AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts Friday morning 55
THE MAKING OF THE HEXACHORDAL SYSTEM:
MEDIEVAL MUSICAL SEMIOTICS IN TRANSITION
Stefano Mengozzi
University of Michigan
Although it is generally recognized that the three-hexachord system acquired its final shape
in the early thirteenth century, the precise historical circumstances and intellectual orientations
that led to that result are yet to be explored. In the first century of their long history,
the ut–la syllables were altogether marginal in practical music manuals. More importantly, in
that early phase medieval theorists did not consider the six syllables as a unified entity (i.e., as
a deductio or a proprietas, much less as a hexachordum) and had not yet developed a systematic
theory of mutation, even though practitioners most likely knew how to perform it. By c. 1270
at the latest, however, Guidonian solmization had grown to become an impressive theoretical
edifice, also thanks to an ad hoc technical terminology that remained in place for at least
three hundred years. How did this momentous transformation—this historical mutatio, as
one might call it—come to be? What were its music-theoretical consequences?
This presentation suggests that the making of the hexachordal system was directly linked
with the contemporaneous emergence of a new figure of erudite music writer who wrote primarily
for a university-educated audience, both religious and secular. The thirteenth century
witnessed the coming of age of the university as the primary and most prestigious center of
high education, particularly in Paris and in England. While the question of the role of music
in the university curriculum of that time remains a fiercely debated subject, it is significant
that the authors who recast the rules of solmization in a newly systemic guise (Jean of Garland
and Magister Lambertus, but also members of the clergy and monastic orders such as Jerome
of Moravia and Engelbert of Admont) either were closely linked to the university, or had significant
exposure to university texts and learning.
These sociological and historical changes produced nothing less than an entirely new understanding
of the Guidonian method of solmization. The new generations of university-trained
authors were not satisfied with presenting that method as a practical device for sight singing,
following earlier theorists of the monastic tradition. Rather, they approached it in distinctly
speculative terms, or as an abstract and self-standing system to be meticulously explored in
all its combinatorial possibilities. By doing so, thirteenth-century writers began portraying
the six Guidonian syllables (voces) as indispensable signifiers (in marked contrast with earlier
authors, including Guido of Arezzo, who had considered them as merely accessorial). For instance,
when they described the six syllables as being sufficient for signifying a melody (“sex
notae… ad significationem cantus uniunscuiusque sufficiunt”), they came close to arguing
that musical space itself was organized into overlapping hexachordal segments. Modern musicology
has often accepted such a conclusion at face value; by placing under close scrutiny the
emergence of the hexachordal system, however, we have an opportunity to reassess its merit.