Medieval music theory
- In 1934, there appeared a classic monograph by Dénes Bartha on the school notes on music theory taken in 1490 by László Szalkai, later Archbishop of Esztergom.
- The book, which includes Szalkai’s text, remains the only major work in the country to deal with the theory of music.
- An international research group, Corpus Hollandrinum, was formed in 2002 to look into the 14th‒16th-century Bohemian, Polish, German and Hungarian texts on music theory and reconstruct from them the late medieval teaching-material and music theory traditions.
- The findings brought a fundamental change in the outlook of Hungarian research on music history. Although Szalkai’s notes were unprecedented in this country, they were not an isolated occurrence, but part of a late medieval, Central European tradition of tracts.
- It speaks for the Hungarian members of the research group that they managed to turn what had been seen only as a written tradition of music theory approachable by philological means into a subject of research in terms of music history, and reconstruct the liturgical plainchant practice in its background. This made it possible to discern the manifold, differentiated system of relations that lies behind the thinking on music theory and the late medieval practice of Gregorian chant. to deal with the theory of music.
Medieval music theory is a field of medieval music studies in Hungary that has undergone radical changes of methodology and approach in recent decades. This reflects interest on the part of the research generation appearing in the 1990s, and promotion of the field in the light of international developments in plainchant research. Earlier relative disregard of it in Hungary is understandable to a degree: apart from the musical notes of László Szalkai which Dénes Bartha published in 1934, hardly any notes or tracts on the musica plana or mensurabilis theory had survived. However, recent international research has unveiled a specifically Central European group of sources embodying a tradition of music theory. This includes a small number of Hungarian remains, on which these researches have shed new light. These 15th-century Central European tracts on music theory form a well-defined group with specific features of form and content. Behind the group lies as instigator and main authority the figure of Johannes Hollandrinus, whose teachings are quoted and discussed to various extents in other tracts. Although little is known of Hollandrinus, and his presumed works of music theory have not survived, elements of them have been preserved by almost 30 South German, Bohemian, Polish and Hungarian treatises. This system embodies a distinct late medieval tradition of music theory, a kind of virtual Traditio Johannis Hollandrini, whose practicality provides a first-hand glimpse of elementary and secondary music education in that period. The international group set up in 2001 under Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba and Michael Bernhard aims to explore the complete textual tradition and publish the sources of it. The fifteen researchers from seven countries include two active contributors from the Early Music Department: Zsuzsa Czagány and Ágnes Papp. The group’s work has revealed several aspects that point beyond the confines of music theory towards a broader frame of music history. These include the musical examples in the tracts and tonaries, which provide an express link between the seemingly remote realm of music theory and plainchant practice in the period. The Early Music Department’s research covers this relation not only in music-theory terms, but in those of liturgical and musical practice at that time. Further details
