university music curriculum to supplement the venerable treatise of Boethius. (The other one was called
De plana musica, “On plainchant.”) Its method of organization and instruction vividly exemplifies the
approach known as “scholasticism” (because it was practiced by scholastici, “schoolmen”). This
approach was thought of as descending not from Plato, the “idea man,” but from Aristotle, the great
observer of things as they are. It purported to be empirical (that is, based on observation) and descriptive
rather than speculative.
The first task in any scholastic description was analysis and classification, and the establishment of
clear conceptual relations between larger divisions (genera) and smaller divisions (species), proceeding,
as we still say, from the “general” to the “specific.” Thus Johannes begins by dividing the consonances (a
genus) into three classes (species): perfect (prime and octave), intermediate (fourth and fifth), and
imperfect (thirds). He also makes a tripartite division of dissonances, with the “perfect” ones being the
most dissonant, etc. He then proceeds to a similarly tripartite division of measured music into three
species: organum, copula, and discant. And finally, he divides discant into six, or twice-three, “manners”
(maneries) or rhythmic modes.
Garlandia’s classification was extremely influential in its time, as we can tell by how many other
theorists copied it. And it has been equally influential in our time, as we can tell by the way modern
musicology has adopted the Garlandian classification scheme and terminology. Our own discussion has
accepted Garlandia’s classification of polyphonic genres, including the somewhat slippery category of
copula “between discant and organum,” as Garlandia defined it long after the fact. Up to now, however,
we have avoided the classic and ubiquitous Garlandian classification of the rhythmic modes.
The reason is that, like many scholastic classification schemes, Garlandia’s discussion of the rhythmic
modes is not really descriptive—not entirely, at any rate. Its descriptive content has clearly been
supplemented by a notional component so that the resulting system will satisfy a priori (that is,
preconceived) standards of completeness and, above all, of symmetry.
Garlandia’s idea of completeness was evidently formed not on the basis of observed contemporary
musical practice but on a list of meters taken over from another authoritative scholastic classification, a
grammar textbook called Doctrinale (“Book of teachings”), written more than a generation earlier (in
1199) by another famous schoolman, Alexandre de Villedieu (or Villa-Dei). In this textbook, six classical
poetic meters are defined in terms of long and short syllables, which are defined in exactly the same terms
employed by contemporary musicians when speaking of note values. Villedieu even refers to singing the
syllables, perhaps (though not necessarily) in recognition of the analogous musical meters of Notre Dame
polyphony: “the syllable which is short holds one beat (tempus) in which it is sung; you must double that
length for the long.”^7 In terms of our accustomed symbols for longs (L) and breves (B), Villedieu’s
enumeration is as follows: dactyl (LBB), spondee (LL), trochee (LB), anapest (BBL), iamb (BL), and
tribrach (BBB).
Garlandia took this list over directly and asserted that there were six rhythmic modes in use in Notre
Dame polyphony. Then he went Villedieu one better by arranging the modes in three symmetrical pairs.
Modes 1 and 2, according to Garlandia, were the trochee (LB) and its reverse, the iamb (BL). Modes 3
and 4 were the dactyl (LBB) and its reverse, the anapest (BBL). Modes 5 and 6 were the spondee (LL),
confined to longs, and its conceptual opposite the tribrach (BBB), confined to breves.
At least one of these modes, the fourth, was pure fiction, included in deference to authority and for the
sake of a symmetry that would justify the inclusion of the dactyl. There is not a single practical source that
contains music in Garlandia’s fourth mode. It exists only in his didactic example of it, and the ones
contrived by subsequent theorists on the basis of his authority. And yet in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries—and again in the nineteenth and twentieth—countless students have memorized its pattern and
its notation. (The latter is easy enough to guess, being the exact reverse of the dactyl or third mode: a