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DUPLE TIME 401
val of nearly fifty years, despite much subsequent advance in matters
of detail. He is speaking, of course, of binary rhythm within the
measure or bar, not ofthe carrure (or group offour bars) the '
greater
rhythm' with which we opened this subject. He rests his case upon
one of the greatest of the medieval theorists, a man whose work is
for the most part clear in its meaning, comprehensive in its scope,
and adequately illustrated Walter de Odington's De speculation
musicae}- It is to Odington, a monk of Evesham, fifteen miles east of
Worcester, that we turn for the first sure evidence, and the earliest
notational practice, of duple time. It is apparent that it was no new
invention of the late thirteenth century: as he himself says:
Longa autem apud priores organistas duo tantum habuit tempora, sic
in metris : sed postea ad perfectionem dicitur, ut sit trium temporum ad
similitudinem beatissimae trinitatis quae est summa perfectio, diciturque
longa hujusmodi perfecta. Ilia vero quae tantum duo habet tempora,
dicitur imperfecta. 2
(Now with the older composers of argana the long had two beats, as in verse;
but later on it is associated with the idea of perfection, so that it has three beats
after the likeness of the most blessed Trinity, who is the summit of perfection
and a long of this kind is called perfect. But the long which has only two beats is
called imperfect.)
This is pure 'Franconian' doctrine, and the theological part of it is
common stock with the theorists of the age: but the interesting part
is the first clause about the older composers.
Odington later observes:
Alii autem, in his modis, utuntur longis et brevibus et semibrevibus et
pausis secundum quod ego accipio, sed tantum dividunt longam in duas
breves, ut duo tempora habentem, et brevem in duas semibreves, et raro
in tres. Et pro longa dua spatia occupat pausa, pro brevi unum. 3
(There are other musicians whose use of the longs, breves, semibreves, and
rests in these modes is the same as my own, but they divide the long into two
breves only, as if it contains two beats, and the breve into two semibreves,
seldom three; also their long rest occupies only two beats, and the breve one.)
Wooldridge comments on this :
Odington makes no comment, but the passage itself is already most
suggestive, for it is certainly a curious circumstance that this information
should be given by the very author who also in another part of the same
1 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 410; printed in Coussemaker, Scriptores, i,
pp. 181-250. In the British Museum is a transcript of one short section only, taken from
another manuscript (Cotton, Tiberius B, ix), which was burnt in the Ashburnham
House fire. The transcript was made in 1 829 for the use of Dr. Pepusch. Coussemaker
also made use of this Pepusch transcript in the preparation of his text.
2 Coussemaker, op. cit. i, p. 235.
8 Ibid, i, p. 245.
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