John Dunstaple Reading Boethius

John Dunstaple’s Annotations to Boethius’s “De institutione musica” in the Manuscript Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 118

Elzbieta Witkowska-Zaremba (ed)

Pages: approx. 250 p.
Size:178 x 254 mm
Illustrations:66 b/w, 12 tables b/w.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2026

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ISBN: 978-2-503-62488-4
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The edition introduces the reader in the world of music theory developed by Boethius, the most influential theorist of Latin Europe, as explained by John Dunstaple, the foremost English composer of the Late Middle Ages.

Subject(s)

BIO

Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba is a professor at the Department of Musicology at the Polish Academy of Sciences Institute of Art. Her main area of research is history of music and music theory focused on Latin texts of the late Middle Ages and early modern era, and the reception of the ancient writings on music up to 1600.

Summary

European theory of music up to ca.1550, in many respects, presents a history of the reception of Boethius’s treatise De institutione musica (before 510). The annotations introduced to this treatise by John Dunstaple (d. 1453), eminent composer of the late Middle Ages, add to our knowledge of the English chapter of this history.

The first part o the volume includes the edition of Dunstaple’s annotations paralleled with relevant parts of Boethius text and provided with the introduction comprising a detailed information on manuscript Oxford, Corpus Christi College 118 and the study of Dunstaple’s hand. In the second part of the book, the selected glosses which have the strongest interpretive potential are translated and examined in a large context of music theory of Middle Ages. They present Dunstaple as a careful and competent reader of Boethius’s arguments and a composer well-read in music theory current in his time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Edition of Dunstaple’s annotations to Boethius’s De institutione musica in Occ.118

Commentary on the selected glosses, additions and diagrams

Chapter 1. Book I
(1) General remarks
(2) ‘Republica, a certain book of Plato’. Mus. I, 1.
(3) ‘Musica bene morata’. Mus. I, 1.
(4) Spartan Decree. Mus. I, 1.
(5) Diagram of the fundamental consonances. Mus. I, 10.
(6) Descriptions of consonances. Mus. I, 16.
(7) Diagram of the diatessaron and the ratio of the minor semitone. Mus. I, 17.
(8) Diagram of the tone as the difference between the diatessaron and diapente. Mus. I, 18.
(9) Diagram of the diapason as interval composed of five tones and two semitones. Mus. I, 19.
(10)‘Those who make art artifices should be named’. Mus. I, 34.

Chapter 2. Books II and III
(1) General remarks
(2) The order and positions of the consonances. Mus. II, 19-20.
(3) Division of the tone. Mus. III, 1.
(4) Arithmetical calculations with the use of minutiae. Mus. III, 3-4.
(5) Diagram of the division of the tone according to Philolaus. Mus. III, 5.
(6) ‘Unity is not a number’. Mus. III, 11.

Chapter 3. Books IV and V
(1) General remarks
(2) Calculating continuous sesquioctave ratios. Mus. IV, 2.
(3) ‘Extenta, id est relaxata’. Mus. IV, 3.
(4) ‘Dicciones, id est nomina cordarum’. Mus, IV, 3
(5) Diagrams of the eight modes. Mus. IV, 15-16.
(6) Division of the monochord. Mus. IV, 18.
(7) Divisions of genus diatonicum according to Martianus Capella. Mus. V, 18

Conclusions

Bibliography
General Index