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MUSICA ENCHIRIADIS
. An anonymous treatise written in northern France in the second half of the 9th century,
Musica enchiriadis was one of the most widely read and influential treatises before the
Dialogus in musica (Pseudo-Odo) and Guido’s Micrologus. The work is preserved in
over forty manuscripts. Two further treatises, Scolica enchiriadis and Commemoratio
brevis de psalmis et tonis modulandis, are so closely associated with Musica enchiriadis
in their theory and in the manuscript tradition that they should be considered essentially
one with it. While several names have been associated with the text in various branches
of the manuscript tradition, none can be conclusively identified as the author of any of
these treatises.
A tonal system built around disjunct tetrachords with semitone in the central position
(T-S-T) lies at the core of the musical theory of Musica enchiriadis. The system thus
repeated itself at the interval of a fifth rather than the octave of the traditional, Boethian
system handed down from Greek antiquity. The terminology of the system relates
directly to musical practice in both the names of notes (protus, deuterus, tritus, and
tetrardus) and the names of the tetrachords (graves, finales, superiores, excellentes). A
primitive musical notation, dasia notation, using transformations of the Greek prosodia
daseia sign was used in musical examples within these theoretical texts. Although the
notation never seems to have been used extensively in practical sources, dasia notation
represents one of the earliest forms of interval-specific notation.
Musica enchiriadis and its related texts provide some of the earliest and most
extensive witnesses of polyphonic singing in the West, and the text offers clear
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