This article proposes a methodology for differentiating between scribal hands in square chant notation. Drawing on several Dominican chant books copied in thirteenth-century Paris, the methodology outlined here may also prove a useful starting point for approaching square chant notations from various other origins. Specifically, this approach highlights eight parameters that may be useful for identifying and distinguishing scribal hands in square chant notation, namely, by examining the forms of F-clefs, custodes, liquescent neume shapes, general neume shapes and/or note groupings, C-clefs, accidentals, hairline extensions and the general appearance of the notation. This methodology is used to identify the notators working within the chant books of the Dominican exemplar manuscript Rome, Santa Sabina, XIV L 1, demonstrating the presence of one main notator, an ‘overseer’ or corrector intervening across several parts of the manuscript to supply missing material, and a second corrector or user of the manuscript adding missing material on one folio only. Through such palaeographical study, it was possible to reveal the different roles of the scribes notating this manuscript, to hypothesise about the process by which the liturgical material within the manuscript was compiled and to identify a potential network of notators working in Dominican manuscripts in Paris in the third quarter of the thirteenth century.

Over the past century, scholars have identified examples of liturgical chant belonging to more than one Western liturgical tradition, including Franco-Roman, Old Hispanic, Old Beneventan and Milanese. In a seminal study, Kenneth Levy identified a set of offertories that circulate in the Franco-Roman, Old Hispanic and Milanese traditions, arguing that all existing versions derive from an earlier, Gallican tradition. This article expands the evidence for connections between the Franco-Roman and Old Hispanic traditions, identifying nearly two dozen Franco-Roman responsories that are shared with the Old Hispanic rite and may be of Gallican or Iberian origin. The diversity of their liturgical assignments and circulation patterns suggests that the exchange of repertory took place at different times and through different routes. Many of these responsories are assigned to the later layers of the Roman liturgy. Others were added to the Old Hispanic liturgy between the eighth and tenth centuries.

Just over half of these responsories show enough melodic connections between the Franco-Roman and Old Hispanic versions, in contour and melismatic density, to imply a shared melodic ancestor. Each version, however, uses the formulas associated with its own tradition, indicating that the melodies have been assimilated to the style and formulaic content of the receiving tradition. Despite the resulting melodic differences, we identify certain commonalities between Franco-Roman and Old Hispanic chant, such as text-setting strategies and common cadential contours, that facilitated the exchange of repertory.

It is known that the seventh book of Jacobus's Speculum musicae contains, alongside other quotations from Ars Nova treatises, the earliest extant transmission of the salient passage of Johannes de Muris's Musica speculativa, Conclusio XVIII, where Muris questions the nature of the fourth as a perfect consonance. However, the relevant passages of Musica speculativa cited and discussed by Jacobus have not yet been analysed in the context of the rich manuscript tradition of the Musica speculativa, which served the needs of musical education throughout Latin Europe for at least two hundred years. In order to position Jacobus's citations of Muris within the framework of the Musica speculativa tradition, I examine several significant variant readings contained in Speculum musicae, comparing them to two French, most probably Parisian, manuscripts transmitting versions A (A-SPL Cod. 264/4) and B (BnF lat. 7378A) of Musica speculativa. Both A and B versions are provided with colophons dated 1323 and 1325, respectively. Establishing which version of Musica speculativa was the source of Jacobus's citations provides a new basis for the dating of two other treatises by Muris to which Jacobus refers, namely Notitia artis musicae and Compendium musicae practicae, and, more generally, for the date of the seventh book of Speculum musicae.

This article examines the Tractatus de musica of Jerome of Moray (‘de Moravia’), affirming his Scottish identity, as proposed by Michel Huglo in 1994. It argues that the Tractatus de musica presents an important overview of Parisian music theory in the thirteenth century, relating to both chant and mensurable music in that century, because it combines the views of several generations: the Positio discantus vulgaris, which he says was used ‘among the nations’; the De mensurabili musica of John of Garland, who corrected its deficiencies; and the treatises of Franco of Cologne and Petrus Picardus. It considers Jerome's career in three phases: his exposure to music and music theory in Scotland; his studies in Paris, most likely under John of Garland, perhaps at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame; and his involvement in the liturgical reforms within the Dominican Order, implemented by its Master, Humbert of Romans in 1256. Rather than assigning Franco's Ars cantus mensurabilis to 1280 (as proposed by Wolf Frobenius) and Jerome's Tractatus to sometime after this, I suggest that Jerome was exposed to John of Garland's teaching in the 1240s and that the Franconian system may have started to gain ground in the 1250s. Jerome compiled his Tractatus over a period of time, adding an excerpt about cosmic music from the commentary of Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle's De caelo perhaps as early as 1271 or 1272, in response to the criticisms of John of Garland and his followers being made by Johannes de Grocheio.

The earliest known treatise on Boethian proportions in Middle English is attributed to ‘Chilston’ in London, British Library, Lansdowne 763. Nothing is known of Chilston's biography, although his treatise also survives anonymously in two related sources (New York, Morgan Library, B.12 and Dublin, Trinity College, 516). In 1927, Irish musicologist William Henry Grattan Flood suggested an identification between the author of the proportion treatise and the scribe of British Library, Royal 5 A VI, a priest's handbook dated to 1446. English lexicographer Jeffrey Pulver was quick to dismiss Flood's identification, which apparently discouraged any further assessment of it. This article reconsiders Flood's suggestion, taking into account 1920s political and cultural biases that might explain Pulver's swift rejection. A contextual exploration of the evidence supports the connection of the proportion treatise to Royal 5 A VI and sheds light on the milieu in which Chilston may have worked. Long recognised for his significance in the vernacular history of music theory and music pedagogy, the proposed contextual framework has significant implications for understanding the multiple functions of music theory in fifteenth-century England. Most notably, it documents the use of speculative music theory among readers and audiences with limited knowledge of Latin. A variety of uses for music theory reveal themselves within the emerging vernacular pedagogical practices of late medieval England. These reflect the broader production of technical texts in Middle English and the increased vernacularisation of English society at a pivotal moment of ecclesiastic and musical history.

This article introduces a metrical adaptation to the contrapunctus method of pitch reduction commonly used to analyse Ars Nova counterpoint. Expanding the medieval concept of colouration from the mensural to the metrical, my contrapuncti highlight the flexible toggling between perfect and imperfect groupings at various rhythmic levels in selected motets by Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300–77). The viewpoint advanced here assumes no a priori metrical grid to parse the musical surface, but rather allows the articulation of sonority, cadence and form to reveal a fluid and unique metrical grouping structure for each piece. With metrical emphases shown as inextricable from contrapuntal and harmonic ones, the metrical contrapunctus captures a more comprehensive picture of Machaut's musical language.