Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities by Nan Cooke CarpenterReview by: Robert StevensonNotes, Second Series, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Mar., 1959), pp. 247-248Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/892730 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 18:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.205 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:58:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The content and arrangement are based on Riemann and Haydon, and the author has made use of a number of recent studies in connection with each of his chapter topics. The only novelty is the intention of presenting a digest of this material in a form ostensibly adapted to the supposed previous preparation and the state of mind of graduates of Amer- ican colleges and music schools who are entering on the study of musicology. The author seems to believe that these aspir- ing scholars, these holders of Bachelor's degrees, have not yet learned to read any foreign language, that they cannot grasp any idea beyond the capacity of an aver- age high-school sophomore, and that they need to be told that a musicologist should "have a sincere interest in and apprecia- tion of scholarship as such." As for lan- guages, it appears that "the real language problem of the American student does not lie in the difficulty that is inherent in reading the language of other countries but rather in his inability to express him- self in his native tongue." The author's own ability in this respect is demonstrated on every page; for instance: "First im- pressions are the most lasting. Example: the first few minutes after making a new acquaintance is liable to leave a lasting impression" (p. 18). Perhaps this is a sample of the kind of English that results from a conviction that "the actual writing down of the material that he has dis- covered is the easiest part of the project . . .almost mechanical" (p. 105). What

confidence can one have in the musical judgments of a writer whose prose con- stantly exhibits his insensitiveness to rhythm, melody, and accuracy?

The fatal flaw of this book, however, stems from a naive assumption that knowledge consists in the ability to assign particular phenomena to general classes or categories, and a consequent total neglect, or unawareness, of the essential interrelationship of all the aspects of a work of art. The four "principle [sic] types of research" include reports in which the student is to "determine the melodic style" of various compositions- a "problem" (this is the author's favorite word) which when "solved" produces the following exhilarating kind of result: "Range; one octave. Motion: diatonic and primarily conjunct. Contour: gradually ascending line to climactic note followed by a gradually descending line to the cadence" (p. 37). The history of music is an equally simple matter: "The cantus firmus procedure . . . remained standard until it was largely replaced during the late 15th and early 16th centuries by a second procedure, that of imitation" (page 25).

In sum, the whole work is simply a caricature of the subject it professes to treat. If there actually are many courses in "music research" now being conducted in the way this book suggests, the pros- pect for American musicology in the next generation is pretty dreary.

DONALD JAY GROUT

Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities. B y N a n Cooke Carpenter. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, [1958]. [xiii, 394 p., facsims., 8vo; $6.001

Reworked from a decade-old doctoral dissertation, this heavily-footnoted book deals mainly with music education in twenty senior universities. But to set the stage Dr. Carpenter-now a professor of English-precedes her chapter on music in the medieval universities with a sum- mary of musical studies before their founding. She here takes into account not only Graeco-Roman precedents but also the music instruction offered by monastic and cathedral schools before 1100. For a postlude, she adds a chapter

assessing the influences which univer- sities were able to exert on the whole course of music in France, England, Italy, and Germany before 1600. For source material, she draws throughout her book upon university statutes, studies lists of professors and graduating students, ex- amines textbooks used in university courses, and surveys the theoretical writ- ings of teachers and alumni.

Three sections of her book have already (1953-55) appeared in print. Two traced the course of music at Oxford in the

247

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.205 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:58:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

medieval and Renaissance periods; and the third dealt with Parisian musical studies in the Middle Ages. These can still be called her best sections. The printed sources for Oxford were very full, and unlike some other material which she has been willing to quote had been faithfully transcribed. Moreover, enough of musical consequence transpired at Ox- ford before Puritan times to make a fas- cinating story. But for the vitality of music studies at Glasgow, Upsala, Cra- cow, and even medieval Bologna, she makes a less convincing case.

If wide adoption as a text makes pos- sible a second printing, her book should certainly be eked out with a bibliography. The author should also standardize her orthography. To cite Glareanus's classic treatise on one page as his Dodecachord- um, in a footnote on the same page as his Dodekachordon, and on the next page as his Dodecachordon carries vacillation too far. Why Ptolomaeus five time (pp. 8n., 220, 224, 353, 355) and Ptolemy another five (11, 84, 134, 197n., 317) ? With the zeal of Shakespeare's Holofernes she calls Leipzig, Paris. and Oxford by their Latin names-but (uotes her foreign languages on other occasions with his 1623 ac- curacy when citing "good old Mantuan" (see for an earnest the transcribed titles below the facsimilies opposite pp. 178, 194, and 195).

Obviously one human life would not give an individual time to read with care all the treatises that the author "sum- marizes." But she falls prey to numerous errors when she takes for her guides such

discredited authors as Soriano Fuertes and Collet, neither of whom can tell her with bibliographical exactness so much as the titles of the treatises which they professed to have read. Even Riemann does not always serve her well; nor does Hawkins. Her choosing Upsala in pre- ference, for instance, to the much more likely Coimbra again must be attributed to her yearning for a conveniently avail- able secondary source (Moberg's Musik und Musikwissenchaft an den schwedi- schen Universitaten) rather than for a voyage into uncharted seas. Her uncritical use of erroneous charts sometimes leads her into flatly contradictory statements (on Encina's "professorship" at pp. 215 and 317, for instance). She ignores such recent critical opinion as Reaney's on the authorship of the Quatuor principalia, Bragard's on the career of Jacques de Liege, Ward's on the editions of Jacopo da Bologna. She never delves very deeply below the surface when discussing even the writings of such major authors as Boethius, Muris, and Gafori.

Still, with the blemishes of a needlessly polyglot style, over-use of inversions and saving phrases (we recall, apparently, it seems), this book is a significant achieve- ment. It will appeal to the Sir Nathaniels and at the same time make a useful text in music education seminars. With the caveat that it perpetuates much old mis- information, it is recommended to all public and college libraries. The appear- ance and format redound highly to the credit of the enterprising University of Oklahoma Press. ROBERT STEVENSON

Gustav Mahler: The Early Years. By Donald Mitchell. London: Rockliff; lNew York: Macmillan Co., [1958]. [xviii, 275 p., illus., facsims., music bibl-- 8vo: 42/-. 98.501

Styles in Mahler biographies change, it seems. From the rhapsodic apprecia- tions written during, or shortly after, Mahler's life (Stefan, Specht, Bekker) through the later studies of his work as part of the Viennese musical tradition (my Bruckner - Mahler - Schoenberg, Redlich's Bruckner and Mahler) we have now arrived at the semi-documentary bio- graphy which seeks to resolve problems arising from conflicting factual state-

ments in previous works, and to estab- lish as accurately as possible the condi- tions of the composer's existence. Be it said at once that Donald Mitchell has made an extremely valuable contribution by giving us so detailed a study of this kind devoted to Mahler's early years- that is, to the very period which, because so few of his compositions from that time survive, has understandably received the least attention in Drevious biographies.

248

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.205 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:58:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions