties, and consistency of terminology. Finally, each volume includes indices verborwn, nominum et rerum.