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5 - From Trees to Degrees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2018

Karen Desmond
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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Summary

The moderns' art of music, according to Jacobus, is incommensurable with the art of the antiqui. Chapter 5 examines the philosophical background to the conceptualisation of rhythmic duration in the ars nova. I argue that two metaphysical debates of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries illuminate the differences between Des Murs’s systematisation of mensural notation and the ars antiqua system favoured by Jacobus. Additionally, even though neither Des Murs nor Jacobus actually included any illustrative diagrams in their discussions of musica mensurabilis, I argue that a visually based conceptualisation of how musical notes relate to each other informed Des Murs’s new system. Des Murs theorises musical time as a continuum, where note durations vary by degrees along this line of time. For Jacobus, the forms of musical notes that represent duration can only make sense within a traditional tree-like hierarchy, with each species of note distinct in their name, definition, and essence. An analysis of these opposing ontologies reveals some of the reasons behind the irreconcilable differences between Des Murs and Jacobus.
Type
Chapter
Information
Music and the moderni, 1300–1350
The a<I>rs nova </I>in Theory and Practice
, pp. 160 - 197
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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  • From Trees to Degrees
  • Karen Desmond, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Music and the <I>moderni,</I> 1300–1350
  • Online publication: 01 September 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316711545.005
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  • From Trees to Degrees
  • Karen Desmond, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Music and the <I>moderni,</I> 1300–1350
  • Online publication: 01 September 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316711545.005
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • From Trees to Degrees
  • Karen Desmond, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Music and the <I>moderni,</I> 1300–1350
  • Online publication: 01 September 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316711545.005
Available formats
×