Medieval Music: The Sixth Liberal Art by Andrew Hughes (review)

368 LETTERS IN CANADA Sur Ie theatre, des documents utiles ont paru: Ie monumental Repertoire des reuvres de la IitUrature radiophonique quebecoise, 1930-197° (Fides, 826, $20.00), de Pierre Page et son equipe; un precis des activib~s du Centre d'essai des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD, 85). Plus discutable, evidemment, etait la these ideologique ou sociologique de Baudouin Burger, L'Activite theatrale au Quebec, 1765-1825 (Eds Parti pris, 1974, 410, $7-50), qui eveille cependant l'interet pour une periode difficile de notre histoire culturelle. Le juge Edouard G. Rinfret a fait des resumes et _ collige divers renseignements dans son repertoire analytique, des origines anos jours, du Theatre canadien d'expression fran~aise. Les pieces sont c1assees au nom de l'auteur; Ie tome I (Lemeac, 390, $15.00) va de A a E inclusivement. Martial Dassylva a plus ou moins bien choisi et recueilli telles queUes une centaine de ses chroniques de 1965 a1972: Un theatre en effervescence (Eds La Presse, 283, $6.50)- (LAURENT MAILHOT) HUMANITIES Andrew Hughes, Medieval Music: The Sixth Liberal Art. Toronto Medieval Bibliographies 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1974, xii, 326, $20.00 Bibliographies of medieval music seem traditionally to have been so complexthat their use has been restricted to experts, and the mediaevalist _ who is not a trained musicologist has been forced to glean information from popular histories and already overburdened colleagues rather than brave the tangled paths ofRiemann's Musik Lexicon. Andrew Hughes has quite rightly rejected this tradition of opacity and has gone a long way towards remedying the situation. Medieval Music, The Sixth Liberal Art is a splendid example of that rarest of tools - a bibliography invaluable both to the expert and the layman, to the musicologist and the medievalist. Much of the success of the book lies in its organization and in Hughes's admission at the outset that an absolute and inflexible ordering of his subject matter is not possible: that an organization essentially intuitive is more likely to be useful to the student of medieval music than any attempt to impose complete order. This intuitive arrangement allows topics to fall in their most likely place rather than in a position dictated by strict adherence to a chronology. Discrepancies and problems of multiple citations are easily solved by a simple system of cross-referencing. The indexing is sufficiently complete that an item can be found by browsing through the appropriate chapter, through the general index under its subject matter, or through the author index if the name is known. The possibility of approaching an entry from any of these routes allows items to be found from only the barest information. Many of the entries are descriptive, and the feeling is inescapable that HUMANITIES 369 Hughes has read most if not all of his 2000 entries. His comments vary from brief summaries to direct criticism, both general and specific and usually very much to the point. Especially useful is the summarization of theories surrounding controversial topics, such as the chart summary of the various theories concerning the origins of Gregorian chant (pp 89--92). Occasionally, as in the discussion of the theories of mensural plainsong (p 83), this involves a certain amount of fence-sitting. The inclusion of reviews of major works is invaluable, though it might well be extended for some entries (Velimirovic's review of no 484, Willi Apel's Gregorian Chant, in JAMS 11,1958, is a case in point). I do not wish to carp about omissions in a bibliography which is extensive without making any claims to being exhaustive, but each reader will find a few works missing he would gladly have included. For example, I regret the omission of Peter Dronke's Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love Lyric (Oxford 1966) from the chapter on the lyric, and, however limited it may be, of Fletcher Collins's The Production of Medieval Church Music-Drama (Charlottesville, Va 1972) from the chapter on the liturgical drama. The cross-indexing occasionally produces minor errors: no 700, Vecchi's Uffici drammatici padovani, should be crossindexed under liturgical drama and the index entry for Friedrich Gennrich should not include no...