The Speculum musicae of Jacobus of Liege is best known today for its author's colourful and spirited assault upon the Ars Nova.Footnote 1 As a musical summa it has received the attention of those pursuing primarily musical questions but it has also – because of its philosophical riches – inspired scholars who wish to explore the intersection of medieval philosophy and medieval thinking about music.Footnote 2 Within the material that borders on both the musical and the philosophical, one of the most intriguing questions pertains to the status of the traditional dichtomy between musicus and cantor. Given Jacobus's conservative position vis-à-vis the Ars Nova, one might expect him to hold the traditional position first suggested by Boethius, clearly articulated by Aurelian of Réôme, and given a polemical edge by Guido of Arezzo: the musicus is superior to the cantor, the former deserving praise for his learning and the latter deserving scorn for his ignorance.Footnote 3 But Jacobus goes beyond this view, as the following article intends to show, overcoming the traditional dichotomy by proposing a third type of musician. This musician, the practicus musicus, stands above not only the traditional cantor who sings without understanding, but also above the traditional, non-practising musicus. This practicus musicus represents a synthesis of the traditional categories, a musical type who sings through art while possessing demonstrable knowledge of music's principles and the scientia built upon those principles.
Initially, Jacobus does not announce his reconception of the musicus–cantor dichotomy. Rather, he appears to coordinate the traditional categories in a straightforward way as embodiments of the respective sub-disciplines of musica theorica and musica practica: ‘Boethius pursues speculation more, Guido pursues practice. The former makes a musicus, with regard to theory, [while the latter] makes a cantor, with regard to practice.’Footnote 4 Yet Jacobus's further treatment of this correlation destabilises its generating concepts: what had been isolated musical and sociological types become more fluid and their distinguishing traits more blurred. The goal of this article will be to clarify Jacobus's innovation in the classification of musicians, to uncover its origins and to consider why such a synthesis (and its attendant redistribution of prestige) did not take place earlier in the Middle Ages.
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Jacobus, along with his medieval predecessors, received the distinction between the musicus and the non-musicus from Boethius (De institutione musica, 1.24), who probably received it from Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl. 100).Footnote 5 Within his account, Boethius distinguished the musicus and non-musicus according to their faculties and their activities. As the ‘true musician’, the musicus possessed reason (ratio). By means of this faculty – rather than by ‘the servitude of work’ – the musicus understood music and exercised authority and judgement over musical performance. In contrast, the non-musicus lacked the faculty of reason and was ‘excluded from comprehension of musical knowledge [and] … [was] totally lacking in thought’. For Boethius, this deficiency was proven by the physical labour of both the performing and the composing non-musici, ‘since, as was said, they act as slaves’ and ‘physical skill serves as a slave’.Footnote 6 The argument upon which Boethius's taxonomy rests may be summarised in syllogistic form:
Thus, according to Boethius, the distinction between the musicus and the non-musicus depended upon the possession and use of reason (ratio). Closely associated with this criterion is the implication that those who engage in such physical labour (i.e. the work of slaves) could not do so rationally. For Boethius, physical labour in some sense indicated the absence of reason and a natural condition of slavery.
Boethius's equation of poets and performers with irrational slaves existed against the background of ancient sources. These sources offered an account of music's historical decline, the performing musician's place in the socio-economic hierarchy, the irrational inspiration of poets and the idea of natural slavery. Before turning to Jacobus's reformulation of the musicus–cantor dichotomy, several of these sources will be considered.
The low esteem in which performers were held by Boethius and his sources – that is, Nicomachus and his Pythagorean–Platonist predecessors – stemmed in part from performers’ roles as agents driving the decline of music from a position of nobility (when it was used to worship the gods and to educate the young) into one of ill repute (i.e. its use in the theatre). In the Plutarchian treatise De musica (c. first to second century ad), the author states that ‘in ancient times people treated music in accordance with its proper status, just as they treated all their other activities. Nowadays musicians have rejected its more dignified aspects, and in place of that manly and inspired music, beloved of the gods, they bring into the theatres a music of effeminate twitterings.’Footnote 7
This reference to music's supposed degradation within the theatre – at the hands of poets and performers – finds elaboration later in the treatise, again echoing the trope of decline from a golden age:Footnote 8
In still more ancient times, it is said, the Greeks knew nothing of the music of the theatre, and devoted all their skill to honoring the gods and educating the young … But in our own times the corrupt kind of music has made such headway that no one ever mentions the educational sort or even understands it, and everyone who practices music has joined forces with the music of the theatre.
Boethius's account of the non-musicus also drew upon the ancient and post-classical understanding of ‘natural slaves’ and their deficit of reason, an understanding embedded within a patriarchal social structure. A locus classicus for this hierarchy appears in Aristotle's Politics (particularly 1259b21–1260a14):Footnote 9
A question may indeed be raised, whether there is any excellence at all in a slave beyond those of an instrument and a servant … [For] the freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all, the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature.
This understanding of natural slavery served as the background of the Boethian trope in which musical performers were seen as irrational slaves.
Although descriptions of musical performers appear repeatedly in ancient and late-antique literature, the most philosophical treatment in antiquity can be found in Plato's dialogue Ion.Footnote 10 In this dialogue, the Platonic conception of the poet and performer – to which Boethius was heir – finds its clearest expression as Socrates engages the rhapsode Ion of Ephesus in a conversation about his work. Socrates ultimately concludes that Ion, the poets whose work Ion recited, and the performers of other arts act ‘not from knowledge but from inspiration, [their] thoughts being “breathed into” [them] without the use of [their] own understanding at all’.Footnote 11 Within this dialogue, Socrates also repeatedly refers to one who is a ‘master’ of a profession and thereby possesses the power to judge that profession. These ancient antecedents correspond to the irrational cantor and the rational musicus.Footnote 12
Boethius's distinction between the musicus and non-musicus also depended upon an ancient disdain for physical labour and the assumption that it automatically excluded reason from the labourer. While this distinction may have originated with Nicomachus and his Greek forebears rather than with Boethius, it was certainly consonant with Boethius's patrician status. A late-antique patrician such as Boethius would have judged physical labour as inappropriate for the gentleman.
Even within the range of activities appropriate for a patrician, Boethius had chosen those activities furthest from physical labour. Although occasionally involved in political life, Boethius chose – at the beginning of his career when he produced his De institutione musica – to remain in Rome and engage in the contemplative life rather than move to the more active and publicly demanding Ravenna.Footnote 13 Boethius's praise of the musicus then, echoes the modus vivendi he had chosen for himself.
Boethius's views of physical labour were shaped by more than his class and broad philosophical heritage. There was a religious component as well. For him, physical labour was bound up with (though not necessarily understood as a result of) the Fall: ‘But when [Adam] gave ear to the persuader and failed to keep the commandment of his Creator, he was banished, bidden to till the ground [emphasis mine]’.Footnote 14 Here one finds physical labour linked to the postlapsarian sentence of banishment from Eden, in which physical labour suffers a de-valuation by association.
A final source of the Boethian disdain for the non-musicus appears in the well-known Platonic and Neoplatonic disdain for the body. To the extent that Boethius appropriated Neoplatonic philosophy as his own, he took up a tradition of thought that judged the body to be an obstacle to philosophical progress and that often rejected the body as a source of shame.Footnote 15
In the opening lines of his treatise On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books, Porphyry presents Plotinus's view of the body as follows:Footnote 16
Plotinus, the philosopher of our times, seemed ashamed of being in the body … And he objected so strongly to sitting [for] a painter or sculptor that he said to Amelius, who was urging him to allow a portrait to be made, ‘Why really, is it not enough to have to carry the image in which nature has encased us, without your requesting me to agree to leave behind me a longer-lasting image of the image, as if it was something genuinely worth looking at?’Footnote 17
Though Boethius, in his writings against the Manichaeans, would reject the strict Neoplatonic view of the body – arguing for the legitimacy of the incarnation and the resurrection of the physical body – the force of the Neoplatonic view can still be felt in his distinction between the musicus and the non-musicus.
Any of these sources – mythical, philosophical, economic and religious – could have created a cultural orientation against musical performers. In combination, these sources were virtually insurmountable. Henry Chadwick (1920–2008) observed:
The disparagement of actual music-making is more than a social attitude conventional in an aristocratic élite towards the low standing of professional musicians in ancient society where, after the classical period, most professional pipe-players were negligibly clad girls brought in at dinner parties to entertain the guests with music and dancing. Aristotle (Politics 1339a–41b10) says professional musicians belong to the lower orders, and gentlemen only play instruments when drunk or for a joke.Footnote 18
Thus, as Chadwick's observation and the previous considerations confirm, a variety of ancient sources – sources that treated music's historical decline, the performing musician's place in the socio-economic hierarchy, the irrational inspiration of poets and the idea of natural slavery – combined to determined Boethius's disdain for the musical performer.
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Jacobus appears to have accepted the Boethian articulation of the relationship between the musicus and the non-musicus, that is, what separated the musicus from the non-musicus was the former's possession and application of reason. Following earlier medieval authors, Jacobus designated the irrational non-musici as cantores. According to Jacobus, those
who use natural instruments through which a vox is formed, knowing how to sing consonances (by experience) but not knowing their musical causes, being unable to distinguish sufficiently between them, not knowing their properties, or numerical proportions – why these are good, those are better, and the others are best, [why] these [are] consonant, these dissonant, [and] these unsuitable for melody – such [people] are called cantors.Footnote 19
Jacobus also referred directly to Boethius's remarks on the relative merits of intellectual and physical labour and commented upon them:Footnote 20
Boethius, comparing theoretical music to such practical [music] says that ‘Every art and discipline ought naturally to be considered of a more honorable character than a skill which is exercised with the hand and labour of a craftsman. For it is much better and nobler to know about what someone else is doing than to be doing that for which someone else has the authority. For the mere physical skill serves as a slave, while the reason governs all as a sovereign. And unless the hand acts according to the will of reason, the thing done is in vain.’
Paraphrasing and elaborating upon Boethius's remarks, Jacobus continued: Footnote 21
Therefore, the scientia of music is more noble in its rational cognition than in the experience of production, to the same degree as the soul is more noble than the body, without which the body cannot rule itself and cannot be moved. And, according to this, the first [i.e. the scientia of music] judges the second [i.e. production derived from experience] and rules it, because the second is not acquainted with reason, but is acquainted with mere production. With regard to this the first is more free, more noble, more honorable, more pure, more secure, more universal, more true, more particular, and more perfect, and the first makes a pure musicus, the second makes a cantor or a player of certain instruments, or an entertainer … or poet with regard to meter. Furthermore, a cantor, having experiential knowledge only, is compared to a true musicus (according to some) as a beast to a man.
Here we see Jacobus's Boethian debts most explicitly: knowledge is superior to manual labour and manual labour, when performed without the direction of reason, produces nothing of real value. Jacobus introduced this quotation from Boethius as a comparison between theory and practice: ‘Boethius, comparing theoretical music to such practical [music] says …’ Thus, Jacobus appears to have equated the physical labour of the non-musicus or cantor with musica practica and the ‘knowing’ (scire) of the musicus with musica theorica.
Much later in the Speculum, Jacobus elaborated upon the Boethian conception of the non-musicus by offering a withering – and somewhat melodramatic – indictment of the irrational singer of discant, entitled ‘Concerning inept discantors’ (De ineptis discantoribus). Speaking of discantors – the soloists who improvised the harmony of discant above the chant tenor – Jacobus expanded the bestial topos presented earlier and imagined a confrontation between an inept discantor and a learned doctor of music from the past:Footnote 22
Since discant, as has been seen, should not be made from random consonances, how brazen is the one who would dare to discant and compose discants while knowing little or nothing about the nature of consonances … Oh what pain! In these times some of them attempt to cast their incompetence in a better light with an inept maxim: ‘This is,’ they say, ‘a new way of discanting’, that is to say with new consonances … O shameful maxim! O specious, irrational excuse! O great abuse, profound crudeness, profound animal-like cruelty, so that an ass is taken for a man, a she-goat for a lion, a sheep for a fish, a serpent for a salmon! O if the expert doctors of music had heard such discantors, what would they have said? They would hear (such) descanting and say: … ‘You are not harmonising with me to produce a single chant! … To me you are cacophonous, an adversary and my undoing. If only you would fall silent’.Footnote 23
Yet Jacobus judiciously distinguished among the inept. Offering a contrast to the complete ignari he addressed in the first half of the chapter, Jacobus presented a class of singers consisting of those who know more, but just enough to make fools of themselves:Footnote 24
But there are some who, though to a limited degree, have learned to discant through experience, but these fail to maintain a proper decorum … Some of them hocket excessively … and at inopportune places they jump around, engage in other unseemly activities, howl like dogs, and as madmen.
This chapter concerning inept cantors, taken in conjunction with Jacobus's previous presentation of the Boethian taxonomy, presents a damning case against the irrational (and often presumptuous) cantor. Indeed, one could be forgiven for believing that Jacobus held nothing but scorn for cantores. Yet Jacobus tempered the harshness of his judgements. While adopting the words, and to an extent, the disdain of Boethius, Jacobus also adapted them. Following upon and sometimes embedded within the passages cited above, Jacobus made statements that appear to qualify and at times seem to contradict his Boethian point of view.
In Book I, as was stated above, Jacobus concluded his paraphrase and elaboration of Boethius's taxonomy with the statement that ‘a cantor, having experience only, is compared to a true musicus (according to some) as a beast to a man’.Footnote 25 Immediately following this statement, however, Jacobus cited a popular maxim: ‘He who does not sing by art but rather by experience, is a beast, not a cantor; proof of art, rather than a voice, makes a cantor.’Footnote 26 Taken together, these two statements seem to conflict with one another. In the former, Jacobus compared the cantor to a beast and in the latter he explicitly distinguished a cantor from those who are beasts. This is not the only apparent conflict within Jacobus's use of the term cantor.
Immediately following his citation of the maxim concerning the cantor who exhibits ‘proof of art’, Jacobus continued to qualify his disdain for the practising musician and practical music: ‘Nevertheless we do not wish so to extol the theoretical that we debase the practical, which does not lack praises, as was discussed earlier in the “Commendation of Music”.’Footnote 27
The reader who turns to this commendatio musicae will find numerous examples of praiseworthy singing and singers, none of whom appear to be the worse off for their ‘manual’ labour.Footnote 28 From the pre-Christian realm, one finds Orpheus drawing all things to himself through singing.Footnote 29 Within the ecclesia triumphans the citizens of heaven sing praises to God incessantly with each class of citizen singing its own particular song.Footnote 30 And through the daily worship of the church militant, God is praised as people are called to devotion.Footnote 31
Similarly, two aspects of his aforementioned diatribe against inept discantors in Book VII militate against interpreting it as a categorical rejection of cantores. First, in his imagined confrontation between the inept discantors and the ‘ancient learned doctors of music’ (antiqui periti musicae doctores), the latter themselves were singing. Recall that Jacobus had his doctores saying: ‘You are not harmonising with me to produce a single chant!’Footnote 32
Second, within the same chapter, Jacobus praised the ‘many good and capable cantores and discantors’ of his own times who ‘not only know how to sing according to experience but also know how to sing according to art, making many beautiful discants’.Footnote 33 Alhough he disapproved of their rejection of the ancient musical authorities, he clearly admired their abilities as singers and acknowledged their understanding of the musical art.
Still other favourable comments about cantores appear throughout the Speculum. In treating his third division of musica instrumentalis, Jacobus wrote: ‘I hold that modern songs and singers are more perfect by far than were the ancient [songs and singers].’Footnote 34 In other passages, he referred to the ‘learned cantor’, ‘good cantors’, ‘wise cantors’, and the ‘valiant cantor, Petrus de Cruce’.Footnote 35
By comparing such praises of cantors with passages in which Jacobus echoed the Boethian disdain for the non-musicus, it becomes clear that for Jacobus the term cantor could bear multiple, and apparently irreconcilable, meanings. On the one hand, it could denote the non-musicus who neither possesses nor applies reason. On the other hand, Jacobus clearly praised singers who possessed an understanding of the principles that undergird their performance. Jacobus, like many medieval authors before him, retained the major premise of the Boethian syllogism – that the true musician, or musicus, possessed and employed reason – while rejecting its minor premise that performers and poets (because they engage in physical labour, which is the province of irrational slaves) must be incapable of rational action.
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While many factors contributed to the rejection of this minor premise by Jacobus, the seeds for this change were in fact in Boethius's own account. In the infamous chapter in which Boethius distinguished the musicus from the slave-performer-poet, Boethius defined the former as ‘one who has gained knowledge of making music by weighing with the reason, not through the servitude of work, but through the sovereignty of speculation’.Footnote 36 Although Boethius's subsequent comments make clear that a musicus would not perform or compose music himself, this definition suggests that he should possess knowledge of how to do so.Footnote 37
Whereas Boethius had apparently assumed that those who engage in physical labour would do so irrationally, the medieval singers of the Daily Office and Mass knew that such a sweeping generalisation was simply untrue.Footnote 38 Jacobus and many of his medieval predecessors were no patricians and they existed within a culture that had – through the monastic life – synthesised the life of the mind and the life of the musical performance.Footnote 39 This synthesis was itself a kind of reconciliation of the ancient forms of life distinguished by PythagorasFootnote 40 in which the monastic life could be understood as the embodiment of either the active or contemplative life, depending on the context.Footnote 41 Indeed it appears, as has been suggested by other authors, that the use of music within the church sanctified a certain type of musical performance and made the office of cantor one worthy of esteem.Footnote 42
The experience of singing the music of the church with a full understanding of its principles led to the creation – no doubt by authors who were themselves singers (rather than primarily scholars or philosophers) – of alternative taxonomies of musicians. Although they defined the relationship between the musicus and non-musicus differently, they existed alongside (while often jostling with) the Boethian arrangement.Footnote 43 Those that were formulated following the introduction of Boethius's hierarchy and probably derived in part from an unwritten cantus tradition in which cantores were themselves distinguished according to skill, share several characteristics. First, they included a revised definition of musicus: the new, ecclesiastical musicus who composed and sang in addition to possessing musical understanding and the power to judge.Footnote 44 Second, these taxonomies also explicitly or implicitly divided the category of cantor into the rational singer-composer (or true cantor), who was the functional equivalent of the new, ecclesiastical musicus, and the irrational singer (or false cantor), who was the functional equivalent of the Boethian non-musicus.Footnote 45
This conjunction of the Boethian taxonomy with the new ecclesiastical taxonomies produced three basic categories of musicians in which the component parts of earlier taxonomies were united: (1) the Boethian musicus who did not perform or compose, (2) the new, ecclesiastical musicus (who was equivalent to the true or peritus cantor) and (3) the irrational, bestial cantor.Footnote 46 Jacobus of Liège inherited these categories and sought to coordinate them in relation to each other.
The second of these categories – the ecclesiastical musicus (or peritus cantor) – was the most striking departure from the Boethian taxonomy. It was typically designated in two ways. Some authors simply used the term musicus for this category and disregarded the Boethian musicus. Other authors employed the term cantor with the modifier ‘peritus’, ‘optimus’, or their semantic equivalent, while at the same time suggesting that the cantor who did not understand what he did was unworthy of the title cantor.Footnote 47
Jacobus's treatment of the musicus and cantor relationship in the Speculum musicae reflects both the continuing force of the Boethian taxonomy – at least within scholastic circles – and the importance of the alternative taxonomies offered by other authors in the Middle Ages. We find in the Speculum both a redefinition of the musicus to include composition and performance and an implicit distinction between true cantores and false cantores. (This latter, implicit distinction accounts for the apparent conflict in Jacobus's use of the term cantor cited above.) Furthermore, Jacobus posited his own designation, the practicus musicus, which is the equivalent of the peritus cantor or ecclesiastical musicus.Footnote 48 Before turning to Jacobus's formulation, let us consider the earlier medieval taxonomies that competed with the Boethian arrangement and contributed – albeit indirectly – to the sometimes confusing relationship between musicus and cantor in the Speculum musicae.
The Musica disciplina, a dossier assembled by Aurelian of Réôme (ninth century), introduces the Boethian taxonomy: ‘As much separates the musicus from the cantor as separates the grammarian from the simple reader, or physical dexterity from rational cognition.’Footnote 49 Following an extended citation of Boethius, Aurelian offers an analysis that suggests a tentative and deferential attempt to bring the Boethian hierarchy of values into a well-established cantus tradition:
Musician and singer seem to differ as much as teacher and pupil. For example, the former creates poems, the latter analyses them; and the least little thing that the pupil accomplishes with time-consuming labour, the teacher discusses and empties of difficulty in the space of a single moment through the skill of his aptitude. And the singer seems to stand before the musician like a [defendant] before the judge. Whoever has any notion of music, however small it may be, can understand this fairly well. As we have said in the foreword, very noble singers are found, yet nowhere, in my opinion, is a musician found like the old ones.Footnote 50
Two aspects of this analysis deserve consideration. First, the similes that the author employed to describe the relationship between the musicus and cantor point to the competing Boethian and ecclesiastical taxonomies. On the one hand, the simile of the judge and the defendant suggests the radical dichotomy that separated Boethius's musicus from the non-musicus. On the other hand, the similes of teacher–pupil and grammarian–reader suggest the new practising musicus of the ecclesiastical taxonomy (while recalling the Carolingian devotion to grammatical studies). For in the latter two similes, the former members likely engaged in the same activities as their junior counterparts, that is, grammarians read and teachers continued to learn. Thus, the implied definition of the musicus in the simile of judge and defendant conflicts with the definition implied in the similes of the grammarian–reader and teacher–pupil.Footnote 51
Although only implied, the consequences of Aurelian's introduction of the teacher–pupil analogy are considerable: Unlike the judge–defendant analogy (which is akin to the master–slave relationship), the teacher–pupil analogy suggested a new way of thinking about the relationship between the Boethian musicus and the non-musicus. Traditionally, a teacher is considered a knower who makes another like himself or herself. Unlike the slave who unthinkingly works without making his own the knowledge of the one who directs him – notably the classical and Medieval view of the slave – the student begins by following the directions of the teacher but ultimately comes to grasp that which the teacher possesses.Footnote 52
A second aspect of Aurelian's presentation deserves consideration: he explicitly referred to the ‘very noble singers’ (nobilissimi valde cantors) of his time, reversing the Boethian judgement that singers were ‘slavish’ by nature.Footnote 53 Furthermore, Aurelian implied that noble cantores could be distinguished from the ignoble, rather than categorically dismissing them. Here, then, one finds the Boethian taxonomy alongside suggestions that a musicus would perform, as well as a distinction between ‘noble cantores’ and their implied opposites. No doubt the latter distinction existed long before the introduction of Boethius to the Carolingians.Footnote 54
Guido d'Arezzo (c.990–after 1033) provides further evidence of the new ecclesiastical taxonomy competing with the Boethian arrangement.Footnote 55 This includes the expanded understanding of the performing musicus and the implied distinction between cantores who deserve their title and those who do not.
While heaping abuse on ‘wretched’ cantores (miserabiles cantores)Footnote 56 and insisting on the profound distance that separates the musicus from the cantor,Footnote 57 Guido nevertheless united the two in requiring that both the cantor and the musicus should be able to sing chants according to his method:
Since both my natural disposition and my emulation of good men made me eager to work for the general benefit, I undertook, among other things, to teach music to boys. Presently Divine Grace favoured me, and some of them, trained by imitating the [steps of the mono]chord, with the practice of our notation were, within the space of a month, singing so securely at first sight chants they had not seen or heard, that it was the greatest wonder to many people. But if someone cannot do that, I do not know with what face he can venture to call himself a musician or a singer (musicum vel cantorem).Footnote 58
Upon reading this passage in light of the original Boethian taxonomy, two things pertinent to the present discussion become clear. First, while Guido did not state explicitly in this passage that he intended to transform non-musici into musici, his decision to provide training to young cantores would appear to be a step in that direction. At the very least, Guido's aims reflected the commonsensical idea, no doubt inherited from the cantus tradition, that poor singers can be trained to become better singers. And yet such a claim appears to be irreconcilable with the Boethian values, particularly if Guido's training involves the acquisition of musical scientia by the singers he is training.Footnote 59 For Boethius, the teaching of a scientia to someone engaged in physical labour – in light of his statements in De institutione musica – would have been an a priori impossibility: those who engaged in manual labour simply could not possess and apply reason. Whereas Aurelian had implied that the musicus would perform (just as a grammarian would read or a teacher would learn), and that perhaps a reader (standing-in for the cantor) could become a grammarian (standing-in for the musicus), Guido made such implications explicit. The cantor can, by learning to sing chants at sight, begin to become a musicus. Furthermore, Guido states that ‘if someone cannot do that [i.e. sing from sight], I do not know with what face he can venture to call himself a musician or a singer (musicum vel cantorem)’, thus suggesting that the bar for the designation cantor had been raised. One could thus distinguish between a Guidonian cantor capable of sight singing and the cantor who cannot and should not ‘call himself … a singer.’
Second, Guido made clear from the statement just cited that he also expected the musicus to be able to sing chants securely at first sight. Here one finds hints of the performing musicus – being the functional equivalent of the peritus cantor – belonging to an implied ecclesial taxonomy. Again, what merely had been suggested in the similes of Aurelian becomes explicit in the Micrologus. The singing musicus would have been unthinkable for Boethius. No patrician of antiquity, according to Aristotle, would have engaged in musical performance, unless he were drunk or as a joke.Footnote 60
Thus, within the writings attributed to Guido, one finds simultaneously a stark – and perhaps rhetorically motivated – distinction between the musicus and cantor as well as the potential for a reconciliation (based on the ability to sing using Guido's method) of the Boethian categories of musicus and non-musicus. This latter potential for reconciliation no doubt reflected the demands of musical–liturgical life and Guido's innovative response to these demands.
In the Musica of Hermannus Contractus (b.1013), the reader finds an explicit, expanded redefinition of the musicus presented alongside the Boethian non-performing, non-composing musicus:Footnote 61
Moreover we should know that the whole intent of musical reasoning bears towards the establishment of the science (scientia) of composing melody reasonably, of criticizing it duly, and of modulating [i.e. singing] it properly. Only he who gains skill in these three things may rightly be called a musician (musicus). However, he who being ignorant of composing knows how to criticise competently is not to be held of small account.
Following this redefinition of the musicus in ecclesiastical terms and affirmation of the value of the non-performing (Boethian) musicus, Hermannus re-articulated the trope of the non-musicus (or cantor) as beast and anticipated Jacobus's exclamations against inept cantors:Footnote 62
[T]he blind herd of singers is concerned only with … the study of inflecting or rather of howling, giving way to no one's reasoning, agreeing with no one's opinions.… [H]e sings in vain whose mind does not blend with his voice.… In this respect they should rightly be considered worse and more ignorant than the ass, which both utters a higher [or louder] sound and never changes its braying to a mooing or any other noise.
Thus, in the account of Hermannus, one finds both the Boethian taxonomy of (non-performing) musicus and slavish non-musicus as well as the new, ecclesiastical musicus who composed and sang.
As is well known, Johannes Cotto, in his De musica (c.1100), maintained the Boethian taxonomy in his distinction between the musicus and cantor as well as Boethius's elaborate dismissal of the latter:Footnote 63
Nor, it seems, should we omit that the musician and the singer differ not a little from one another. Whereas the musician always proceeds correctly and by calculation, the singer holds the right road intermittently, merely through habit. To whom then should I better compare the singer than to a drunken man who does indeed get home but does not in the least know by what path he returns. Yet even a millwheel sometimes gives forth a distinct pitch in its creaking, though itself unaware of what it is doing, since it is an inanimate thing.
As Guido well says in his Micrologus: From the musician to the singer how immense the distance is; The latter's voice, the former's mind will show what music's nature is; But he who does, he knows not what, a beast by definition is. Et cetera.
And yet Johannes, while maintaining the Guidonian polemic against irrational cantores, further expanded the conception of the musicus and his presumed activities within an ecclesiastical context:Footnote 64
One should know that this art is to be deemed by no means the lowest of the arts, especially since it is most necessary to clerics and is useful and delightful to anyone practicing it. For whoever devotes unremitting labour to it, and perseveres without pausing or wearying, can gain from it this reward, that he will know how to judge the quality of song – whether it is refined or commonplace, true or false – and how to correct the faulty and compose the new. The knowledge of music, then, is no small ground for praise, is no slight use, and is no mean achievement, since it makes him who knows it a judge of music already created, an emender of faulty music, and an inventor of music.
In this passage, clerical use and delight in music are joined with the capacity to judge, correct and compose music (the latter skills being granted by Boethius to the musicus).
Through a consideration of these sources, the reader can glimpse the interaction of competing musical taxonomies rooted in the Boethian and cantus traditions. In each case the values of a particular author shape the outcome of this interaction.
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Previously in this study, the ambiguities in Jacobus's use of the term cantor were established by reading his Speculum musicae in the light of the reception of Boethius's taxonomy of musicians. Accordingly, cantor did not always designate the irrational, Boethian non-musicus. Often in the Speculum musicae the term cantor – under the influence of the implied ecclesiastical taxonomy – could also designate the functional equivalent of a rational, performing musicus. As if aware of these ambiguities in his use of the term cantor, Jacobus offered another designation of the performing musicus or rational cantor, employing the term practicus musicus. For Jacobus, the abilities and activities of this practicus musicus were clear:Footnote 65
It seems, moreover, that the primary goal of practica musica [is] either to know the more important chants, or to know how to sing. Indeed someone who knows the various mixtures of pitches, the natures of consonances, their properties, agreements, differentiae, natural proportions and even the rules of the chants should not be called a practicus musicus unless he knows how to sing.
For Jacobus, Guido d'Arezzo fits this definition of the practicus musicus perfectly. Although Guido possessed musica theorica and practica, he chose – according to Jacobus, to the great gain of his age – to devote himself to musica practica:Footnote 66
I think that Guido the Monk was sufficiently expert in musica theorica and musica practica at the same time. In fact, he contributed to the expansion of musica practica. Indeed this was lucky for the age, since in his time few people in the Church knew how to sing harmoniously and securely. For that reason, he passed on a method of notating and singing by means of ‘new notes’ (novis notis). And concerning the monochord and the modes of chant, which some call tones, he wrote many good things.… if he had applied himself to musica theorica, I think he would have said many beautiful and good things. But he chose musica practica.
But what of the musici who could not sing? The extent to which Boethius's original taxonomy had been challenged, since its reintroduction by the Carolingians, can be seen in Jacobus's insistence that even those who cannot sing can still be worthy of the title musicus:Footnote 67
But those who are unable to sing (either because of a defective voice or because they have not had experience), but nevertheless know the natures of consonances and other things pertaining to theoretical music, these people do not lose the title of musicus.
Furthermore, whereas Boethius had not entertained the idea that a musicus would want to sing, Jacobus encouraged those who could not sing, but wished to do so, to seek out the proper instruction while maintaining realistic expectations:Footnote 68
Therefore the musicus who wishes to be a practicus, who would like to sing not only according to use, but according to art, let him learn to produce properly the various conjunctions of pitches and consonances treated previously and particularly while young, because one who desires greatly (untrained and unskilled though he may be) will become in chant, whatever he may be in theoretical music [i.e. an expert]. … Thence, when he will have been instructed further, he may sing without solfege and sing the text of the chant on his own (without recourse to notation), and even if he sings with notation, let him continue his effort until that time when he can sing securely any previously unseen and unheard ecclesiastical chants, as though singing ex tempore and without a teacher, so that he is a practicus musicus or merits to be called a cantor.
By explicitly equating his practicus musicus with the cantor who merits the title, Jacobus's statement achieved the (greatest possible) reconciliation of the values of the cantus tradition (and its distinctions among singers) with the values of the Boethian distinction between rational and irrational musicians.
The decision to designate the rational performer as a practicus musicus represented only one possible solution to the tension between the Boethian taxonomy of musicians and the implied ecclesiastical taxonomy of cantores. Jacobus was consistent with the original Boethian arrangement in that the musicus remained the normative category. For Boethius and many later medieval authors, the non-musicus or cantor was defined in terms of the capacities he lacked. By retaining the term musicus and modifying it with practicus, Jacobus followed Boethian legacy. When faced with the challenge posed by authoritative yet competing taxonomies of musicians, other authors chose other solutions.
The author of the Summa musice (c.1300) presented another arrangement, describing two types of musicians: the cantor who is a musicus and the cantor who is not a musicus:Footnote 69
These two things [i.e. the delightful and the useful] are found in music. It is delightful, because no other art gives pleasure so quickly; it is useful, because its practitioner (artifex), that is to say the musicus, can compose new and correctly formed chant, can judge the same and can emend music that is not correctly formed. The difference between a musicus and a cantor will now be plain to the attentive reader. Every musicus is a cantor, but the reverse is not the case. A cantor who is a musicus, that is to say a theorist (theoricus) and performer (practicus), comes into this category, but a cantor who is not a musicus should not be called a performer (practicus), save by an abuse of the term, because performance is required to follow the science of theory (theorice rationem) which advances first.Footnote 70
This arrangement is at once consistent and inconsistent with the one proposed by Jacobus. The author of the Summa musice equated the musicus with the theorist (theoricus) and required that the cantor who aspires to the title practitioner (practicus) should acquire theoretical knowledge ‘because performance is required to follow the science of theory (theorice rationem) which advances first’.Footnote 71
And yet the author's decision to designate the rational practitioner as a cantor (while certainly not without medieval precedent) departs from the Boethian taxonomy (and its later reconfigurations). Furthermore, the author does not acknowledge the category of the non-performing musicus. Indeed, if ‘every musicus is a cantor’, then the non-singing musicus is no musicus at all.
A clearly articulated instance of this trend towards making the musicus a species of cantor may be found in Arnulf de St Ghislain's Tractatulus de differentiis et gradibus cantorum (?1400), written some seventy years after the Speculum musicae. In this work, following the thinking found in the Summa musice, all musici are cantores. But Arnulf went further. He explicitly placed those musici who cannot sing at a rank secondary to the cantores who ‘are first in honor [dignitate prior]’. In these cantores of the first rank, ‘natural instinct, aided by a sweet voice’ are combined with ‘the acquisition of the noble art of singing [that] guides … [the] singer's voice according to rule’.Footnote 72 Unlike the author of the Summa musice, however, Arnulf acknowledged and honoured the non-singing musicus for fulfilling several important purposes: he teaches others what he cannot sing himself and by ‘exercising the authority of judicial power in music and sitting on the throne of the musical court of law, [he] rightly judges these [i.e. the cantores of the first rank] to be the most excellent among musicians … since they are found to be lacking in nothing’.Footnote 73
Thus one sees in the taxonomy of musicians offered by Arnulf de St Ghislain the culmination of the trend towards designating the musicus – either the practicus musicus of Guido d'Arezzo or the purely theoretical musicus – as a species of cantor. Jacobus's noble cantor (practicus musicus) had become the normative category against which the non-performing musicus was to be judged.
The redefinitions within alternative and implied ecclesiastical taxonomies of cantor and musicus allowed for a category of musician – the rational performer and composer – that had been absent from the Boethian division. Whereas most earlier authors chose to call this type of musician a musicus (with the Boethian hierarchy in mind) or chose to distinguish the noble cantor from the irrational cantor (with the values of the cantus tradition in mind), later authors sought to synthesise, or at the very least coordinate, the hierarchies of the two traditions. Most often, the latter used the term cantor to designate the genus of musicians, while presenting the musicus as a species of cantor. Jacobus, however, albeit ambiguously employing the term cantor at certain points, nevertheless offered the term practicus musicus as his term of choice. Employing an essentially identical hierarchy to that developed by Arnulf de St Ghislain, he declared that the hybrid practicus musicus was superior to the non-practising musicus and the irrational cantor. And yet, unlike Arnulf de St Ghislain, Jacobus designated this type of musician as a musicus.Footnote 74 What might be the significance of Jacobus's approach? While speculative (in the modern sense), what follows will suggest several possibilities.
Because the rational singer who unified theory and practice within the singer's own person was considered superior to one who possessed only theory or practice (with the latter derived solely from usus), this rational singer's position and title within the taxonomy of musicians – as a type of musicus or as a type of cantor – could either reinforce or reverse the values of the original, Boethian taxonomy of musicians.Footnote 75 If the rational singer, being superior to both the rational, non-performing musicus and the irrational cantor, received the denotation of cantor, then the category of cantor – and by extension, the values of the cantus tradition – could be understood as superior to that of the musicus and the Boethian tradition. However, if the rational singer received the designation of musicus, the pre-eminence of the musicus (and a modified, Boethian perspective) would be reinforced.
By choosing to denote the rational singer as a practicus musicus, Jacobus cast his lot with the musicus, and (by extension) theoria. While he does not offer reasons for his choice of terms, one may consider at least three possible causes. First, the major premise of Boethius's taxonomy was that the musicus possesses knowledge. To denote such a person by the term cantor – understood by many medieval authors as the opposite of the musicus – would be inconsistent with Boethius's taxonomy, a taxonomy that Jacobus seemed to wish to maintain with a modified significance.
Second, the choice of practicus musicus was consistent with Jacobus's Aristotelian understanding of the relationship between theoria and practica. According to Aristotle, as understood by Aquinas, practice should be an extension of theory. By modifying the term musicus (as the embodiment of theoria) to designate one whose practice is grounded in theory, Jacobus created a hierarchy of musicians that is consistent with his hierarchy of musical cognition in which the knowledge undergirding true practice flows from theoretical knowledge.Footnote 76 Had he chosen to call the rational singer a cantor, he would have reversed this Aristotelian view by suggesting that the rational singer was essentially a cantor and only secondarily (or accidentally) a possessor of knowledge. Instead, the practicus musicus is first of all a musicus (and an embodiment of theoria) and second a practitioner.
Third, had he chosen to identify the practicus musicus as a species of cantor, it might have imperilled the status of the non-practising musicus, however diminished that status might have already become. As could be seen above, the Summa musice granted no position to the non-practising musicus. To set aside the activity of pure theorica musica would have subverted the Aristotelian idea that theoria is the pinnacle of human activity.Footnote 77
In light of the analysis offered in this article, one may profitably reconsider the statement by Jacobus presented at its beginning: ‘Boethius pursues speculation more, Guido pursues practice. The former makes a musicus, with regard to theory, [while the latter] makes a cantor, with regard to practice.’Footnote 78 The correlation in this statement between theoria, Boethius and the musicus remains unproblematic. But what of the relationship between musica practica, Guido and the cantor?
Recalling the two ways in which Jacobus employed this term throughout the Speculum musicae, one recognises that in this statement cantor means a Guidonian cantor or peritus cantor, which Jacobus designated as a practicus musicus. There is no doubt that modern standards of terminological consistency would have been better met if he had used practicus musicus in this passage. Nevertheless, his meaning is clear when considered in the greater context of the work.
Finally, one can address the question of how the musicus-cantor relationship within the Speculum corresponds to Jacobus's understanding of theory and practice. Two observations may be made. First, because of the ambiguous meaning of cantor, one cannot unreflectively present musicus and cantor as analogous embodiments of theoria and practica. The designation cantor can refer to the irrational Boethian non-musicus or a learned singer possessing true scientia. When employed to designate the latter, it denotes Jacobus's practicus musicus and the analogy of musicus and cantor to theory and practice becomes legitimate.
Second, by positing the practicus musicus as a synonym for the rational singer, Jacobus reinforced the pre-eminence of theoria. Had he chosen to consistently employ the term cantor for the rationally guided singer, he could have implied that theoria had become merely the source material for practice while losing both its autonomy and primacy. In Jacobus's formulation the practicus musicus was first a musicus – the embodiment of theoria – and, by extension, one engaged in practice.
Another aspect of the above statement by Jacobus deserves consideration: the association of Boethius with theoria and Guido with practica. Here we find distinct bodies of propositional knowledge associated with theory and practice. Musica practica was not simply the application of musica theorica to a practical end or the activities of a practicus musicus (whatever they might be), but rather a distinct deposit of knowledge communicated by authors from late antiquity that was supplemented and modified through the Middle Ages. This leads to the question of what it is in Guido's writings that make them practical and what is it in Boethius's writings that makes them theoretical. This taxonomy of propositional knowledge must be the topic of a future study.
In conclusion, the Speculum musicae did not replace the Boethian taxonomy, but rather posited it alongside alternative or implicit taxonomies that differed from the Boethian arrangement. These taxonomies included a revised definition of musicus: this new, ecclesiastical musicus was composed and sung in addition to possessing musical understanding and the power to judge. Moreover, these taxonomies – as later formulations of the values of the cantus tradition – explicitly or implicitly divided the cantor into the rational singer-composer (peritus cantor), who was the functional equivalent of the new, ecclesiastical musicus, and the irrational singer (stultus cantor), who was the functional equivalent of the Boethian non-musicus.
As writers sought to classify the musicians of their own day, three basic types emerged: (1) the Boethian musicus who did not perform or compose, (2) the new, ecclesiastical musicus (which was equivalent to the peritus cantor) and (3) the irrational cantor. As the most striking departure from the Boethian taxonomy, the second category resulted in alternative designations. Some authors, disregarding the Boethian musicus, simply used the term musicus for this category. Others employed the term cantor, while at the same time suggesting that the cantor who did not understand what he did was unworthy of the title cantor. Jacobus's treatment of the musicus and cantor relationship in the Speculum reflected his respect for Boethian authority as well as the inheritance of the alternative taxonomies offered by authors in the Middle Ages and the realities these taxonomies represented.
