Dolores Pesce, ed. and trans. Guido d'Arezzo's Regule rithmice, Prologus in antiphonarium, and Epistola ad Michahelem: A Critical Text and Translation, with an Introduction, Annotations, Indices, and New Manuscript Inventories. Musicological Studies 73. Ottawa: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1999. ISBN 1 896926 18 5

• Published in: Plainsong & medieval music 2001, Vol.10 (2), p.185-199
• Main Author: ILNITCHI, GABRIELA
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Catholicism; Essays; Investigations; Melody; Musicology; Scholars; Translation; Translations
• ISSN: 0961-1371; 1474-0087
• DOI: 10.1017/S0961137101220129

New limitations placed on sacred singing in the later seventh and early eighth centuries restricted the Roman singers choice of texts and musical strategies, but without creating a need for delity in musical transmission. [...]when John the Deacon criticized the crudeness of Frankish singers, he was not reacting to their inability to sing Roman chant note for note, but their failure to comprehend the Roman musical idiom, a formulaic mode of performance, neither self-conscious nor contrived, indigenous to Rome but foreign to the Franks. [...]they came to regard Roman chant as a collection of individual pieces. [...]even as the Gregorian repertory was taking shape in the oral environment the Franks were inclined to judge each performance of a given chant against standards of correctness based on local tastes, habits and abilities. [...]in Karps view the specic interrelationships among Gregorian chants can be no older than the Carolingian adaptation of the Roman cursus, although admittedly these connections ultimately derive from procedures for chanting the psalms that spread from Rome to the hinterlands in the seventh 7 Cf. The reader should beware, however, that this section, besides using a somewhat awkward format, is replete with typographical errors and spelling inconsistencies (e.g., Pythagorus instead of Pythagoras on pp. 209 and 210, Pergau instead of Pegau on pp. 105 and 249). [...]some conspicuous distortions of titles of works that are not part of the music-theoretical literature are particularly bothersome, such as Rhetoricorum ad Herennium and De inventione rhetorica (p. 207) and De arte poetica (p. 191) instead of Rhetorica ad Herennium, De inventione and Ars poetica.