Boethius, De Musica; Anon. Musica enchiriadis; Anon. De Organo

1. Fols 1r-49r Boethius, De musica.

Fol. 1r. Omnium quidem perceptio sensuum ita sponte ac naturaliter . . .(49r) . .  non spissas vero ut . . .

2. Fols 49r-54r Anon. (sometimes called Pseudo Hucbald), Musica enchiriadis (also called Enchiriadon).

3. Fols 54r-56r Anon. (sometimes called Pseudo Hucbald), De organo. There follow muscial notation and two diagrams of tones.

No catchwords.

Quire signatures are in contemporary brown ink in Roman numerals at the centre of the bottom margin.

Foliation is in modern pencil in Arabic numerals at top right of folio.

Text space: 255 x 165 mm., 39-40 long lines, ruled blind, with pricking at outer margins.

Folios 1r – 2v contain glosses by thirteenth and fourteenth-century hands. 

The first word on fol. 1r is in a red ink (now degraded to dark grey), further divisions of the text are marked by initials two to five lines high in red, green, and brown inks, and rubrics are in orange and red. The text is extensively illustrated with diagrams in green, orange, and brown ink.

The earliest certain evidence of ownership is the inscription on fol. i: ‘Boetii Musica. an Ancient MS. in fine condition with diagrams. A MS. of a work of rare occurrence bound by C. Lewis. H. Drury. 1824’. The Reverend Henry Joseph Thomas Drury (1778–1841) was a master at the Lower School at Harrow, and a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. In 1827 the manuscript appeared as no. 807 in the catalogue of the sale of Drury’s books held in London.[i]

On the spine of the manuscript is the printed number ‘3345’ of Sir Thomas Phillipps. According to A.N.L. Munby, Phillipps acquired sixty-nine manuscripts at the 1827 Drury sale, which he numbered 3335 to 3403. Munby also observed that a note in the catalogue of the Phillips Collection indicated that the majority of the ex-Drury manuscripts came from the Celotti Collection.[ii] A Boethius De musica on vellum was lot 77 in the 1821 sale at Sotheby’s in London of manuscripts owned by Celotti.[iii] This is a likely candidate for the manuscript owned by Drury, since he acquired a manuscript of Cicero’s De oratore from the same sale,[iv] and no Boethius De musica was included in Celotti’s 1825 sale.[v] The 1821 sale included manuscripts which Celotti obtained from the collections of Giovanni and Giulio Saibante of Verona, and the Venetian Jesuit Matteo Luigi Canonici (1727-1805).

On the verso of Fol. v is written in pencil ‘W.H. Robinson 5–9–1949. £LE–N/a/–’. This shows that the manuscript was bought from Robinson by the State Library of Victoria on 5 September 1949.[vi]

[Evans] A Catalogue of the Extensive and Valuable Library of the Rev. Henry Drury M.A. Late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and Rector of Fingest, Bucks, F.R.S., F.S.A. […], [London] 1827, p. 45, No. 807.

G. Hänel, ‘Katalog der Handschriften der Bibliothek des Herrn Baronet Phillipps zu Middlehill in Worcestershire’, Archiv für philologie und paedagogik, Vol. V, 1837, 546–594, p. 560.

A.N.L. Munby, Phillipps Studies, 5 vols, Cambridge, 1951–1960, Vol. III: The Formation of the Phillipps Library up to 1840 (1954), pp. 53–54 and 151.

C.A. McCallum, The Public Library of Victoria 1856–1956, Melbourne, 1956, p. 73.

K.V. Sinclair, ‘Phillipps Manuscripts in Australia’, The Book Collector, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1962, 332–37, pp. 334–35.

K.V. Sinclair, ‘Eine alte Abschrift zweier Musiktraktate’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 22, 1965, pp. 52–55.

K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, pp. 381–82, No. 223.

R.M. Thompson, ‘State Library of Victoria 091 B623’, Mediaeval Manuscripts from the State Libraries and the National Gallery of Victoria, The University Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2–12 October 1973, Melbourne, unpaginated, no. 1. E. L. Waeltner, Die Lehre vom Organum bis zur Mitte des 11. Jahrhunderts: Band I, Edition. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1975. (Münchner Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte, Band 13)

H. Schmid (ed.), Musica et Scolica Enchiriadis una cum aliquibus tractatulis adiunctis, Munich, 1981, pp. viii–xii.

M.M. Manion and V.F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, p. 95, No. 35, fig. 81.

N. Phillips, “Musica’ and “Scolica Enchiriadis”: The Literary, Theoretical and Musical Sources, PhD thesis, New York University, 1984, p. 532.

M.M. Manion, ‘Italian manuscripts in Australian collections’, in La Miniatura italiana tra Gotico e Rinascimento, E. Sesti (ed.), Florence, 1985, 175–88, p. 176.

C. Bower, ‘Boethius’ De Institutione Musica: A Handlist of Manuscripts’, Scriptorium, 42, 1988, 205–51, p. 223, No. 51.

C.J. Williams, Investigating Manuscript *091/B63 of the State Library of Victoria: Treasure Trove or Pandora’s Box? Armadale [1992].

B. Hubber, ‘“Of the Numerous Opportunities”: the Origins of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts at the State Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, Nos 51–52, 1993, 3–9, p. 9.

G.H.R. Horsley, ‘Classical Manuscripts in Australia and New Zealand, and the Early History of the Codex’, Antichthon, Vol. XXVII, 1993, 60–85, p. 61.

C. Meyer et al., The Theory of Music, 6 vols, Munich, 1961–2003, vol. VI, Manuscripts from the Carolingian Era up to c. 1500, Addenda, Corrigenda, Descriptive Catalogue (2003), p. 3.

S. Carmody, ‘William H. Robinson, Booksellers and the Public Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, No. 81, Autumn 2008, 90–105, pp. 100–02.

B.J. Muir, ‘Boethius, De Musica and Pseudo-Hucbald, Musica Enchiriadis’, in B. Stocks and N. Morgan (eds), The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia, and New Zealand exh. cat., State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 14, 193, 202–03, No. 66 and fig. 41.

M.M. Manion, ‘Reading the Medieval Book in an Exhibition’, in Imagination, Books, and Community in Medieval Europe, in G. Kratzmann (ed.), Melbourne, 2009, 13–48, p. 34 and fig. 29.

This is one of only five surviving manuscripts combining De musica (On Music) with a distinctive version of Musica enchiriadis (Music Handbook) sometimes alternatively called Enchiriadon, and the short text De organo. The others are: Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, MS 531; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS I 406; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7202; and Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 9088. Nancy Phillips identified the Melbourne and Florence manuscripts as copies of the one in Paris, noting strong indications of an Italian origin for all three in terms of the style of script and initials. Furthermore, the Paris manuscript bears a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century inscription indicating that it belonged to a Dominican convent in Venice.[i]

Previously uncommented on is what seems to be a fifteenth-century inscription on fol. iii of the Melbourne manuscript, visible under ultraviolet light as: ‘n[umero] C^oXIJ duch[atij] iij Zeno’. That the first part of the inscription might be an inventory number is suggested by the fact that the number ‘112’ also appears at the top left of the same folio. The next word of the inscription is partly obscured by a horizontal scratch or pen mark, but seems to be the amount paid for the manuscript (three ducats). This leaves the name ‘Zeno’. If the inscription is indeed fifteenth century, then the person in question could be the humanist bibliophile Jacopo Zeno, bishop of Padua who ded in 1481. Zeno was also the chancellor of the city’s university. After Zeno’s death, his successor Pietro Foscari admitted that he was able to trace less than a third of Zeno’s books, which he recorded in an inventory made in 1482. Since this listed 320 titles donated by Zeno to the cathedral, more than 600 books must already have disappeared, although, a small number were later recovered.[ii] 

De musica was the most important text on Western music from the time it was written around the beginning of the sixth century A.D. until the end of the Middle Ages. It is a theoretical discussion of the Pythagorean view of the relationship between music and mathematics. In particular, it describes the intervals of an octave in terms of ratios, and provides illustrations of these. However, it also discusses in Platonic terms the relationship between music, human character, behaviour, and society.

Musica enchiriadis is a ninth-century Latin treatise that has been variously attributed in the past to Hucbald, Otgarius, Hoger of Werden, and Otger of Laon, but is now considered anonymous. It deals with definitions and concepts concerning monophonic chant, especially notation, as well as modality, and polyphonic singing. It closes with a reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth and a celebration of the mysterious power of music.

The short treatise De organo at the end of this manuscript discusses a kind of early polyphony in which one or more singers are accompanied in their plainchant melody by another, semi-improvised voice over the top, according to the rules set out in the treatise.[iii]

On fol. iii of the Melbourne manuscript is a schematic diagram of astrological texts by a fifteenth-century hand, with a text below, identified by Sinclair as a commentary on Arzachel’s astrological text Canones ad tabulas tholetanas. [iv]

A table of contents written in a fifteenth-century hand on fol. 56v shows that the manuscript once formed the second part of a larger volume beginning with ten books of the Etymologiae of Isidore. Sinclair identified the diatessaron/apotome diagram on the same folio as a fifteenth-century addition.[v] He did not notice, however, that it relates to an erased diagram, visible under ultraviolet light at the foot of fol. 19v.[vi] Linking the two additional diagrams in the different parts of the manuscript are their similar, slightly coarse script, and the fact that the diagram on fol. 56v illustrates two Pythagorean ratios described in the text on fol. 19v from De musica, book II, chapter 27, beside a diagram illustrating chapter 29. Perhaps the annotator abandoned the diagram at the foot of 19v. to exploit the greater space on fol. 56v.

Carol Williams has suggested that the diagram on fol. 56v. may be fourteenth century, and this seems justified in view of such fourteenth-century forms as the long tail of the number ‘9’.[vii] Further, she speculated that the diagram could possibly be associated with the fourteenth-century teacher of music to the choir at the cathedral of Padua, Marchetto da Padova. He is regarded as amongst the most important musical theorists of the Middle Ages, in particular for abandoning a strict adherance to the Pythagorean approach to tonality.[viii] Williams noted that in his treatise Lucidarium in arte musicae planae of 1317/1318 Marchetto attributed the Musica enchiriadis to Hucbald, as it is described only in the five group ‘C’ manuscripts, of which the Melbourne manuscript is one of two with known links to Italy that were in existence in his time, as the Florence manuscript dates to the fifteenth century. In the absence of an autograph manuscript by Marchetto, the attribution to him of the diatessaron/apotome diagram is all but impossible to confirm. However, the possible indications of a provenance for the Melbourne manuscript from the bishop of Padua, whose seat was in the cathedral where Marchetto had previously taught the choir, makes the idea that Marchetto consulted the manuscript now in Melbourne all the more intriguing.

Digital imaging and research on this manuscript were supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australia:Researching and Relating Australia’s Manuscript Holdings to New Technologies and New Readers. Substantial donations from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Catholic Church Insurance and the National Australia Bank are gratefully acknowledged. The Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, The Network for Early European Research, and Newman College, The University of Melbourne, have also generously contributed to the project.

Chief Investigators (CIs) of the ARC project were Professor emeritus Margaret Manion (The University of Melbourne), Professor Bernard Muir (The University of Melbourne), and Dr Toby Burrows (The University of Western Australia). Graduate research assistants were Alexandra Ellem, Dr Hugh Hudson, Dr Elaine Shaw and postgraduate scholar Elizabeth Melzer (The University of Melbourne). Shane Carmody was the representative of the Chief Industry Partner (The State Library of Victoria). The following curators, conservators, photographers and computer specialists at The State Library of Victoria also contributed their expertise: Katrina Ben, Des Cowley, Ian Cox, Adrian Flint, Ross Genat, Jean Holland, Shelley Jamieson, Afsana Khan, Coralie McInnes, Monika McIntyre, Helen McPherson, Peter Mappin and Sarah Mason. Before he left the project at the end of 2011, Hugh Hudson made a significant contribution to this entry, particularly in the area of Provenance and the updating of  Bibliography. This contribution is also specifically acknowledged in appropriate endnotes. Other contributors both in Australia and overseas are acknowledged in the relevant endnotes.

These detailed entries draw on the information in earlier catalogues and also update it. In particular, they are based on the following: K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, M. M. Manion and V. F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, and B. Stocks and N. Morgan, eds, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008. Our debt to these pioneering publications and dependence on them are acknowledged here.

Margaret M. Manion on behalf of the ARC Team, October, 2013.