Music in Early Franciscan Thought by Peter V. Loewen (review)

Abstract

Music in Early Thought. By Peter V. Loewen. (The Medieval Fran- ciscans, no. 9.) Leiden: Brill, 2013. [xiii, 262 p. ISBN 9789004248175 (hardcover); ISBN 9789004248182 (e- book), $182.] Illustrations, facsimiles, bibliography, index.Music in Early Thought is an in- terdisciplinary study that examines the writ- ing and thinking of men whose works on music and related arts were widely dissemi- nated during the rise of the Order in the thirteenth century. Peter V. Loewen's principal contribution is the ar- gument that Franciscans had an immense in- fluence on late medieval ecclesiology and preaching, with music as a key part of a campaign of reform and renewal in the Church. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and might to others, because contem- porary Franciscans' charisms are about al- most anything but music. In fact, issues of peace, social justice, poverty, and reconcili- ation are among the primary concerns of their Order in the modern age, and no I have ever known had an inter- est in music. Conversely, monastic tradi- tions of the sung Office and Mass, along with theoretical education in music, are most often associated historically with Benedictine foundations and cathedral scholae cantorum and this still holds true today. Loewen supplies the evidence that Franciscans indeed had a deep and abiding influence on the use of music as part of a larger program of preaching, teaching, penance, and evangelization.The book is ninth in the series The Medieval Franciscans, which explores discipline-specific topics. It culls from recent scholarship and interest in the Franciscan vision not only in areas of phi- losophy, theology, and spirituality, but also in its application to social, missionary and pastoral work, art, liturgy and exegesis (back cover). The series is an annual publi- cation edited by Steven J. McMichael. Other volumes in the series cover diverse and fascinating topics such as Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (2004). The collection demonstrates the interdisciplinarity of its commitment to the movement from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.Through the pages of Music in Early Thought, it becomes apparent that medieval Franciscans retained their founder's use and understanding of music, along with dance, gesture and drama, as being essential to their work in the world. These themes were taken up by the theologians-musicians-theorists to whose work Loewen dedicates chapters: Lotario di Segni (Pope Innocent III), Alexander of Hales, William of Middleton, David von Augsburg, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and Juan Gil de Zamora. Loewen fluently traverses several disciplines to fashion a thought-provoking work of scholarship in medieval musicology and philosophy and demonstrates an admirable command of theological, liturgical, and art historical materials. He brings medieval sources that have not been well understood together with ones that he has brought to light.The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 opened up a place for Franciscans to preach and serve in other pastoral capaci- ties along with secular clergy. Six years later, they were required to sing the divine office according to the custom of other clerics (p. 3). The combined effect of these changes must have altered the trajec- tory of their self-understanding as street beggars witnessing to the poverty of Christ. Now they were placed among parochial clergy and practiced the daily round of sung prayer associated with confidence and monasteries, and required skills and understanding in the practice of chant, all the while maintaining their identity as mendicants.Generally speaking, as chant became less an oral tradition and more a written one, music theory became more important. But why have musicologists not previously ex- amined medieval theory? Loewen asserts that it was embedded in en- cyclopedic works that had escaped the at- tention of modern musicologists. …