This manuscript contains textbooks on mathematics (De Arithmetica) and music (De Musica), both composed in the early sixth century by the Roman philosopher Boethius (c. 480-524 AD).
MS 67 ff.136v.-137r.
The displayed opening shows a section of De Musica which describes a mathematical theory of music that had originally been developed by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras around 500 BC.
MS 67 ff.136v.
Diagrams appear throughout the text and illustrate how ratios produce intervals between musical notes. The blocks and arcs visible in this opening represent a tone (tonus); fourth (diatessaron); fifth (diapente); and octave (diapason).
MS 67 ff 137r.
This volume holds a collection of treatises on music theory compiled by William Chelle (fl. 1524-1559), musician and Precentor of Hereford Cathedral, in 1526.
MS 466 ff9v.-10r.
The opening includes a diagram of bells, three of which are struck by hammers, which may give suggestions or demonstrations for how bells should be rung.
MS 466 ff.10r.
The three smallest, and therefore highest pitched, bells seem to be struck first, in keeping with the standard sixteenth-century practice of ringing bells in a sequence from highest to lowest pitch, a pattern known as ‘rounds’. Modern ‘change-ringing’, in which the sequence is more varied, was introduced into church bell-ringing in the seventeenth century.
MS 466 ff10r.
Claudius Sebastiani was a music theorist and organist active in Switzerland and France in the sixteenth century. His Bellum Musicale was published in 1563 and is written as an allegorical war between kings of two provinces representing plainchant and polyphony, fighting over who will succeed Apollo as supreme head of the realm of music.
QL1402.S3 1563 Sig L1v.-L2r.
Sebastiani’s text reveals advantages and disadvantages of each form of music, rather than arguing in favour of one or the other. The text of the Bellum is beautifully augmented with woodcuts; the open page uses the image of a tree to illustrate concepts of music theory.
QL1402.S3 1563 L2r.