Luminita Florea | Eastern Illinois University (original) (raw)

Ph.D. Dissertation by Luminita Florea

The Quatuor principalia is possibly the work of the Oxford Franciscan John of Tewkesbury, active ... more The Quatuor principalia is possibly the work of the Oxford Franciscan John of Tewkesbury, active between ca. 1351 and 1392, who was also the maker and owner of the earliest extant copy of the treatise, and the author of an astronomical work, De situ universorum.
Codicological evidence is compiled from 13 manuscripts. Supplementary evidence is adduced from one of the earliest convent library catalogues compiled by the Oxford Franciscans, as well as from study of Franciscan history in England and the available sources in Britain and elsewhere at the time of the Quatuor principalia's compilation in the mid-14th century.
A full catalogue raisonne of manuscripts is an intrinsic part of the dissertation.

Books by Luminita Florea

Papers by Luminita Florea

“For as a man having brought a horse to the water cannot compell him to drink except he list, so ... more “For as a man having brought a horse to the water cannot compell him to drink except he list, so may I write a booke to such a man but cannot compell him to reade it.” Thus Morley, bitterly and not without a trace of sarcasm, expressed his philosophical resignation with some of his contemporaries’ pitiful ignorance of the basic precepts of music.
Of the three parts comprising the Plaine and Easie Introduction, Morley tells us, in Part I “I have boldlie taken that which in particular I cannot challenge to bee mine owne.” The paper examines some of the waters from which Morley made himself drink: the quotations coming from the Quatuor principalia musice, a work finished in Oxford on the 4th of August, 1351 by a Franciscan who withdrew his name, but who can be assumed to have been John of Tewkesbury.
Diagrams, tables, and generally speaking graphic illustrations of every sort, if they can be shown to come from an extraneous source, are taken here as “quotations.” The paper attempts to identify these, as well as some recognizable paraphrases on sections from the Quatuor principalia. Next, it addresses the problem of the manuscript or manuscripts containing the complete or partial text of the Quatuor principalia that Morley might have had in hand, and from which he translated some text and copied at least one illustration. The Quatuor principalia forms the source for such a large portion of Morley’s Annotations as to warrant further inquiry into the specific version (long or short) and manuscript (or manuscripts) he used.

Fourteenth-century music theorists occasionally described the craft and theory of musical composi... more Fourteenth-century music theorists occasionally described the craft and theory of musical composition in terms borrowed from other academic disciplines, such as anatomy, or more mundane professions, such as pharmacy, cooking, weaving, or stitching. In addition, many described the sonorous impact of the final musical product on the listener and, for the sake of eloquence, often resorted to metaphorical discourse involving a variety of senses—not just the sense of hearing.
In listening to polyphonic music, for example, Jacques of Liège (c. 1260-after 1330) experienced sensuous pleasure triggered by a conglomerate of different, yet simultaneously received stimuli. He averred that “polyphony is gracious food for the ears,” and likened the emotional and sensory impact of multi-voiced compositions to that of ceremonial silk printed with a variety of “prolations, figures, and inscriptions.” The music theorist was thinking about the sound, not the sight of woven silk cloth as polyphonic music; conversely, he was contemplating the sight, not the sound, of polyphony as embroidered silk. His hearing saw and ate, and his sight heard. Tactile sensations, too, were implied in his description of polyphony: silk, besides being an article of “great sartorial significance” was “touchable” in the highest degree. It is possible that oriental connotations, however subliminal, might have “spiced up” his experience of sound as well: both silk and polyphony possessed the strong appeal of textures not only beautiful, but also intriguing by virtue of their exoticism, understood as a quality somewhat extravagant and mysterious.
The visual appearance of contemporary music scores is more closely related to the “polyphonic” texture of silk woven into somewhat less flamboyant Andalusian silk tapestries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Yet the value of the analogy here stands firm, for staff positioning on page as well as text underlay can easily be likened to band alignment in the piece of cloth described above—and so can sonorous alignment of multiple voices in simultaneous performance.
Engelbert of Admont (c. 1250-1331) introduced the etymology of “chroma” when describing the chromatic genus of ancient Greek music. His metaphor involved silk as a fabric whose analogical effectiveness lie in the shimmering of its texture and its iridescent colors. Once again the sense of hearing was invested with visual and tactile connotations.
Last but not least, Johannes de Grocheo (fl. C. 1300) used similes revealing his perception of the sonorous material of chant as an additional element of beauty stitched onto the pre-existing text of the mass, just like pearls, stones, gold, silver, and silk threads conferred visual beauty and glamour onto otherwise ordinary, pre-shaped objects of fashion.

"Monster analogies were used to increase both the dramatic and educational impact of 14th- and 15... more "Monster analogies were used to increase both the dramatic and educational impact of 14th- and 15th-century theoretical discourse on music. Identifying errors in musical thought, composition, notation, or performance as “monsters” turned perceived transgressions from the norm into terrifying constructs, to be avoided at all costs. Boethius, whose sixth-century De arithmetica was standard reading in late medieval university music curricula, had written on the hundred-handed Gigas and three-bodied Gerio, of Cyclopic characters and other forms of hypotrophy of the body in reference to numbers and proportions.
This paper analyzes three views of monstrous anomaly from late medieval theoretical discourse about music. The first one is an example of analogical transfer involving zoomorphic imagery of Classical extraction: in the earlier part of the 14th century Jacques of Liege, trained at the University of Paris and possibly teaching there as well, penned a diatribe against the proponents of abnormal notational values such as larga (or duplex longa) and fusa (eighth-note). He viewed these note-shapes as monstrous violations of the accepted norm, evoking multicephalic creatures; to him and his intended readership these monsters might have recalled the Hydra of Lerna, Cerberus, or Medusa Gorgona.
The second example, based on a zoomorphic analogy as well, comes from 15th-century philosopher, mathematician, canonist, and music theorist Ugolino of Orvieto, archpriest of the Ferrara Cathedral. His analysis of the eight ecclesiastical modes posits that the occurrence of structural anomalies within interval species engenders a monstrous, composite animal: Chimera.
The third example, still from Ugolino, is the unique instance of a surgically manufactured, anthropomorphic musical monster. Its origin, traceable to actual 14th and 15th -century surgical performance, suggests Ugolino’s familiarity with contemporary surgery tracts such as Guy de Chauliac’s Chyrurgia magna (1363). Furthermore, it also suggests Ugolino’s actual connection with Michele Savonarola, physician to both Borso and Lionello d’Este at the court of Ferrara, and known for having performed one of the two types of surgery present in Ugolino’s analogy."

"Late medieval music theorists’ discourse on the relative virtues of the arts retained the distin... more "Late medieval music theorists’ discourse on the relative virtues of the arts retained the distinction between the seven liberal ones (which included musica) and the seven mechanical ones: wool-weaving, ironwork, agriculture, navigation, hunting, medicine, and theatrics. The latter enumeration, proposed by English theorist Walter Odington at the close of the thirteenth century, is reminiscent of Hugh of St. Victor’s while also echoing the Opus maius of Roger Bacon—who, in turn, was quoting St. Augustine’s authority. Furthermore, early Renaissance music theorists postulated that the work of cobblers, carpenters, and land cultivators did not belong with the instruments of inquiry into the speculative side of music; and that woodworking, ironworking, shoemaking (or mending), the making of shoe soles, architecture, and painting were manual occupations to be dismissed in scholarly discourse on the superior arts, including music.
Yet in quite a few music theory tracts of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries analogies were used to create bridges between the liberal and mechanical arts. As figures of speech involving elements of palpable reality, analogies reconfigured theoretical discourse, facilitated the understanding of musical concepts, and ultimately improved musical knowledge.
This paper presents two case-studies in connecting the liberal and mechanical arts through analogies inspired by leather preparation and cobbling in France:
The anonymous author of the Musica Guidonis (a Cistercian chant treatise based on the principles evolved by Guido, Abbot of Cherlieu, in the twelfth century) invoked the stretching of cured leather to explicate hexachord mutation as well as accommodating a large chant ambitus in vocal performance. The paper proposes that such an analogy is best read in the context of Cistercian monastic economy, which relayed heavily on in situ mills and tanneries for the preparation and production of both cloth and leather goods, and of which Cherlieu itself was a prime example as attested in contemporary documents.
In the early 14th century, Parisian music theorist Johannes Grocheio posited that just as the crafts of leather preparation and cobbling were mutually beneficial, so, too, theology and canon law, in prescribing the texts or the subject-matter of the sections of the Mass aided the work of the musical artisan. This double analogy discloses the author’s familiarity with at least some of the contemporary Parisian métiers whose bustling headquarters were situated on the Île de la Cité as well as in the Quartier d’Outre-Grant-Pont. The geographic distribution and physical association of trades, directly observed by Grocheio in Paris might easily have been a factor in his adoption of a rather unexpected analogy for the musical embellishment of the text of the Mass. Evidence for reading the analogy in its urban context comes from reconstructed maps of the city, the taille of 1292, Etienne Boileau’s Livre des métiers, the early fourteenth-century Le Dit des rues de Paris, as well as texts of late 13th-century motets.
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The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, by examining György Ligeti's cycle of three pieces... more The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, by examining György Ligeti's cycle of three pieces for double choir, what I call his compromise between temporal forms that possess their own microcosmic history and latent drama, and architectural patterns of his music that are endowed with a purely spatial coherence. I hope to demonstrate that an analysis of the aesthetic concepts at work in Ligeti's pieces might lead to a somewhat non-traditional approach in elaborating analytical strategies of modern music.

Renaissance Quarterly 56/1 (Spring 2003): 180-2.

Renaissance Quarterly 50/2 (Summer 1997): 625-6.