Medieval Music Theory

Abstract

Medieval music theory encompasses technical writing on music from roughly 500 to 1450 ce—from the transmission to the West of ancient Greek music theory via the writings of Boethius and his contemporaries to the development of printing. It was disseminated principally in Latin (the primary language of intellectual discourse in the West) through handwritten documents, which remain its principal witnesses. The subjects of medieval music theory include fundamentals of music, notation of both pitch and rhythm, counterpoint, musica ficta, and modes. Medieval music theory has strong relations to other disciplines of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy); to the institutions within which it flourished (church, monastic and cathedral schools, and—during the later Middle Ages—universities). It has strong ties to philosophy and theology and, of course, to music in practice. During the later Middle Ages, English, German, French, Italian, and other vernaculars became increasingly common in discourse on music, but they never overtook Latin.