QUESTIONING THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY PARIS: JOHANNES DE GROCHEIO AND JEROME DE MORAVIA OP Constant J. Mews Changing the curriculum within any university is always a difficult enterprise. Much has been written about the impact in Paris in the thirteenth century of newly translated scientific works of Aristotle on thinking about such major issues as the eternity of the world. Less attention, however, has been given to the implications of the impact of Aristotelian thought for thinking about music, a discipline that was always considered to be a natural part of mathematica. In this paper, I shall explore the tension between Aristotelian and Boethian perspec- tives on music at the University of Paris in the later thirteenth cen- tury through comparing two, very different treatises: theArs musice of Johannes de Grocheio, active in Paris in the later thirteenth century, and the Tractatus de musica of the Dominican, Jerome (Hierony- mus) de Moravia. Whereas Jerome draws heavily on the authority of Boethius, Grocheio turns to Aristotle to justify an account based on the practice of music in Paris. After introducing these two figures, I shall explore the contrasting ways in which they respond to the authority of both Boethius’s De musica and Aristotle’s De caelo. Grocheio’s only known composition is preserved anonymously sim- ply as an Ars musice in (H) London, British Library, Harley 281, fols. 39–52, a rich anthology of treatises about music, copied in around 1300.1 Copied in a single hand, this volume opens with a collection of 1 The most recent edition of the Ars musice is that of Ernst Rohloff, with valuable facsimile reproduction of the two surviving manuscripts, Die Quellenhandschriften zum Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheio. In Faksimile herausgegeben nebst Übertragung des Textes und Übersetzung in Deutsche, dazu Bericht, Literaturschau, Tabellen und Indices (Leipzig, 1972), henceforward referred to as Rohloff 1972. The work was first edited from the Darmstadt MS by Johannes Wolf, “Die Musiklehre des Johannes de Grocheo,” Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 1 (1899–1900), 69–120; Rohloff studied the work in a Leipzig dissertation of 1925, published asStudien zum Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheo, Media Latinitas Musica 1 (Leipzig, 1930; 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1943), but published the edition as Der Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheo, Media Latinitas Musica 2 (Leipzig, 1943), drawing on both manuscripts. 96 constant j. mews treatises by, or attributed to, Guido of Arezzo, and a Cistercian tonary. Then follow Grocheio’s Ars musice and two treatises on the tones, one by Petrus de Cruce, a secular cleric of Amiens, the second by Guy of Saint-Denis, who may well be responsible for compiling the Harley MS as a whole in around 1300.2 Grocheio is identified by name as its author only in a second (textually inferior) copy, produced in the early four- teenth century and belonging to the Carthusian library of St Barbara, Cologne (D: Darmstadt, Landesbibliothek 2663, fols. 56–69):3 Explicit theoria magistri Johannis de Grocheio, regentis Parisius. (The last two words, indicating that he was a regent master at Paris, were added subsequently by the same hand, Parisius being scarcely legible). No other records have been found that mention him, adding to the air of mystery which surrounds his achievement. Christopher Page has suggested that he came from Gruchy, in Normandy, a supposition strengthened by his occasional reference to forms of song and dance practised in Normandy.4 An English translation was produced by Albert Seay, Concerning music (De musica) (Colorado Springs, 1973). References are given to the Rohloff 1972 edition, and the folio of the Harley manuscript, while Grocheio’s text is cited from an edition and translation forthcoming with TEAMS (Kalamazoo, MI), being prepared by the author with John Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh McKinnon, and Carol Williams (all from Monash University, Australia). I am indebted to these colleagues for illuminating so many points in this paper, in particular to John Crossley, as also to Nancy van Deusen, for discussing this paper. Thanks are also due to the Australian Research Council for funding this project. 2 The Harley manuscript is described by Michel Huglo and Nancy Phillips in The Theory of Music: Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts, eds. Joseph Smits van Waesberghe, Peter Fischer, and Christian Maas, RISM, 6 vols. (Munich, 1961–2003), 4:74–78. The texts attributed to Guido of Arezzo have been extended with a heavily edited version of the De musica sometimes assigned to pseudo-Odo, as well as with further material, assembled by Guy of Saint-Denis; see Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys and Carol Williams, “Guy of Saint-Denis and the Compilation of Texts about Music in London, British Library, Harl. MS. 281,” Electronic British Library Journal (2008), art. 6, pp. 1–34 <http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2008articles/article6.html>. The two treatises on the tones in this manuscript are Petrus de Cruce, Tractatus de tonis, ed. Denis Harbinson, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 29 (Rome, 1976) and Guido von Saint-Denis, Tractatus de tonis, ed. Sieglinde van de Klundert, 2 vols. (Bubenreuth, 1998). Guy speaks favourably about Petrus de Cruce as a great composer at Amiens, Tractatus de tonis 2.1 and 2.8, ed. van de Klundert, pp. 78, 133. 3 The Darmstadt manuscript is described in detail by Richard Bruce Marks,The Medieval Manuscript Library of the Charterhouse of St Barbara at Cologne, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 21–22 (Salzburg, 1974), 2:361–63, more detailed than Michel Huglo and Christian Meyer, The Theory of Music3 (1986), 41–42. 4 Christopher Page, “Johannes de Grocheio on Secular Music: a Corrected Text and a New Translation,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 2 (1993), 17–41, repr. in Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Studies on Texts and Performance (Aldershot, 1997). .