Grocheo and The Measurability of Medieval Music: 
A Reply to Hendrik Vanderweif 

]. E. Maddrell 

The pleasure I had in discovering that Dr. Vanderwerf had found my 
article on Mensura (Current Musicology IO: 64-68) worth replying to was some-
what diminished by the realization that he had not recognized its purpose. 
My article clearly reveals that I do not rely on treatises for my information 
on medieval music. The suggestion I made was that a scholar transcribing 
monody might need non-paleographic guidance in evaluating the often 
inconclusive evidence of musical notation. There can be no question of 
relying on "treatises" (in the plural) since Grocheo's is the only work to 
discuss secular monody. Excerpts from other treatises were quoted because 
they had a bearing on my semantic discussion of the term mensura, except 
for my brief citation of Anonymous IV's remarks on the interpretation of 
non-mens ural notation. My conclusion was that, while there is no theoretical 
evidence for "free rhythm," our methods of transcribing monody should 
take full account of the Chansonnier Cange and the later additions to the MS du 
Roi-neither of which, I might add, supports a strictly modal method of 
transcription. The main significance of the article, however, was the proof 
that mensura, for Grocheo and other theorists, did not primarily mean 
quantitative measurement. 

A full discussion of the Chansonnier Cange would, therefore, have been 
hardly appropriate, even ifit could have been contained within the limits ofa 
single article. The fact that the Cange scribe did use longs and breves for 
single notes, however erratically, is not to be explained away by saying that 
he was influenced by motet notation; nor does it argue for "free rhythm," 
although it may imply the use of non-modal fixed rhythms. 

As for the practical value of Grocheo's treatise, it is hardly good scholarship 
to dismiss a source merely because it does not support one's own view. The 
only evidence Dr. Vanderwerf adduces in support of his extraordinary opinion 
that Grocheo is of questionable value as an authority is a paragraph of generali-
zation, vague in expression as in thought ("many treatises," "in many instan-
ces," "such treatises," "learned authors," but not a single concrete instance), 
about a distinction between Musica and music. If by "treatises about Musica" 
Dr. Vanderwerf means philosophical treatises in the Boethian tradition of 
musica speculativa, treatises that were not concerned with practical music, 
then one can only marvel at the eccentricity of a view which would associate 
Grocheo, of all theorists, with the speculative tradition-Grocheo, whose 
avowed intention was to avoid speculative theory and concentrate on the 
music of Paris as performed in his own day! 

Dr. Vanderwerf questions my interpretation of passages from Grocheo 
dealing with the instrumental ductia and the cantus coronatus. I cited the former 

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because it is by nature a form in fixed rhythm, yet Grocheo included it with 
monodic song as "music not precisely measured"; the conclusion is either 
that Grocheo was a half-wit or that mensuratam has a meaning distinct from 
the modern sense of quantitative measurement. The passage about the cantus 
coronatus is hardly so obscure as Dr. Vanderwerf claims. The "crowning" 
can refer only to accompaniment or to ornamentation of the melody; I now 
think ornamentation by the singer to be more likely. In any case, it cannot 
mean "crowned in a contest," since it would be the singer, not the song, that 
was crowned. 

I am surprised that Dr. Vanderwerf should believe that Anonymous IV 
was referring to polyphony in free rhythm in the passage quoted at the end 
of my article. Anonymous IV in this section of his treatise is preoccupied 
with methods of reading ligatures and single notes, and it is obvious from 
the context, to say nothing of his use of such mens ural terms as "cum pro-
prietate" and "cum perfectione," that he has regular rhythms in mind. 
Besides, any system which deduced rhythm from the ligatures must have had 
fixed rhythms. I am equally surprised that Dr. Vanderwerf should feel that 
if all the trouvere songs were sung in fixed rhythm, some theorist "would have 
amply described it." I regard this as an argumentum ex silentio, one of the 
classic errors in logic. 

Perhaps Dr. Vanderwerf will publish the evidence on which he bases his 
view that in an ideal performance of a song the text would have "the un-
divided attention of performer and listener alike," whereas the melody would 
be only "simple and unobtrusive." Ideal from what point of view? And is 
one justified in assuming that medieval taste in the relation of text to music 
was that of any other period-the 16th century, for example, or the 19th? 

Happily, I can welcome at least the spirit of Dr. Vanderwerf's closing 
remarks on the importance of ethnological evidence, which has thus far not 
received sufficient attention. The real question, after all, is not which kind 
of evidence-paleographic, theoretical, ethnological-should carry the 
most weight, but how one can best use all three kinds together. 

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