May 2024 Print

Jerome of Moravia’s Tractatus de Musica

By Joseph Ahmad

The interpretation of Gregorian chant has been fraught with controversy ever since the first attempts to “restore” or “purify” chant were made in the decades following the Council of Trent. These early endeavors produced the “Medicean edition,”¹ which was intended to accompany the Tridentine Missal. In the mid-1800s, earnest, scientific study of the history and manuscript tradition of Gregorian chant began at the Abbey of Solesmes. There, Dom Joseph Pothier and Dom André Mocquereau developed the generally free, slightly rhythmic approach to chant that one hears in most churches today, often called the “Solesmes method.” Since the late 19th century when this approach to chant was developed, the study of medieval music has continued to advance, particularly at the Abbey of Solesmes itself. Of the abbey’s more recent scholars, the best known today is Dom Eugène Cardine, whose study of ninth-century manuscripts resulted in the 1979 Graduale Triplex, which prints ninth-century neumes alongside modern square notation. Moreover, beginning with Cyrille Vogel’s pioneering work in the 1970s,² scholarship in medieval liturgy has greatly advanced, largely overturning many of the anti-medieval prejudices of the mid to late Liturgical Movement: far from being a dull epilogue to the golden age of Patristic-era liturgy, medieval liturgy was vibrant, creative, and beloved by the laity.³ Consequently, contemporary scholars such as Marcel Pérès⁴ (director of Ensemble Organum), Bartosz Izbicki (director of Jerycho), Niels Berentsen,⁵ Dominique Vellard (director of Ensemble Gilles Binchois), and Antoine Guerber (director of Diabolus in Musica) have turned to sources from the medieval period to inform their approach Gregorian chant. One of these sources is the thirteenth-century treatise Tractatus de Musica⁶ by Jerome of Moravia. I present it with the hope that it might inspire us to sing chant more beautifully and richly.

The life of Frater Hieronimus de Moravia, OP (c.1200–c.1280) is mostly shrouded in mystery, apart from some key details. Scholars differ on whether his toponym, Moravus, refers to Moravia—roughly today’s Czech Republic—or Moray, a county in Scotland. Given that Jerome spent almost his entire career in Paris, and given the close connections between Scotland and France at the time, Michel Huglo and Constant Mews opt for his Scottish origin.⁷ Whereas thirteenth-century Moravia was suffering devastation at the hands of the Tatars, Moray “was then flourishing as a result of strong political, cultural, and religious connections between Scotland and France…mediated in particular through French-speaking bishops and the Order of Preachers.”⁸ St. Andrews resonated with the polyphony of Notre Dame and Scotland’s bishops regularly traveled back and forth from Paris.⁹ Jerome came to Paris around 1219, where he studied music with John of Garland, canon of Notre Dame, and a major auctor for Jerome’s treatise.¹⁰ Having earned his doctorate, he taught at the Sorbonne and became a cantor at La Sainte Chapelle around the 1240s. He possibly assisted Humbert of Romans with his 1254 reform of the Dominican Rite and its chant, for which Jerome’s Tractatus de Musica serves as an introduction.

Jerome’s treatise on music is an encyclopedic reference, comprising both the theoretical and the practical. The first half of the book is heavily indebted to Aristotle, Simplicius, Boethius, Cassiodorus, St. Augustine, St. Isidore of Seville, and more recent authors, such as al-Farabi, Richard of St. Victor, John of Garlandia, and even Jerome’s colleague, St. Thomas Aquinas. We shall pass over most of the theoretical section, except to comment upon the metaphysical aspects of music, which might demand particular emphasis today. Given the omnipresence and commercialization of music, the modern cantor might be tempted to think that music serves to entertain and, at best, inspire emotions. Translated to an ecclesiastical context, music would be the aesthetic sugar that makes the dogmatic medicine easier to go down. While the cultivation of emotion is not unimportant for Jerome, music has an intrinsic meaning and purpose that is cooperative with its use as a vehicle for the words of scripture: “Musical song moves the souls of its hearers because it delights the ear, elevates the mind…and tempers the madness of the frenetic—indeed, for these a certain order in the text takes effect (horum autem quaedam efficit ordo prosaicus).”¹¹ Citing Isidore, Jerome writes, “the universe itself is said to be composed of a certain harmony of sounds, and the heavens themselves to revolve based on harmonic modulation.”¹² Likewise, Richard of St. Victor assimilates music to the mathematical harmony present in the cosmos and the human body: “Musica humana is located either in the body, or in the soul, or in the joining together of the two.”¹³ Aural music ought to move the soul of the listener to resonate both literally and figuratively with this cosmic harmony. In turn, the essence of chant is the text of scripture. One should compose and sing chant in such a way that “the chant would express what the words say (sonant).”¹⁴ Finally, since the music of chant is inextricable from the meaning of the scriptural text, the cantor ought to internalize what he is singing, so that the listeners are properly moved by the words of scripture.

Jerome’s prescriptions for the organization of the schola are common-sensical. The singers must have a clearly defined precentor and they must agree on the style and tempo of the chant, whether they will sing secundum antiquos vel secundum modernos.¹⁵ That there was some flexibility in the performance of chant in the later medieval period is attested by the fifteenth-century music theorist, Johannes Tinctoris, who states that plainchant was often sung, “according to the rite of the church or the wish of the singers.”¹⁶ Regarding pitch, Jerome holds that chant should be sung so as to be within the schola’s chest voice, since “voices sing vigorously from the chest.”¹⁷ Finally, the precentor ought to attend ad cantum omnem diligenter, that is, not to sing in such a way that only the most expert choristers can follow.

Concerning rhythm, Jerome first lays down a simple method, which will be the basis for more complex techniques. The beat in Gregorian chant is ternary, with each beat being composed of three instantiae, moments. Thus the beat of the chant should have a 3/8 or 6/8 feel. The fundamental notes are the longa (2 beats), the brevis (1 beat), and the semibrevis (½ beat). Figure 1 is a summary of all the note lengths described by Jerome.

“Every plain or ecclesiastical chant has…equal notes, namely of…one beat.”¹⁸ There are five exceptions. First, if the first note of the chant is the final of the mode, then it is a longa. Thus the Introit Requiem aeternam would begin with a longa, but the Dies Irae would not. Second, if a syllable has multiple notes, the second one is a longa (if it is not preceded by a longa). We will pass over the third exception since it concerns the plica, a note that is only found in medieval chantbooks. For Jerome, a plica is a longa if the tail is on the right. Fourth, the penultimate note of a phrase is not a brevis, but Jerome does not specify its length. In context, it seems that it should be given the same note value as the final note in a phrase. In turn, the length of this final note depends on the length of the pausa (rest) that follows it. A longa precedes a pausa of one beat, a longior precedes a pausa of two beats, and so on. In turn, the pausae correspond to logical units in a text. A pausa imperfecte dictionis—within a logical unit—has one beat. A pausa perfecte dictionis—which marks a complete thought—has two beats. A pausa orationis perfecte—which completes a whole section—receives three beats.

Contemporary chant manuscripts show us how the medievals used pausae for phrasing and emphasis. These pausae, marked by faint lines, are far more frequent than would be necessary for singers to breathe. This seems to indicate that silence was an important component to the medieval experience of chant. Above is a transcription of the Alleluia for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity from a Dominican graduale of the mid to late-fifteenth century.¹⁹

Following Jerome’s scheme, the half bar-line is a pausa of one beat, the full bar-line is two beats, and the double bar-line is three beats. As one can see, there is a marked preference for short phrases punctuated by silence. If one wishes to incorporate pausae into his performance of chant, he need not sing exclusively from medieval manuscripts: once one understands the logic of medieval musical phrasing, he could add pausae to an edition that lacks them, such as the Liber Usualis.

Beginning from the beginning, let us apply Jerome’s method to this chant. The first note is not the final, and so it is short. The next two notes are the penultimate and ultimate of a phrase that terminates in a one-beat pausa: therefore these two notes are longae, two beats each. The next three notes are breves. Then the last two notes of the phrase are two beats each. When we reach the end of the Alleluia, the final note is four beats long.

Jerome next adds a layer of complexity to the basic scheme outlined above. It is appropriate for more advanced singers, and to be used on more solemn occasions. Jerome gives melismas certain rhythmic patterns depending on the number of notes in a group. These groupings can be thus summarized:

Number of Notes	Pattern
four notes	longa – brevis – longior – longior
five notes	longa – brevis – semibrevis – longior – longior
six notes	longa – brevis -two semibreves – longior – longior
seven or more	longa – brevis – three or more brevissimae – longior - longior

Looking at the chant above, we could apply one of these patterns to the second half of the word eorum. Here we have a group of eleven notes, meaning that the last pattern listed would apply. If we look at the phrase just before eorum, we have two groupings of four notes. Thus the first group would be longa – brevis – longior – longior, but the second would be brevis – longa – longior – longior. Jerome suggests this change to break up the monotony of repeating the same pattern twice.

Jerome next discusses ornamentation and embellishment. First Jerome describes reverberatio, which is a kind of appoggiatura or grace note of a semitone or whole-tone applied to the beginning of long notes. Vibratio or flos harmonicus is a trill of either a tone or semitone above the note. When a long note ascends by semitone, one ornaments it with a flos longus—a slow trill by the semitone. The second note of a syllable (which is a longa, following Jerome’s second rule above) is ornamented with a flos apertus—a slow trill by the whole tone. Applying these ornaments to the chant above, it is clear that the qui, which begins the verse, could be ornamented with a flos longus—slow vibrato on the mi that resolves into a firm tone on the fa. Likewise, the second syllable of corde would be a good candidate for the flos apertus.

Jerome proceeds to discuss peculiar methods of singing which are “not observed by all, but by some of the French.”²⁰ If two or more notes are sung in succession on the same pitch, they are to be treated as semibreves. Likewise repeated notes of the same pitch are ornamented with reverberatio. Ascending and descending intervals are ornamented by filling in the intervals with one or more notae mediatae, passing notes—in addition to reverberatio. Returning to the chant above, one could employ reverberatio and notae mediatae to give emphasis to sanat, whose slow, rising pitches illustrates man’s being lifted out of the pit of sin. Passing notes and appoggiatura could be used to bring out a sense of verticality.

Thus concludes Jerome’s discussion of performance practice. With his emphasis on a kind of flexible mensuralism, on ornamentation, as well as on the use of silence, Jerome’s approach to chant might be quite different from what we are used to. This is one of the great gifts of historical study: by interacting with another who lived centuries ago, we can learn about possibilities that we might not have considered otherwise. The point is not that Jerome’s treatise will allow us to sing chant exactly as Thomas Aquinas might have heard it at the University of Paris (for we regrettably lack a thirteenth-century Alan Lomax), but rather that Jerome shows us a set of possible techniques that were considered beautiful and divine in his day: with some care, we could employ these in our own performance of chant to better glorify God. On that note, I will close with Jerome’s last piece of advice—that the key to beautiful music is a cheerful heart: “The chief impediment to singing beautiful notes is sadness of heart, for no note has value nor could be of value unless it proceeds from cheerfulness (hilaritate) of heart.”²¹

Endnotes

¹ Graduale de sanctis iuxta ritum Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae cum cantu Pauli V. Pont. Max. iusso reformata (Romae : Ex Typographia Medicaea, 1614).

² See Vogel, Cyrille, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, William Storey & Niels Rasmussen, ed. & tr. (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1986).

³ See, for example, Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale, 1992).

⁴ Les Voix du Plain-Chant (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001).

⁵ “Discantare Super Planum Cantum : new approaches to vocal polyphonic improvisation 1300-1470,” Ph.D. Diss. (Leiden, 2016). Accessed online at http://hdl.handle.net/1887/45012

⁶ Hieronymus de Moravia, Tractatus de musica, S. M. Cserba, ed., in Freiburger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, vol. 2 (Regensburg: Pustet, 1935): 3–179. Accessed online at https://chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/13th/IERTDM1

Weber, Laura, “Intellectual Currents in Thirteenth Century Paris: A Translation and Commentary of Jerome of Moravia’s Tractatus de musica,” Ph.D. Diss. (Yale, 2009).

⁷ Huglo, Michel, La théorie de la musique antique et médiévale (Aldershot: Routledge, 2005), no. XV. Mews, Constant J. “Jerome of Moray: a Scottish Dominican and the evolution of Parisian music theory 1220–1280.” Plainsong & Medieval Music 31, no. 2 (2022): 123-142.

⁸ Mews, 125.

⁹ Mews, 126.

¹⁰ Maginty, Edward, “Jerome of Moravia, OP” New Blackfriars 12, no. 130 (1931): 17-29, 18.

¹¹ Tractatus de Musica cap. XXIV; cf. Weber, 380.

¹² Tractatus cap. VII; Weber, 212-213. Jerome is referencing Isidore’s Etymologies, III. 17.

¹³ Tractatus cap. VII; Weber, 212.

¹⁴ Tractatus, cap. XXV.

¹⁵ Tractatus, cap. XXV.

¹⁶ Cf. Weaver, Charles, “André Mocquereau’s Theory of Rhythm” Ph.D. Diss. (CUNY, 2023), 19.

¹⁷ Tractatus cap. XXV.

¹⁸ Weber, 389.

¹⁹ “Biggers Gradual,” LOC M2147 XVI M6, p.109-110. The gradual can be viewed here: https://www.loc.gov/item/2009536648/

²⁰ Weber, 393.

²¹ Tractatus, cap. XXV; Weber, 397.

TITLE IMAGE: France - Paris, chapelle Sainte-Ursule de La Sorbonne [randreu].