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What iz Chapter 17 of Guido's Micrologus about? - A Proposal for a New Answer
Edward Green
; Manhattan School of Music, New York, SAD
Sažetak
Chapter 17 is the most controversial section of Guido's Micrologus. Even medieval commentators were unsure of its intent. A thoughtful attempt to explain its purpose was made by van Waesberghe in his 1951 article "Guido of Arezzo and Musical Improvisation." Guido, he argued, intended to initiate students into the art of improvisation through an innovative methodology: aligning the vowel series along definite points of the gamut.
This essay explores the possibility that chapter 17 might have had a different significance: that Guido designed it as a logical continuation of the subject matter he had been pursuing in chapters 15 and 16 - namely, the aesthetics of chant. Moreover, his notion of aesthetics illustrates what the great 20th century philosopher Eli Siegel explained is universal in world aesthetics: the oneness of opposites.
Taken as a unit, chapters 15-17 (with chapter 14 functioning as a "prelude") are an an introductory text in "songwriting." Guido is not so much interested in improvisation, as in the creation of new chant: a oneness of word and melody which is relatively "fixed." Evidence suggests that the rules in chapter 17 are there to encourage a student to appreciate the expressive impact of vowel recurrence. The rules are not arbitrary; they make sense on heuristic terms. The essay includes a close study not only of Guido's text and musical examples, but also the De musica of Johannes Affligemensis and the anonymous Liber Argumentorum.
Ključne riječi
Guido d'Arezzo; Micrologus; van Waesberghe; Johannes Affligemensis; De musica; Eli Siegel; Aesthetic Realism; Liber Argumentorum
Hrčak ID:
87474
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.8.2007.
Posjeta: 2.148 *