Chapter Six

I would not doubt that Roger Caperon, the Frenchman, could be swallowed in a single gulp original: "vno potu deglutiri." This is a sharp rhetorical flourish common in medieval and Renaissance academic polemics, suggesting Caperon’s theories are so flimsy they can be dismissed instantly.. For this same Roger Caperon says thus: There are four figures which are added in song: namely, Coruph From the Greek koryphe, meaning "summit" or "head.", synemenon, apotome, and crisis. He calls the note Gamma "Coruph"; because B-flat original: "b" is added, he calls it synemenon; and for the B-natural original: "♮", he uses apotome. But he calls the high "e" crisis, in which the followers of Guido place the note la. He is correct to say the synemenon is B-flat, if he understands it as the distance of a semitone from A to B-flat—though he does not state this himself. He also speaks well of the apotome if he understands the distance between B-flat and B-natural; for it is so named by Boethius and Philolaus Philolaus (c. 470–385 BCE) was a Pythagorean philosopher; Boethius (c. 477–524 CE) was the primary authority on music theory in the Middle Ages. as that which we call the "major semitone." And thus he posits twenty strings, falling into the same error as others.

A brief notice on various instruments.

Having set out a moderately regular division of the monochord A one-stringed instrument used to demonstrate the mathematical ratios of musical intervals., it remains for us to teach how to reduce the human voice to this rule, raising and lowering it alternately. We shall achieve this better if a knowledge of various instruments is first declared to us, while we follow their main tracks, so that we may know how to temper the natural organ—the voice—with other instruments.

Of these instruments, some thin out the sounds through excessive tension, or dull them and return them to a low pitch through loosening. There are also diverse strings, both in length and thickness, as in the cithara, the lyre, the polychord, the clavichord, the harpsichord original: "clavicibalo", the psaltery, and many other instruments to which new names have been given by posterity, and of which we shall make clear mention in the second book.

All these, however, cannot escape our mathematical division; for the strings of the monochord—which are of the same thickness, length, and tension—if struck at the same distance, will necessarily emit the same sound, just as we find in ancient monochords. But according to whether each is struck closer to or further from the place where they are twisted Referring to the bridge or the tuning pins., it emits a lower or higher sound according to the proportions of the division given above. Now, however, not all strings are of the same thickness, nor are they tempered with the same tension. Therefore, if the frequent practice of music were to fall from memory, we could by no means find the truth of consonance The sounding together of notes that results in a pleasing or stable interval. through these modern instruments. But returning to the prior division, we would mark the sounds. For if anyone wishes to fit this in harmony, let him turn to the sound of our instrument—the voice—and having weighed that, he will know this. There are, however, some of the new monochords having one...