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Summa Musice
A Thirteenth-Century Manual for Singers

Part of Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs

  • Date Published: May 2007
  • availability: Available
  • format: Paperback
  • isbn: 9780521036023

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About the Authors
  • 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. There has been no edition of the Summa musice since 1784, when Gerbert published a very faulty text. Christopher Page's book provides a completely new 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.

    Reviews & endorsements

    "This admirably executed volume provides the student of medieval music with the text and translation of a previously neglected theoretical treatise, one that proves to be of considerable interest, if not overwhelming importance...an elegantly wrought exemplar of insight, learning, and technique; it should stand as a model for subsequent editions and translations of medieval musical writings." Notes

    "...the Summa Musicae will interest all students of medieval music." Brad Walton, Continuo

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

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    Product details

    • Date Published: May 2007
    • format: Paperback
    • isbn: 9780521036023
    • length: 296 pages
    • dimensions: 229 x 152 x 17 mm
    • weight: 0.44kg
    • availability: Available
  • Table of Contents

    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.

  • Editor

    Christopher Page, University of Cambridge

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