The footnote quarrels of the modal theory: A remarkable episode in the reception of medieval music

Early Music History

Volumn 20, Issue , 2001, Pages 87-120

  Haines, John ^a  

^a Shorter College

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EID: 61449518136     PISSN: 02611279     EISSN: 14740559     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0261127901001024     Document Type: Review

References (99)

1. A. Machabey, La musicologie, 2nd edn (Que Sais-Je, 978; Paris, 1969), pp. 120-1: 'Il a une propension à tenir ses conclusions pour des acquisitions personnelles intouchables et son attachement à une illusoire priorité peut le conduire jusqu'au tragique et au ridicule.'
2. Ernest Sanders, cited at the end of the above paragraph, stated that Aubry had 'actually died of a wound he received in training for his duel with Jean Beck' (Sanders, 'Conductus and Modal Rhythm', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), pp. 439-69, at p. 468, n. 105)
3. On further rumours surrounding Aubry's death, see J. Haines, 'The "Modal Theory", Fencing, and the Death of Pierre Aubry', Journal of Plainsong and Medieval Music, 6 (1997), pp. 143-50, at p. 143
4. See also J. Chailley, 'Quel est l'auteur de la "théorie modale" dite de Beck-Aubry?', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 10 (1953), pp. 213-22
5. F. Gennrich, 'Wer ist der Initiator der "Modaltheorie"?' in Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés (Barcelona, 1958-61), i, pp. 315-30
6. The work of Hans Robert Jauss is especially associated with the study of reception; see his 'Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory' in his Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis, 1982), pp. 3-45
7. For the reception of medieval music, see: R. Lug, 'Zwischen objektiver Historizität, oraler Authentizität und postmoderner Komposition', Studia musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 31 (1989), pp. 45-55
8. id., 'Minne, Medien, Mündlichkeit: Mittelalter-Musik und ihre Wissenschaft im CD-Zeitalter', Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 90/91 (1993), pp. 71-87
9. id., 'Minnesang: Zwischen Markt und Museum', in W. Gratzer and H. Möller (eds), Übersetzte Zeit: Das Mittelalter und die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Hofheim, forthcoming)
10. K. Bergeron, Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998)
11. A. M. Busse Berger, 'Friedrich Ludwig, Jacques Handschin and the Agenda of Medieval Musicology', in A. M. Busse Berger et al. (eds), Perspektiven auf die Musik vor 1600: Beiträge vom Symposium Neustift/Novacella 1998 (Hildesheim, forthcoming)
12. E. Aubrey, 'Medieval Melodies in the Hands of Bibliophiles of the Ancien Régime', in B. Haggh (ed.), Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman (Paris, 2001)
13. D. Leech-Wilkinson, 'Yearning for the Sound of Medieval Music', in A. Kreutziger-Herr and D. Redepenning (eds), Mittelaltersehnsucht?: Texte des interdisziplinären Symposions zur musikalischen Mittelalterrezeption an der Universität Heidelberg, April 1998 (Kiel, 2000), pp. 295-317
14. and id., Hearing Medieval Music (forthcoming)
15. H. Riemann, 'Die Melodik der deutschen Minnesänger', Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 28 (1896), pp. 1-2, and (1897), pp. 17-18, 33-4, 45-6, 61-2 and supplement
16. 'Die Melodik der Minnesänger', Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 28 (1897), pp. 389-90, 401-2, 413-14, 425-6, 437-8, 449-50, 465-6, 481-3, 497-8, 513-14
17. 'Die Rhythmik der geistlichen und weltlichen Lieder des Mittelalters', Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 31 (1900), pp. 285-6, 309-10, 321-2, 333-4, 345-7, 429-30, 441-2
18. 'Die Melodik der Minnesinger', Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 33 (1902), pp. 429-30, 441-4, 457-8, 469-71
19. The books reviewed by Riemann were, in order, P. Runge, Die Sangesweisen der Colmarer Handschrift und die Liederhandschrift Donaueschingen (Leipzig, 1896)
20. F. A. Mayer and H. Rietsch, Die Mondsee-Wiener Liederhandschrift und der Monch von Salzburg (Berlin, 1896)
21. P. Meyer and G. Raynaud, Le chansonnier Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Bibl. Nat. fr. 20050): Reproduction phototypique avec transcription (Paris, 1892), i
22. E. Bernoulli, Die Choralnotenschrift bei Hymnen und Sequenzen (Leipzig, 1898)
23. P. Runge, H. Schneegans and H. Pfannenschmid, Die Lieder und Melodien der Geissler des Jahres 1349 nach der Aufzeichnung Hugo's von Reutlingen (Leipzig, 1900)
24. and G. Holz, F. Saran and E. Bernoulli, Die Jenaer Liederhandschrift, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1901)
25. Riemann's ideas developed out of his more general theories of musical rhythm as enunciated in his Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik: Lehrbuch der musikalischen Phrasirung auf Grund einer Revision der Lehre von der musikalischen Metrik und Rhythmik (Hamburg, 1884), ch. 1. The Chailley-Gennrich dispute was rooted in Franco-German musicological relations, whose history can be traced back to the rise of Musikwissenschaft and the work of such scholars as Hugo Riemann in the second half of the nineteenth century. Riemann's unprecedented musicological work emblematised Germany's academic prestige and exposed the deficiencies of French research. Since the founding of the new Berlin university in 1810, German scholarship had risen to mighty heights while the flagging French university system looked on. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, ending with its loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, only compounded the already low Gallic academic self-esteem. At the end of the century, the historian Ferdinand Lot deplored 'the lack of a true system of higher education' in France, declaring that 'the secret of Germany's scientific hegemony ... is in the organisation of its universities' (L'enseignement supérieur en France: Ce qu'il est - ce qu'il devrait être (Paris, 1892), pp. 6 and 9). The musicologist Jules Combarieu, reminiscing on his exchange year at the University of Berlin where he had studied with Philip Spitta in the 1880s, further lamented the lack of music programmes in French universities and the general poverty of advanced music historical studies ('Cours d'histoire générale de la musique', Revue musicale, 5 (1905), pp. 3-6)
26. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the French academy deeply felt the need to revise its classroom approach and research methodology in order to keep up with its German neighbour (W. Keylor, Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French Historical Profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), ch. 4)
27. Quotation from E. Sievers, Altgermanische Metrik (Halle, 1893), p. 3
28. See K. Lachmann, 'Über althochdeutsche Betonung und Verskunst' (1831) and 'Über das Hildebrandslied' (1833) in id., Kleinere Schriften zur deutschen Philologie, ed. K. Müllenhoff (Berlin, 1876), i, pp. 358-448
29. H. Möller, Zur althochdeutschen Allitterationspoesie (Kiel and Leipzig, 1888), p. 110. France's academic lag was especially manifest in certain research areas, most notably in the field of medieval literature. By contrast to the flourishing study of medieval metre in Germany, little had been written by French authors on this aspect of their heritage. In his 1900 survey of French metric studies, Franz Saran could claim that 'French nationalistic studies on prosody have not paid attention to the problem of poetic rhythm' ('Die nationale, französische Verslehre hatte das Problem vom Rhythmus des Verses nicht beachtet'
30. Saran, Der Rhythmus des französischen Verses (Halle, 1904), pp. 187-9)
31. It was thanks instead to German scholars such as Friedrich Diez, who had suggested the presence of regular accentual patterns in Old French and Old Occitan, that metric studies of French medieval literature had begun (Diez, Altromanische Sprachdenkmale (Bonn, 1846), pp. 75-132)
32. First transcription, Riemann, 'Die Melodik', 28 (1897), p. 1 of appendix to pp. 61-2; second transcription, ibid., p. 466, Diez citation, 450. Riemann was playing into the French musicological insecurity expressed by Saran, Combarieu and Lot. The only French work Riemann could find to review, Paul Meyer and Gaston Raynaud's Chansonnier Saint-Germain, was an already dated facsimile edition which Riemann presented as typical of French scholarship. Readers of the Musikalisches Wochenblatt had only recently read his critique of two German scholarly works for comparison, and it was not in France's favour. Paul Runge and Heinrich Rietsch's editions featured weighty introductions and complete transcriptions of the manuscripts under study, whereas Meyer and Raynaud's facsimile edition opened to a paltry two-page introduction in which the editors promised a volume of transcriptions sometime in the near future - as it turns out, it never appeared. Riemann launched into a brief history of French scholarship on medieval monophony, referring at one point to the 'chaos of the scholarly literature in foreign areas' ('Chaos der Litteratur fremder Gebiete'; 'Die Melodik' (1897), p. 449)
33. C.-E.-H. de Coussemaker's Œuvres complètes du trouvère Adam de la Halle (Paris, 1872)
34. F.-L. Perne's edition in Francisque Michel's Chansons du Châtelain de Coucy, suivies de l'ancienne musique, mise en notation moderne, avec accompagnement de piano, par M. Perne (Paris, 1830)
35. By contrast, he lionised German scholarship in this area as scientifically rigorous and innovative. He recalled its lineage, beginning with F. H. von der Hagen's four-volume work Minnesinger: Deutsche Liederdichter des zwölften, dreizehnten und vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, aus allen bekannten Handschriften und früheren Drucken gesammelt und berichtigt, mit den Lesarten derselben, Geschichte des Lebens der Dichter und ihrer Werke, Sangweisen der Lieder, Reimverzeichnis der Anfange, und Abbildungen sämmtlicher Handschriften (Leipzig, 1838-61), and culminating with recent publications he had reviewed. It was thanks to German work, both musicological and literary, that French medieval melodies could now be transcribed correctly according to 'principles of a rhythmic reading of melodies based on the metre of the text' ('Principien der rhythmischen Lesung der Melodien auf Grund der metrischen Beschaffenheit der Texte'; (1902), p. 429), that is to say, Riemann's own new principle of Vierhebigkeit
36. P. Aubry, Les plus anciens monuments de la musique française (Mélanges de musicologie critique, 4; Paris, 1905); the pastourelle is found on pp. 11-13. Riemann's castigation of French scholarship had provoked the ire of Pierre Aubry, who was the first to develop the application of Franconian notation and the rhythmic modes of antiquity to trouvère melodies in his 1898 École des Chartes thesis entitled 'La philologie musicale des trouvères' (Positions de thèses soutenues à l'École nationale des chartes (1898), pp. 5-13; my thanks to Marie-Christine Moine of the Centre historique des Archives nationales for her assistance). He had continued to develop this idea in several articles published between 1900 and 1904 (cited in Haines, '"Modal Theory"', p. 144, n. 8). Aubry's work was in part motivated by a passionate patriotism born of the Franco-Prussian conflict
37. In a series of lectures given at the Institut Catholique in Paris, Aubry defended the enduring contribution of French musical scholars, founders of the modern scientific discipline he now christened musicologie. These lectures were published in the first of a series introduced by Aubry, 'Mélanges de musicologie critique'. His French musicological genealogy went back to Pierre-Benoît de Jumilhac (1611-82), whereas Riemann's lineage had begun only in the first half of the nineteenth century (Aubry, La musicologie médiévale: histoires et méthodes. Cours professé à l'Institut Catholique de Paris 1898-1899 (Mélanges de musicologie critique, 1; Paris, 1900)
38. e siècle by A. Jeanroy, L. Brandin and P. Aubry, in Revue musicale, 3 (1903), pp. 508-11, at p. 509). Aubry's patriotic defence against Riemann's accusations generated Les plus anciens monuments, the fourth in his 'Mélanges de musicologie critique' series
39. Les plus anciens monuments was intended to be for secular monophony what the Benedictine scholar-monks of Solesmes's Paléographie musicale had been to plainchant. Jules Combarieu later wrote that Aubry had borrowed the outward form of the Solesmes publications, 'having taken their method and even a little of their spirit' ('après leur avoir pris leur méthode même et un peu de leur esprit'; 'Discours sur Pierre Aubry', Revue musicale, 10 (1910), pp. 485-7, at p. 486)
40. In the Paléographie musicale, the Solesmes scholars had created what one writer considered one of France's 'most powerful scientific monuments' (N. Rousseau, L'école grégorienne de Solesmes, 1833-1910 (Rome and Tournai, 1910), p. 23, n. 3). Les plus anciens monuments began with a lengthy overview which included a discussion of rhythmic interpretation, the bulk of the volume containing representative photographic plates spanning four hundred years of musical notation. In these respects, it imitated the second and third volumes of the Paléographie musicale which had appeared only about a decade earlier, Le Répons-graduel Justus ut Palma, parts 1 and 2 (Solesmes, 1891-2). Aubry had thus brought secular medieval monophony into the orbit of the new French science of musical palaeography. Like Aubry's work, the Paléographie musicale had also been a response to German scholarship, namely the 1877 Graduale Romanum Ratisbon edition (see Bergeron, Decadent Enchantments, ch. 2). When Solesmes scholar Paul Cagin recalled 'a German doctor of music' leaving the Solesmes premises as he disconsolately muttered that 'it was impossible ... to prevent their (i.e., the Solesmes school) being everywhere and always ahead', it was primarily to gloat over France's hard-sought musicological victory over Germany in the field of plainchant (translated in Bergeron, Decadent, p. 86)
41. The first segment of Riemann's lengthy review appeared less than a year after Les plus anciens monuments was published ('Die Melodik der Minnesänger', Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 36 (1905), pp. 761-3, 777-9, 797-800, 817-20, 837-9, 857-9, 879-80; musical example from p. 879). The German scholar began by calling Aubry a 'fanatical advocate of the mensural interpretation' ('fanatischer Vertreter der mensuralen Deutung', p. 761), a distinctively French interpretation since, as Riemann had earlier stated, it had originated with Perne and Coussemaker. Then, one facsimile at a time, the Leipzig doctor dismantled Aubry's work. He failed the editor for poor knowledge of Franconian theory (e.g., p. 762); he blamed him for transcribing incorrectly (e.g., p. 837) and for not transcribing when needed (e.g., p. 799). He even mimicked an Aubry transcription in one instance (p. 820). Aubry's work was unreliable and therefore could not be considered a scientific method (p. 837). His 'little study' hopefully would be followed by more thorough publications, Riemann concluded (p. 880). These denunciations were supplemented with attacks of a more vindictive nature embedded throughout the text. In one paragraph especially (pp. 837-8), Riemann responded with livid sarcasm to Aubry's earlier passing accusation: Now, I graciously acknowledge the state of my insufficient knowledge which, understandably and unfortunately, is limited to sources available to me, namely those published in print or various examples which I happen to discover. But I note from Aubry's latest publication that the 'embarrassment of riches', on which source he sits, does not necessarily enable one to see more clearly, but apparently only confuses that much more. I maintain once again that Mr Aubry, surely without intending it, has transmitted to me in the work at hand abundant material both for a thorough examination of his competence in the undecided question and also for the completion of my defective knowledge. (Nun, ich quittiere höflichst dankend über die Konstatierung meiner mangelhaften Kenntnisse, die sich allerdings leider auf die mir erreichbaren, d. h. durch Druck veröffentlichen oder mir anderweit zufällig vermittelten Belege beschränken. Ich ersehe aber aus Aubry's neuester Publikation, dass der embarras de richesse dessen, der an der Quelle sitzt, keineswegs unbedingt schärfer sehen macht, sondern augenscheinlich nur um so mehr verwirrt. Aber ich bestätige nochmals, dass Herr Aubry, ganz gewiss ohne es zu wollen, mir in dem vorliegenden Werk ein reiches Material zur gründlichen Untersuchung seiner Kompetenz in der schwebenden Frage und zugleich zur Vervollständigung meiner lückenhaften Kenntnisse geliefert hat.) To these witty attacks Riemann added images of war. Aubry foolishly believed he could 'forge a weapon against my rhythmic theory' ('eine Waffe gegen meine rhythmische Theorie zu schmieden', p. 818); elsewhere, he had inadvertently supplied the German scholar with 'the means finally to destroy his opposition to my theory of monophonic notation' ('das Mittel ... seinen Widerstand gegen meine Deutung der Choralnotierungen endgültig zu brechen', p. 799). The Franco-Prussian conflict was evidently close at memory's hand
42. On the Madrid codex: P. Aubry, 'Iter Hispanicum: notices et extraits de manuscrits de musique ancienne conservés dans les bibliothèques d'Espagne', Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 8 (1907), pp. 337-55 (citation p. 353); this was later published along with the remaining articles in this series as a book with the same title (Paris, 1908)
43. On the Fauvel codex: Aubry, 'Un "explicit" en musique du roman de Fauvel', Le Mercure musical, 2 (1906), pp. 118-26, published separately that same year as a book (Paris, 1906)
44. Aubry, Le Roman de Fauvel: reproduction photographique du manuscrit français 146 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (Paris, 1907)
45. e siècle (Paris, 1907)
46. e siècle d'après le manuscrit de Montpellier (Bibliothèque Universitaire, H. 196)', La Tribune de Saint-Gervais, 13 (1907), pp. 145-51, 169-79, published separately that year as a book (Paris, 1907)
47. The first in the footnote quarrels of the modal theory was prompted by a development in tandem with but separate from the Riemann-Aubry exchange. The more plainly vindictive aspects of their debate, until now latent in the text of the printed page, began to surface in a private epistolary dialogue between Aubry and Friedrich Ludwig, and would soon emerge full-fledged in the space just below the printed page. On 30 April 1906, Aubry wrote to Friedrich Ludwig correcting the German scholar's statements about manuscript Madrid Hh 167, which Ludwig had described in an earlier article without directly consulting it (F. Ludwig, 'Die mehrstimmige Musik der ältesten Epoche im Dienste der Liturgie', Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, 29 (1905), p. 113)
48. At the time of this letter, Ludwig was the greatest living authority on late medieval polyphony, having studied in unprecedented detail its sources, musical notation and development. His study culminated in his 'Studien über die Geschichte der mehrstimmigen Musik im Mittelalter' published in the Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellchaft: 'I: Die mehrstimmige Musik des 14. Jahrhunderts' (4 (1902), pp. 16-69),
49. 'II: Die 50 Beispiele Coussemaker's aus der Handschrift von Montpellier' (5 (1904), pp. 177-224)
50. 'III: Über die Entstehung und die erste Entwicklung der lateinischen und französischen Motette in musikalischer Beziehung' (7 (1906), pp. 514-28)
51. these were reprinted in Ludwig, Studien über die Geschichte der mehrstimmigen Musik im Mittelalter, ed. F. Gennrich (Summa musicae medii aevi, 16; Langen bei Frankfurt, 1966)
52. Ludwig was one of the very few professors of musicology in Europe, and at the University of Strassburg, one of Germany's premier research institutions and an outpost of Prussian culture in the newly annexed region of Alsace (J. E. Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society, 1870-1939 (Chicago and London, 1984)).
53. Ludwig's idea of latent modal rhythm, first presented in a lecture given in November 1905, would soon become the starting point for the interpretations of Beck and Aubry (see my forthcoming 'Friedrich Ludwig's "Musicology of the Future": Commentary and Translation')
54. P. Aubry, 'L'œuvre mélodique des troubadours et des trouvères: examen critique du système de M. Hugo Riemann', Revue musicale, 7 (1907), pp. 317-32 (where the syllogism is found), pp. 347-60 (the musical example), pp. 389-95
55. This article was reprinted as a book, La rythmique musicale des troubadours et des trouvères (Paris, 1907)
56. Johann-Baptist Beck, 'Die modale Interpretation der mittelalterlichen Melodien bes. der Troubadours und Trouvères', Caecilia, 24 (1907), pp. 97-105, example on p. 104
57. Following their 1906 encounter, Beck and Aubry met occasionally at the Bibliothèque Nationale and also corresponded. As Aubry, the editors of the Revue musicale, and even Beck himself later acknowledged in a footnote, Aubry had put at Beck's disposal his large collection of photographic facsimiles (Johann-Baptist Beck, Die Melodien der Troubadours (Strassburg, 1908), p. 5, n. 1
58. Aubry, 'Zur modalen Interpretation der mittelalterlichen Melodien bes. der Troubadours und Trouvères', Caecilia (1907), pp. 131-3, at p. 132
59. editorial preface to Aubry, 'Lettre ouverte à M. Maurice Emmanuel sur la rythmique musicale des trouvères', Revue musicale, 10 (1910), pp. 261-70, at p. 261).
60. It seemed only fair that, in return, the young scholar should share with Aubry aspects of his developing method which had been assisted by Aubry's generosity. Ironically, it was unsolicited offprints of Aubry's Revue musicale article sent by the author himself to Beck which prompted the younger scholar's Caecilia outburst (Beck, 'Die modale Interpretation', p. 99). Aubry's generosity in this case may be read both as a warning to Beck to keep out of the debate with Riemann, and as a proposal to side with him in this debate. The posted offprints had the very opposite effect, however, and turned Beck into a bitterly bold adversary. In a footnote on page 99 of his Caecilia article, Beck reproduced the letter he had written in response to Aubry's offprints. After acknowledging receipt of these, Beck declared that he easily recognised his own 'système modal' - here named in print for the first time - throughout 'L'œuvre mélodique', and that a more developed critique was imminent. His footnote citation even included the two crisp closing flourishes of the letter: 'I shall return to this question. Distinguished regards.' ('Nous y reviendrons. Civilités distinguées.') Beck's stand could not have been clearer. If Aubry was plagiarising his ideas and trying to obtain his approval, Beck was here calling his bluff. He was making public the fact that, from July 1907 on, Aubry knew of his denunciation. Most importantly, Beck was now entering the debate between Riemann and Aubry
61. e siècle publiés d'après le manuscrit Ed. IV. 6 de Bamberg (Paris, 1908); musical example from page 133. The preface is signed January 1908, only six months after Beck's July 1907 Caecilia article. Seemingly undaunted by Beck's denunciations, Aubry meanwhile returned to the area recently contested with Friedrich Ludwig, medieval polyphony. In this field crowded with the German publications of Ludwig and others, the appearance of Aubry's triple volume Cent motels in 1908 came as a major accomplishment for French motet studies, especially fitting since Aubry had picked a manuscript of French motets held in a German library. In his eulogistic review of the work, Jules Combarieu wrote that he even felt 'a French joy comparing this great work, unconcerned with success in the market, with certain German books by famous authors, obviously intended to "make a lot of money"' ('j'éprouve même une joie française en comparant ce beau travail, dédaigneux des succès de vente, à certains livres allemands, signés de noms illustres, et destinés évidemment à "faire beaucoup d'argent"'; review of Cent motets in Revue musicale, 8 (1908), pp. 570-71, at p. 570). Aubry's Bamberg facsimile edition, with its separate volumes devoted exclusively to commentary and transcriptions, even more than the earlier Les plus anciens monuments and Roman de Fauvel edition, was the progeny of the Solesmes science of paléographie musicale
62. Citation in Aubry, Cent motets, iii, p. 22
63. his La rythmique musicale was cited on pp. 53, 121 and 141. While the name of Riemann, Aubry's public adversary, was cited in the text and the notes, Beck was relegated entirely to the space beneath the text. Apparently, Aubry was making as little as possible of the Alsatian's Caecilia denunciations. Yet even an uninitiated reader would have wondered at the footnote on page 141 of Aubry's Cent motets. For here, Aubry mentioned a 'colleague from beyond the Rhine, Mr Jean Beck' ('un confrère d'outre-Rhin, M. Jean Beck'), who had independently arrived at the same conclusions as he. The very next sentence turned this ambiguous honour into a thinly veiled insult. Aubry honoured Beck as the originator of the theory 'of the application of modal formulas to the interpretation of measured monophony' ('de l'application des formules modales à l'interprétation des monophonies mesurées'). That is to say, Beck had discovered modal patterns where they were already evident, in measured readings of monophonic songs. To this Aubry added that since Beck's work was hitherto unpublished, he did not yet know his exact arguments. Elsewhere, in a rebuttal to Beck's Cecilia accusation published in that same journal less than a year before the completion of Cent motets (January 1908), Aubry had insisted that, during their conversations at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Beck had never revealed anything more than the general outline of his modal theory. 'Since when are conversations cited in a scholarly work?' he asked ('Depuis quand dans un travail critique cite-t'on des conversations?'; Aubry, 'Zur modalen Interpretation', p. 131)
64. 'Mr Beck worked at his end, and I at mine', Aubry concluded, 'and, by means which are doubtless personal and very different from those of Mr Beck, I arrived at results nearly identical to his' ('M. B. a travaillé de son côté, j'ai travaillé du mien, et, par des moyens qui me sont sans doute personnels et qui doivent être très différents de ceux de M. B.... je suis arrivé à des résultats à peu près identiques aux siens'; 'Zur modalen Interpretation', p. 132)
65. e siècle', Revue musicale, 4 (1904), pp. 483-94, at p. 484
66. In Beck's time, the term 'modal notation' did not have the more restricted sense later adopted (see W. Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), pp. 220-58)
67. Spurred on by what he perceived as Aubry's plagiarism, Beck published only the commentary, announcing forthcoming complete editions of both troubadour and trouvère melodies to appear as the Monumenta cantilenarum lyricorum Franciae medii aevi (Beck, Melodien, pp. 6 and 193-4)
68. These editions never appeared, however. (See my 'The First Musical Edition of the Troubadours: On Applying the Critical Method to Medieval Monophony', forthcoming in Music & Letters.) Brief mention was made of Pierre Aubry in the introductory survey of the scholarly literature (pp. 3 and 4) in Die Melodien der Troubadours. It was in a footnote on page 5 that Beck thanked Aubry for lending him photographic reproductions. This was the first and last friendly interaction in print between the two scholars
69. P. Aubry's Trouvères et troubadours (Les Maîtres de la musique, ed. J. Chantavoine (Paris, 1909)) more than likely came as a complete surprise to Beck. Nowhere in the body of the book was his name to be found, except in the bibliography, where Die Melodien der Troubadours was cited. Of the thirty-some bibliographical items, the majority were by French authors and one-third by Aubry himself. The histories of the Belgian Fétis (see above, n. 5) and the German A. W. Ambros (Geschichte der Musik (Leipzig, 1864), ii) were deemed unworthy of mention: 'Everything in Fétis's book should be rejected, and in Ambros's, there is nothing useful' ('Du livre de Fétis tout est à rejeter, et dans celui d'Ambros, il n'y a rien à prendre', p. 221). The only mention of Beck was in a footnote at the end of the book, p. 192
70. Beck, 'Séance du 19 mars 1909,' Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Comptes rendus des séances de l'année 1909 (1909), p. 222
71. Aubry, 'Séance du 30 avril 1909', Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Comptes rendus des séances de l'année 1909 (1909), pp. 321-5
72. Details of the trial were later published in Johann-Baptist Beck, 'Zur Aufstellung der modalen Interpretation der Troubadoursmelodien', Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 12 (1911), pp. 316-24
73. P. Aubry, 'Lettre ouverte à M. Maurice Emmanuel sur la rythmique musicale des trouvères', Revue musicale, 10 (1910), pp. 261-70
74. Beck's denunciation of Aubry in the very stronghold of French intellectual life, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, made it painfully clear that he would not tolerate being dismissed to the lower margins of the page. To his war-like aggressiveness Aubry responded in frantic self-defence, just as much for France's honour as his own, against the ideological tyranny of Germany. First Riemann, then Ludwig, and now finally Beck had seized that French national treasure, the music of the thirteenth century, that golden age of the French Middle Ages. Beck's accusations were an affront to the French and a challenge which demanded a reply. Speaking to the members of the Académie, Aubry appealed to their patriotism in assessing this matter: To sum up, if we owe to German erudition a renewed interest in our national antiquities, we must add that French musicology has not been shown up in this area, and that it is also in France that the long lost meaning of the musical language of Philip Augustus' and Saint Louis's contemporaries was rediscovered at the same time (Aubry, 'Séance du 30 avril 1909', p. 321). (En un mot, si nous devons à l'érudition allemande une marque nouvelle d'intérêt à nos antiquités nationales, il faut ajouter que la musicologie française ne s'est pas laissé devancer sur ce terrain et que c'est en France aussi qu'a été simultanément
75. e siècle') - a thinly disguised expression for Beck's modal theory. The second change was the alteration of the title of Beck's book, given in the first edition simply as Die Melodien der Troubadours. This time, the full lengthy title was given, taking up seven full lines of text and making it the longest bibliographical item. The author's name was changed from 'Beck (Jean)' to 'Beck (Dr J.-B.)'. The abbreviation for 'Johann-Baptist' set Beck in a German camp with Riemann and against the francophone majority of the bibliography, which included Aubry; the title 'Dr' was the only one in the bibliography, placing the lonely young titled author in a crowd of renowned but untitled scholars
76. Jean Beck, La musique des troubadours: étude critique (Les musiciens célèbres, ed. André Pirro; Paris, 1910), example on p. 48
77. Aubry, Trouvères, p. 104
78. Riemann, 'Die Beck-Aubry'sche "modale Interpretation" der Troubadourmelodien', Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 11 (1910), pp. 569-89. In this increasingly public debate pitting Aubry against Beck, Riemann's Vierhebigkeit was fast becoming parenthetical and, worse yet, old-fashioned. His Sammelbände article attempted once again to polarise the debate between himself and another camp by conflating two scholars into one, and to reinstate his Vierhebigkeit as the central monolithic system it had been in the 1890s. In coining the 'Beck-Aubry'sche' nickname, Riemann became the first to attempt to solve the paternity of the modal theory, an attempt which would continue up until Chailley and Gennrich a half century later (above, n. 1). Despite his title, it seems that Riemann could not decide between 'Beck-Aubry' and 'Aubry-Beck'. In the title and throughout most of Riemann's article, Beck's priority was asserted with the former appellation. But the transcriptions he critiqued were mostly Aubry's, and he wrote at one point exclusively of 'Aubry's discovery' (p. 572). Further on, he referred to the 'Aubry-Beck'sche System' (p. 579), and elsewhere their names were also found in this order (pp. 582-3). Apparently, he was undermining Beck's priority, despite the verdict in the trial. And when he cited Aubry's La rythmique musicale, the year of publication was given as 1906, a year earlier than it was actually published (p. 571)! On the other hand, Riemann's article, as stated in the body of this essay, did make public the verdict in the trial, and, for this reason, even more than Beck's La musique des troubadours, was probably the last straw which led to Aubry's suicide
79. Ludwig, 'Zur "modalen Interpretation" von Melodien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts', Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 11 (1910), pp. 379-82
80. Ludwig, Repertorium organorum recentioris et motetorum vetustissimi stili, i, part 2: Handschriften in Quadrat-Notation (1910; repr. Musicological Studies 7, rev. L. Dittmer; New York, 1964), pp. 42-57
81. Ludwig's sudden claims in 1910 to being the creator of the modal theory pleased very few. For Beck and Riemann as for the general musicological audience, he was just another voice in this increasingly confusing clamour. Besides, his claims were unverified. Where exactly had Ludwig first stated that motet repertoires were the key to unlocking the rhythm of trouvère songs, as he insisted? And just where were his transcriptions of troubadour and trouvère songs in modal rhythm? The only proof the Strassburg professor provided was in a footnote which cited an article entitled 'Die Aufgaben der Forschung auf dem Gebiete der mittelalterlichen Musikgeschichte', published in the Supplement to volume 1 of the 1906 Munich Allgemeine Zeitung ('Zur "modalen" Interpretation', p. 381, n. 1
82. Handschriften, p. 55; a commentary and translation are provided in my forthcoming 'Friedrich Ludwig's "Musicology of the Future"'). As it turns out, this was the transcription of a speech given on the occasion of Ludwig's acceptance of the post of lecturer at the University of Strassburg in November 1905. He was probably counting on very few checking this reference, already difficult to find in 1910 and practically unavailable today - and for good reason. For in it, he had only briefly sketched his theory of a latent rhythm in non-mensural notation which could be checked by comparing later motets and mensurally notated monophonic songs. No specific evidence or transcriptions were given; the earliest of Ludwig's published monophonic transcriptions according to the modal interpretation date from 1924 (Ludwig, 'III. Conductus und Carmina Burana; Troubadours, Trouvères, Minnesinger und Meistersinger, die ältesten "Laudi" und die spanischen Cantigas; die Organa der Notre Dame-Schule; die älteste lateinische und französische Motette; der Sumer-Canon
83. Etwa 1150-1300', in G. Adler (ed.), Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1924), pp. 158-68)
84. Beck denied Ludwig's accusations of plagiarism in a supplement to his review of Aubry and A. Jeanroy's Le chansonnier de l'Arsenal ('Besprechungen', Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 34 (1910), pp. 738-46, at pp. 743-6). He insisted that he had already developed his interpretation prior to Ludwig's arrival in Strassburg in the autumn of 1905, and had presented his theory in a seminar presentation in the spring of that year, a fact which his dissertation supervisor, Gustav Gröber, had recently confirmed. Moreover, Beck revealed, he had instructed Ludwig in the application of his method, informing him of certain manuscripts of which Ludwig was not aware. According to Beck, Ludwig had even corrected proofs of his Caecilia article and was one of the readers of his dissertation; in both instances, he had nothing but praise. At no time until now, Beck declared, had he ever accused him of plagiarism
85. Beck, 'Correspondance'
86. Beck, 'Zur der Aufstellung'
87. Aubry, 'Lettre ouverte', pp. 263 and 269
88. On the myths and facts surrounding Aubry's death, see J. Haines, 'The "Modal Theory"'. The vitriol hitherto hidden in the notes slowly wafted up into the body of the text, death shuffling close behind. Now swinging ever more dangerously between emotional extremes, Aubry slowly realised that he would never be able to undo, or even put behind him the verdict in the trial, especially not with this growing crowd of claimants. The recent months had heaped disgrace upon disgrace: Beck's new book, then Riemann's article reducing him to Beck's forerunner; it is also possible that Aubry knew of Ludwig's upcoming article, even though it appeared after his death. These publications naggingly echoed what was for Aubry the deepest humiliation, to have been discredited by his own people. In his open letter, he lashed out at Maurice Emmanuel: 'Where are the services which you personally have rendered to French musicology?' ('Où sont les services que personnellement vous avez pu rendre à la musicologie française?', p. 269). By dishonouring him, Aubry continued, Emmanuel had dealt France's musicological heritage a wound from which it would never recover (p. 270)
89. Beck, 'Zur Aufstellung', pp. 316-24
90. Beck's insistence on being vindicated even after Aubry's death ultimately cost him an academic post in Europe, for the published trial, no matter how just its verdict, made Aubry a musicological martyr and Beck his persecutor. Meanwhile, Beck subtly appealed to musicological judicial precedents. His concluding Suum cuique, prefaced by its enigmatic 'once again' ('Abermals'), was a direct reference to an earlier footnote quarrel over the origins of neumatic notation. In 1852, Coussemaker announced his theory of the origins of neumes in grammatical accents. A few years later, Théodore Nisard claimed in a footnote that he, not Coussemaker, had first revealed this theory in 1848-9. In 1889, the editors of the Paléographie musicale pronounced in a footnote their verdict that Nisard's claims were null, concluding with the phrase Cuique suum, that is, 'to each his own' (Paléographie musicale, i: Le codex 339 de la bibliothèque de Saint Gall (Solesmes, 1889), p. 102, n. 1). Jules Combarieu, Aubry's close friend and colleague, later referred to this footnote verdict as a judicial sentence which had put into practice musicology's penal code, as he put it (J. Combarieu, 'Archéologie musicale de Coussemaker et Th. Nisard', La Tribune de Saint-Gervais, 9 (1895), p. 10)
91. Following the announcement of Aubry's death, the Sammelbände editors delayed the appearance of Beck's article until the following year. Beck, feeling increasingly attacked, added a postscript to his article berating the editors for their delay and accusing Johannes Wolf, in his recent obituary of Aubry, of glorifying the French scholar at his expense and calling the entire trial into question (Wolf, 'Pierre Aubry †', Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 12 (1910-11), pp. 13-15)
92. Beck partially cited from the following, taken from Wolf's conclusion: The fact that he who called himself the father of the (modal) idea needed to bring in support troops from France simply confirms the old saying that a prophet is least honoured in his own country. The greater the accomplishment, the greater the rivalry ... Aubry assured me of the independence of his research with evidence from his own hand, and I believe him (p. 15). (Wenn ihm, der sich offenbar als der Vater des Gedankens aufspielte, Hilfstruppen in Frankreich erstanden, so beweist dies nur die traurige Wahrheit des alten Satzes von Propheten, der nichts in seinem Vaterlande gilt. Je bedeutsamer die Leistung, um so größer die Anfeindung ... Aubry hat mir die Unabhängigkeit seiner Forschung in die Hand versichert und ich glaube ihm.) In several footnotes to his appendix (p. 321, n. 2; p. 322, n. 1), Beck enumerated Wolf's oversights and cited incriminating private correspondence from him. The appendix concluded with Beck's further defence against Ludwig's accusations. But the Sammelbände editors did not allow Beck to have the last word. His bitter postscript was followed by a one-paragraph counter by Johannes Wolf which concluded the article. Wolf candidly stated that the trial and Aubry's death had been a blow to musicology and had furthermore caused personal sorrow both to him and to many of his colleagues. Aubry was not guilty of plagiarism, he maintained; the jury's verdict was questionable, since no specialist of medieval music had been on the panel. It was Ludwig, if anyone, who was the real author of the modal theory, he concluded, although Beck did deserve credit for its unprecedented development, and for this reason alone the jury's decision was to be respected despite its shortcomings. The last statement, cited above, might have read as a concession to Beck, except for Wolf's final sentence which followed: 'But panels of judges are also prone to err' ('Aber auch Richterkollegien können irren', p. 324)
93. Jean Beck, Les chansonniers des troubadours et des trouvères: le Chansonnier Cangé (Corpus cantilenarum medii aevi, no. 1, ser. 1; Philadelphia, 1927), ii, pp. (35)-(64)
94. Nearly twenty years after the trial, Beck had undergone not only a theoretical change but an identity transformation in his new American homeland. He was teaching Romance philology and writing exclusively in French, with his Christian name permanently changed to Jean. (By this time too, Alsace had returned to France.) An Aubry-like patriotism was expressed in note 41 of page (56) in volume 2 of his Chansonnier Cangé edition. Here, Beck wrote that France was the cradle of polyphony, whose art had come much later in Germany. This statement nearly echoed Aubry's discussed above in nn. 6 and 15. Furthermore, Beck's 1908 Melodien der Troubadours was cited throughout as Mél. d. Troubadours (e.g., p. (56)), the abbreviation denying its Germanness while retaining the letters of the original title, and the acute accent suggesting instead a French work. Nonetheless, the old spectre of the modal-theory debate still loomed: in footnote 28 on page (52), Beck fervently defended his paternity against Ludwig's 1910 claims. From whence had come Beck's knowledge of the Barcelona manuscript? In note 17 on page (45), he revealed that the monks at the monastery of Burgos had sent to Pierre Aubry a complete photographic reproduction of the troper so he could identify its contents. 'Aubry lent it to me', Beck continued, 'and I copied it entirely' ('Aubry me la communiqua et j'en pris une copie complète'). In another unrelated matter, Beck claimed in note 31 on page (52) that some of Friedrich Gennrich's transcriptions had plagiarised his own. For this reason, none of Gennrich's works had been included in his bibliography. Gennrich responded to this accusation a few years later in a lengthy footnote which further revealed what he claimed was the truth about the Barcelona troper (Gennrich, 'Lateinische Kontrafakta altfranzösischer Lieder', Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 50 (1930), pp. 195-6, n. 1). He first countered that Beck was not the author of the modal theory, but his teacher Friedrich Ludwig, a fact which Beck had himself admitted, Gennrich insisted. As for Beck's access to the Barcelona troper, Gennrich had news for his readers. Given the tension between Aubry and Beck after 1907, he argued, how could Aubry have lent his adversary these precious photographs in 1910? The truth was quite different, Gennrich announced. According to him, shortly after Aubry's death, Beck had gone through his archives recently donated to the Sorbonne by his widow, and had stolen the Burgos photographs sent five years earlier by the monks of Silos. Gennrich would repeat this claim several decades later ('Initiator', pp. 329-30). Whether or not Gennrich's claim was true will have to wait for further discoveries, since I have been unable to locate these photographs either in Aubry's archives at the Sorbonne or in Beck's archives at Princeton University
95. Husmann, 'Zur Rhythmik des Trouvèregesanges', Musikforschung, 6 (1953), pp. 110-31
96. Two useful post-modal theory retrospectives are B. Kippenberg, Der Rhythmus im Minnesang (Munich, 1962)
97. and H. van der Werf, The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères: A Study of the Melodies and their Relation to the Poems (Utrecht, 1972)
98. Chailley's preface is found in H. Anglés, Las canciones del Rey Teobaldo (Obra póstuma), ed. A. Sagaseta (Pamplona, 1973)
99. The debate between Jacques Chailley and Friedrich Gennrich on the paternity of the modal theory, discussed at the start of this essay, did not end with Gennrich's 1961 article. In a footnote to Anglés's posthumous edition (p. 14, n. 5), six years after Gennrich's death, Chailley had the last word. He quoted a letter from Félix Raugel, an old student of Pierre Aubry's, dated 1 December 1961, in response to Gennrich's claims that Aubry had admitted that Beck was the author of the modal theory. Raugel knew Aubry at the time of the trial and stated that he had suffered a nervous breakdown ('dépression nerveuse'). This had led him to make contradictory statements, first granting the paternity of the theory to Beck, then, in the months before his death, denying this vigorously, as I have explained above. But Raugel's full disclosure was not included in Chailley's footnote. In 1995, Jacques Chailley finally revealed to me what Raugel had mentioned to him by word of mouth, that Aubry's death had been a covered-up suicide ('un suicide déguisé'). Evidence discovered shortly before Chailley's disclosure confirmed Raugel's statement, and both findings were made public in 1997 (Haines, 'The "Modal Theory"'). The full story has been told here for the first time