Didactic images in a thirteenth-century French music theory treatise: theScientia artis musiceof Hélie Salomon

Abstract

The Scientia artis musice, a music theory treatise completed in the year 1274 by Hélie Salomon, a cleric from the village of St-Astier (Périgord/Dordogne), covers all the usual topics treated in such sources: letter names, hexachord syllables, the claves (letter + syllable(s)), the musical hand, mutation, staff notation, clef placement and chant genres. It includes an incomplete tonary with representative chant genres together with a commentary on the seculorum (differentiae) appropriate to various chant incipits. A lengthy instruction on the performance of parallel four-voice organum is also included. The Scientia is the only medieval theory treatise whose eight illustrations (called ‘figurae’) include human figures. These images relate directly to matters covered in the treatise and serve to make its main points more easily committed to memory. Of especial interest is the image of an enthroned bishop that serves as the focal point for a novel exposition of the tonal system of chant as (1) a set of logical relations modelled after the Tree of Porphyry and (2) a variant of the tree of consanguinity. Since the sole surviving copy of the treatise is the original, all these details must reflect the author's intention.