After the publication of Martin Gerbert's three volumes of Scriptores de musica sacra potissimum in 1784 and the complementary ‘new series different from Gerbert's’ published eighty years later by Edmond de Coussemaker, relatively few editions of medieval music theory treatises appeared until the middle of the twentieth century, when the series Corpus Scriptorum de Musica was launched by Joseph Smits van Waesberghe. With the recent publication by Michael Bernhard and Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba of the twenty-six treatises related to the Traditio Iohannis Hollandrini and a volume of brief tractatuli published by Christian Meyer and Shin Nishimagi, one might think that little more would come to light.Footnote ¹ Nevertheless, in the course of the work on the Hollandrinus project, a collection of hitherto unknown plainsong and mensural music treatises did come to light in a volume once owned by Stephan Roth (1492–1546), a Zwickau city clerk (Stadtschreiber) and later member of the town council, who had probably acquired the collection during his student days in Leipzig (1512–17).

The volume containing the treatises (Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek 24.20.26) is only one of an astonishing collection of 6,000 manuscripts and books (440 of them incunabula) that Roth collected and bequeathed (along with 3,750 letters from hundreds of correspondents) to the Latin school in Zwickau, his birthplace and where he had served as rector of the Latin school beginning in 1517. He moved to Wittenberg in 1523, by which time he was already attracted to Reformation theology. From 1526 to 1528 he published a number of Luther's sermons (not very faithfully, as Luther discovered). Nevertheless, his translation of Luther's sermons on the Psalms was introduced by a preface in which Luther assured the reader that Roth had, through long association with him, ‘alle vnsere weisse zu leren vnd reden efaren’. In 1528 Roth received an appointment at Zwickau as second and later first Stadtschreiber, and three years before his death in 1546 he was inducted as a city councillor (Ratsherr) in recognition of his contributions to his native city.

The collection of treatises, bound with other manuscripts and prints, must have already been a unit when Roth acquired it, since the foliation of the treatises (1–131) is continuous, whereas the separata that make up the first 147 folios of the Konvolut are individually foliated. This first part consists mainly of ecclesiastical texts, works that might be expected to attract a young man with an interest in religious topics. The last item in the Konvolut is a manuscript copy (supplied with many glosses) of Georg Hutter's instructions for praying the rosary: Egregius modus orandi rosaceum coronam beate Marie virginis – not a typical Reformation form of devotion. The pre-Reformation dating of the collection also helps to explain the large number of chant treatises, which would have lost much of their relevance when the traditional Latin liturgy was replaced by new forms of worship in the vernacular. Nothing in Roth's biography suggests a special interest in music, but had he anticipated a career in a Lateinschule, the teaching of music (i.e., plainsong) would have been a significant part of the curriculum.

All the treatises are anonymous but obviously the work of musicians well versed in chant and/or mensural theory, which they present in methodical fashion. Eleven treatises, labelled A to L by the editors, are provided with generic titles, for example, ‘Tractatulus de musica chorali’, ‘De musica figurali’ (listed in the table on pp. 19–22). The first two edited treatises (A and B) are not part of the continuous foliation mentioned above. They precede two printed music books bound into the collection: Michael Kleinspeck's Lilium musicae planae (1496) and Uldaricus Burchard's Hortulus musicae practicae (1517). Neither is included in the present edition, nor is a treatise from the Traditio Hollandrini, already edited by Bernhard and Witkowska-Zaremba. The 1517 date of the Hortulus provides incidentally a terminus ante quem non for the binding of the Konvolut.

The first Schreiberhand (of five identified by the editors) was responsible for copying most of the treatises. Within each treatise a roman numeral has been assigned to each chapter and the sentences have been numbered. Editorial comments are clearly indicated in the margins. The presence of running heads at the top of each page facilitates locating passages to which attention is drawn in the editors' introductions to the teaching of the treatises (pp. 25–67).

The reference to humanism in the title of the volume under review refers almost exclusively to the introductions (prooemia, praefationes, prologia) that precede most of the treatises. (Treatises H and L have no introduction, and treatises B and C are in themselves no more than introductions.) The introductions praise, often in eloquent terms, the dignity, usefulness and beneficent effects of music. While this approach continues a venerable medieval convention stretching back to Boethius, the introductions go beyond the traditional sacred (Tubal, David) and mythical (Pythagoras) topoi to include authors who were part of the humanist educational palette (Cicero, Horace, Vergil, Ovid). One of the introductions (F) even brings in Jupiter but directly thereafter evokes the vision of Isaiah. The piling up of references to a wide range of auctoritates is intended to inspire and encourage (perhaps youthful) readers to commit themselves to the task of mastering the noble art of music. According to the author of treatise F, the ancients considered musici to be on the same exalted level as seers and wise men (‘vates et sapientes’). Unfortunately, there is no Personenregister that would have assisted the reader in tracking down these references.

There are the expected references to the Hebrew and Greek ‘inventors’ of music, Tubal (J) and Pythagoras (E and J), respectively. Music's magical powers are recalled (Amphion, Orpheus), as is its capability to rouse or soothe the emotions (H: the example of Timotheus) and its practical use (utilitas). The lengthy introduction to treatise J closes with a division of music according to the four Aristotelian causes, the final cause being the ‘laus dei in officiis divinis’. The same treatise also presents a diagram that situates musica as a part of philosophy.Footnote ² Each of the theorists proposes a definition of music in the long ‘musica est’ tradition, but they neglect the staple division into musica mundana, humana and instrumentalis that stems from the Boethian tradition.Footnote ³ None of the introductory essays has any discernible connection with what follows in the body of the treatise.

The editors designate the assemblage of treatises in Stephan Roth's Studienkonvolut as the ‘Vulgata der Musiklehre ihrer Zeit’ (p. 15), an apt characterisation of its pedagogical intent. None of the treatises, as far as I can tell, breaks ‘new ground’, but that was never their purpose, which was to guide the learner step-by-step from the most basic elements to more complex concepts. The chant treatises touch on all the usual topics: letters, sol-fa syllables (voces, sillibae), hexachords (without using the term), intervals, species of fourths, fifths and octaves (F I 24–33; F V 27–49; H IV 32–61), claves (letter + syllable), clef displacement (for melodies of extended range; F IV 1–228; H III 1–22; K p.p. IV 1–8), and mutation (shifting from one hexachord to another). A few of the treatises discuss coniunctae: hexachords besides the usual three that introduce a pitch not present in the normal gamut (E b 32; H II 52–7: ‘cantus fictus’; J VII 1–22: ‘de coniunctis’, of which eight are listed). Not every topic is taken up in every treatise. Many of the musical examples give the impression of being designed to serve also as singing exercises. Only one treatise (D I 24) includes a musical (‘Guidonian’) hand, reproduced in facsimile. Treatise D includes a brief tonary of the Office and Mass psalmody.

The mensural treatises (A, E, G, K, L) are every bit as methodical as the longer chant treatises. (The prima pars of K briefly treats aspects of chant theory.) The contents of treatise G are typical: it distinguishes between modus, tempus and prolation, explains the rhythmic functions of the dot (punctus) and presents a ‘tree’ that attempts to represent the relationship of long, breve, semibreve and minim in different prolations (to be interpreted in light of the editors’ comments on p. 253). This is complemented by a chapter on proportions. The longer treatises G and K illustrate their teaching with copious musical exempla in one to four voices. Mensural treatises obviously place the measurement of musical time in first place, but treatise G concludes with a chapter ‘de thonis [sic]’ that acknowledges the difficulty of assigning a single mode to a polyphonic piece not based on a cantus firmus. Each of the eight tones is illustrated by a short mensural phrase, a series also found in treatise E c 22ff.

In addition to an index of the Lexicon Musicum Latinum sigla used in the footnotes, there are indexes of chant incipits and of technical terms in Latin and German. In closing, the significant contribution of Alexander Rausch (Vienna) is acknowledged, whose editorial skill and knowledge served to make Musiklehre zwischen Mittelalter und Renaissance a substantial addition to the corpus of music theory treatises from the twilight of the Middle Ages.