Johannes de Garlandia
Johannes de Garlandia (Johannes Gallicus) (fl. c. 1270 – 1320) was a French music theorist of the late ars antiqua period of medieval music. He is known for his work on the first treatise to explore the practice of musical notation of rhythm, De mensurabili musica; prior to this time, music notation applied to pitch only. Johannes de Garlandia embraced the task and took the responsibility of facilitating the reproduction of musical compositions with a clear indication of what the rhythmic values would be. By initiating the treatise on rhythmic notation, de Garlandia regarded it as a personal transformation and used this work as a contribution to the facility and well-being of other musicians and performers.
Life and problems of identification
Until the mid 1980s, it was believed that Johannes de Garlandia lived in the first half of the thirteenth century and wrote two treatises, De mensurabili musica and De plana musica, and thus was intimately connected with the composers of the Notre Dame school, at least one of whom — Pérotin — may still have been alive in the earlier part of his career. Unfortunately the linking of his name with those two works only began after 1270, and it now seems likely that Garlandia was Jehan de Garlandia, a keeper of a bookshop in Paris, records of whom appear on various official Parisian documents between 1296 and 1319. Most likely he was an editor of the two previous anonymous treatises, and while he did much to clarify them and transmit to them to posterity, he did not write them.
Sources writing about Garlandia in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century also call him a magister, indicating he probably had a role as a teacher at the University of Paris.
Works
De mensurabili musica, most likely written around 1240, is the single most important treatise in the early history of rhythmic notation, for it is the first to propose notation of rhythm. Specifically, it describes a practice already in use, known as modal rhythm, which used the rhythmic modes. In this system, notes on the page are assigned to groups of long and short values based on their context. De mensurabili musica describes six rhythmic modes, corresponding to poetic feet: long-short (trochee), short-long (iamb), long-short-short (dactyl), short-short-long (anapest), long-long (spondee), and short-short (pyrrhic). Notation had not yet evolved to the point where the appearance of each note gave its duration; that had still to be understood from the position of a note in a phrase, which of the six rhythmic modes was being employed, and a number of other factors.
Modal rhythm is the defining rhythmic characteristic of the music of the Notre Dame school, giving it an utterly distinct sound, one which was to prevail throughout the thirteenth century. Usually one mode prevailed through a phrase, changing to a different mode only after a cadence. Only with the development of the music of the ars nova in the early fourteenth century was the regular modal rhythm to break down and be supplanted by freer rhythms, as made possible by the development of precise notation.
It is not certain how much of the treatise was written anonymously, and how much Garlandia edited it, except that Garlandia probably wrote some of the later chapters in their entirety. Franco of Cologne, writing around 1250, clearly borrowed portions of the unedited version. Garlandia's achievement was to refine and disseminate it; his position as a bookseller may have something to do with its wide distribution and influence.
Legacy
Johannes de Garlandia was the first composer to write a treatise on the importance and the procedure of notating the rhythmic elements for a musical composition. "De mensurabili musica" described the essence of rhythm in a notational pattern of tension, and release so that specific rhythmic values could be communicated to musicians and performers without their having to use rote memorization to execute the new compositions. Thus, de Garlandia's tretise helped to indicate exact rhythmic values by the placement of specific symbols.
References and further reading
- Baltzer, Rebecca A. Johannes de Garlandia. Edited by L. Macy. Grove Music Online, 2006. Retrieved February 6, 2005.
- de Garlandia, Johannes. Concerning measured music=De mensurabili musica. Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press, 1978. OCLC 5074453
- de Garlandia, Johannes, and Christina Meyers. Musica plana Johannes de Garlandia. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner, 1998. ISBN 3873205912
- de Garlandia, and Erich Reimer. Johannes de Garlandia: De mensurabili musica. Wiesbaden, F. Steiner, 1972. OCLC 664186
- Hoppin, Richard H. Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0393090906
- Huglo, M. "La notation franconienne: antécédents et devenir" in La notation des musiques polyphoniques aux XI–XIIIe siècles. Poitiers, 1986.
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