Classical Metrics and Medieval Music

CLASSICAL METRICS AND MEDIEVAL MUSIC Albert Seay Albert Seay (BA. and B.M., Murray College; MM., Louisiana State University ; Ph.D., Yale University) is presently professor of music and chairman of the Music Department at Colorado College. His publications include critical editions of composers and Latin treatises for the American Institute of Musicology. His book, Music in the Medieval World, was published in 1965 by Prentice Hall. Scholars of literature have long explored the implications of Vergil, Horace, and Ovid, together with many other Latin writers of following times, upon Medieval and Renaissance writers, considering the relationships from almost all angles. That our Roman poets were potent sources of inspiration goes without saying; questions of metrics, of imagery, of subject matter, of language, of structure were long decided upon the basis of reference back to Latin origins. As a part of an educated man's intellectual baggage, a thorough knowledge of Latin as a language (dead or not) provided a powerful source of inspiration continuously for centuries thereafter; only in the last half-century or so has this influence waned to such an extent that we can no longer expect our students to recognize automatically what is one of the great foundations in our literary and artistic history. However, it is difficult for many historians of literature to recognize that the fertilizing power of classic literary procedures and the teaching thereof had an equally strong role in the development of its sister arts and, in particular, music. The understanding of the extremely close relations between poetry and music during most of our past cultural history is not a completely closed book to many students of literature, but it does seem at times, to those of us who are students of the history of musical style and development, not sufficiently considered in its implications by those in the other humanistic disciplines. At any rate, it is my hope to touch upon the impact of the Latin poets and their system of metrics upon certain areas of the history of music, in particular the importance of their attitudes and procedures in the development of musical notation and in musical composition. It is this intimate connection between language, poetry, and music found in the classic past that made it possible for certain crucial advances to be made in music in its earlier history in Western civilization, advances upon which rest most of our musical practices since then. Let me begin with a few bits of background that hold within themselves clues to what musicians were to single out as of import. The first is the emphasis upon oratory that is such a strong characteristic of Roman education. The road to success in Rome in the years before the full impact of the Empire lay in the law and the ability to speak well before the Senate. 60RMMLA BulletinJune 1969 (One might remark that things have not changed too much at the present time.) This stress upon speaking well was a strong one and an oratorical talent was much to be treasured. Some idea of the high esteem of a brilliant speaker is reflected in the magnificent essay of Cicero, "De Oratore." In this work Cicero discusses many aspects of the orator's art, the profits to be gained by doing it well, the type of influences wielded by great speakers in the past, and the importance of the orator in the life of the state. One of the most interesting of these points is that found in Book III, Section 60, where Cicero talks of what the orator needs beyond those words with which he hopes to sway his audience. There are gestures, to be sure, as well as clear and meaningful enunciation of the words as standard procedures; but, which is more important to our subject, there is the use of various tones of voice and certain kinds of rhythmic phrasings. Evidently, this gives the orator something of the problems and techniques of the musician, for music too works with both these items, labelling them, however, melody and rhythm. That the affinity of the two arts is a close one is further made clear by Cicero's repetition of the anecdote about...