De musica mensurata: the anonymous of St. Emmeram. Complete critical edition, translation, and commentary (review)

Reviews 169 detail to ceremonialrituals,from parental blessings (Bruce Young) to trial by combat in King Lear (Gillian Murray Kendall), rather than, more vaguely, to 'ritual thinking'. Rose's discussion of ceremony in Julius Caesar is the only one to raise an earlier, legitimate concern of ritual studies: theatre as ritual. Writing initially on touching for the king's evil, Deborah Willis develops an argument about 'sacred physic', from Macbeth to Marina in Pericles, which is richly suggestive for bothritualsof royal power and Shakespeare's romances. Ann Blake Department of English La Trobe University Yudkin, Jeremy, ed., De musica mensurata: the anonymous of St. Emmeram. Complete critical edition, translation, and commentary. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990; cloth; pp. xii, 385; 1 plate; R.R.P. US$45.00. The late-thirteenth-century treatise De musica mensurata is presented in the form of a didactic poem of 407 leonine hexameters with interlinear glossed interjections, accompanied by a lengthy commentary. For a formal description of the manuscript see RISM B III 3, 113 where it has the sigla D-Mbs Clm 14523. It is one of the most important musical treatises of the second half of the thirteenth century and is the longest and most comprehensive musical treatise of the Middle Ages to have been written up to its time. The unusual format of the treatise and the inevitable questions surrounding attributable authorship and date and location of redaction pose some specific problems which Jeremy Yudkin tackles with authority and conviction. The scholarly introduction falls into two parts, thefirstof which deals with the literary style of the poem, glosses and commentary, the theoretical content and the dating of the treatise, and its authorship, ambience, and audience. Yudkin describes the scholastic techniques used by the author and explains the philosophical plan of the treatise which defends the authority of Johannes de Garlandia against the novelties of Magister Lambertus. The references to these Parisian masters and musical examples which make precise reference to the Notre D a m e repertory and some Parisian motets satisfactorily support Yudkin's hypothesis of the Parisian origin of the treatise, an issue already addressed in his article, 'The anonymous music treatise of 1279: why St. Emmeram?', ML 72 (1991), 177-96. It is proposed that the whole text (verses, glosses, and commentary) is the work of a single author, though the commentary suggests the work of two different authors. While the author remains anonymous, Yudkin's detective work uncovers the possibility that the author's master seems to have been Henry 170 Reviews Tuebuef, master of the University of Paris and member of the chapter of Notre Dame. The second part of the introduction opens with a consideration of palaeographic and codicological issues and provides a detailed description and history of the manuscript. The date 23 November 1279, encoded into verse in the last three lines of die poem should be considered, according to Yudkin, the date of the redaction of the treatise and not the date of the copy. Though Yudkin has been able to find answers to many of the questions prompted by this manuscript its presence in the abbey of St. Emmeram remains a mystery. An explanation of the editorial method and method of translation concludes the introduction. Yudkin provides a disclaimer and states that: 'editorial principles are partly a matter of fashion'. He follows with praise for the latest fashion for the diplomatic approach in text critical circles, and continues: 'ideally, this edition would have followed this practice in its entirety. Musicology, however, is by no means on the cutting edge of literary or scholarly fashion, and to insist on the nouvelle vague would have in some ways have been counterproductive' (p. 58). He does not directly justify this approach but alludes to the dependance on the classical tradition of imitatio and the importance of building an understanding of the loci paralleli in texts such as these, leaving the reader to assume that he has taken this compromise position in order for the edition to be comparable to other modern editions of simlar texts. His editorial method has conserved the original orthography but normalize s ae for e, ti for ci, i...