Burgundian chansons by Binchois, Morton, and others. The most prominent French
music theorist of his generation, Tinctoris was the author of at least a dozen treatises,
covering virtually every aspect of late 15th-century music: notation (Proportionale
musices and others), compositional procedure (Liber de arte contrapuncti), practical
matters of solmization and performance (Expositio manus and De inventione et usu
musicae), and the aesthetics and uses of music (Complexus effectuum musices). His
Terminorum musicae diffinitorium, one of two treatises published during Tinctoris’s
lifetime, is the earliest printed dictionary of musical terms. Respected by his
contemporaries as a humanist and as an authority on music, Tinctoris is also recognized
by modern scholars as the single most important witness to later 15th-century musical
thought.
J.Michael Allsen
[See also: BINCHOIS, GILLES; DUFAY, GUILLAUME; MUSIC THEORY]
Tinctoris, Johannes. Opera omnia, ed. William Melin. N.p.: American Institute of Musicology,
1976.
——. Opera theoretica, ed. Albert Seay. 3 vols. N.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1975–78.
Woodley, Ronald. “Iohannes Tinctoris: A Review of the Documentary Biographical Evidence.”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 34(1981):217–48.
TONGRES
. Founded by members of Julius Caesar’s army in 57 B.C. as Atuatuca-Tungrorum,
Tongres (Limburg) is with Tournai one of the oldest settlements in modern-day Belgium.
An important fortified city at the crossing of the Roman roads from Bavay to Cologne
and from Arlon to Nijmegen, it was largely overrun by the Franks and Vi-kings between
the late 3rd and 6th centuries and declined under the Merovingians. Gradually, under the
protection of Liège, it regained some momentum between the 9th and 13th centuries,
when it built new city walls.
The Gothic collegial church of Notre-Dame, on a cultic site that goes back at least to
the 4th century A.D., was begun in 1240 and completed 300 years later. On a basilical
plan, Notre-Dame has three naves of six bays, crossed by a transept, but without an
ambulatory. The choir, transept, and eastern parts of the nave, all with three levels, date
from the 13th century; the apse was added in the 14th, side aisles and chapels in the 15th,
and the massive western tower between 1442 and 1541.
The treasury is the richest in Belgium, remarkable for the age, variety, number, and
splendor of its objects. Notable are a Merovingian enamelwork buckle; a 9th-century
ivory book cover; a triptych of the Holy Virgin (ca. 1380); important reliquaries; fourteen
silver statuettes from the 14th-16th centuries; and a fine collection of ecclesiastical
vestments.
William W.Kibler
Paquay, Jean. Monographie illustrée de la collégiale de Tongres. Tongres, 1911.
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