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Studies in the History of the Cadence
Caleb Michael Mutch
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2015
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2015
Caleb Michael Mutch
All rights reserved
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ABSTRACT
Studies in the History of the Cadence
Caleb Michael Mutch
This dissertation traces the development of the concept of the cadence in the history of
music theory. It proposes a division of the history of cadential theorizing into three periods,
and elucidates these periods with four studies of particularly significant doctrines of musical
closure. The first of these periods is the pre-history of the cadence, which lasted from the dawn
of medieval music theory through the fifteenth century. During this time theorists such as John
of Affligem (ca. 1100), whose writings are the subject of the first study, developed an analogy
between music and the classical doctrine of punctuation to begin to describe how pieces and
their constituent parts can conclude. The second period begins at the turn of the sixteenth
century, with the innovative theory expounded by the authors of the Cologne school, which
forms the subject of the second study. These authors identified the phenomenon of musical
closure as an independent concept worthy of theoretical investigation, and established the first
robustly polyphonic cadential doctrine to account for it. For the following three centuries
theorists frequently made new contributions to the theorizing of the cadence in their writings,
as exemplified by the remarkable taxonomy of cadences in the work of Johann Wolfgang
Caspar Printz (1641-1717), the subject of the third study. By the early nineteenth century,
however, cadential theorizing had largely ossified. Instead, authors such as A. B. Marx (1795-
1866), on whose writings the fourth study focuses, only drew upon the concept of the cadence
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as was necessary in their treatments of newly emerging theoretical concerns, especially musical
form.
In order to elucidate and corroborate this historical framework, the dissertations
chapters undertake close readings of the doctrines of musical closure put forth by John of
Affligem, the Cologne school, Printz, and Marx. The theoretical contributions contained in
these sources are interpreted and contextualized in light of the non-musical discourses upon
which they draw, and through interrogation of the relationship between the cadential ideas
they espouse and contemporaneous musical practice. In doing so, the dissertation reveals
discontinuities in the concepts and functions of cadential doctrines in historical music theories,
and provides new possibilities for understanding and experiencing musical structure.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF EXAMPLES ................................................................................................................................ iv
LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................................... vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................................................... vii
INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1. MUSICAL CLOSURE, GRAMMATICO-RHETORICAL DOCTRINE,
AND CHANT: JOHN OF AFFLIGEM ..................................................................................... 14
1.1 The Analysis of Speech Structure in Classical Rhetoric ........................................................ 16
1.2 The Grammatical Doctrine of Punctuation in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages ......... 24
1.3 Grammatical and Rhetorical Elements in Musical Discourse before John of Affligem ....... 34
1.4 John of Affligem and the Application of the Distinctiones to Music ....................................... 46
1.5 The Transmission of the Doctrine ................................................................................................ 66
1.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 70
CHAPTER 2. POLYPHONIC CLOSURE IN THE RENAISSANCE:
THE COLOGNE SCHOOL ........................................................................................................ 72
2.1 The Term Clausula Formalis ........................................................................................................... 75
2.2 Precedents of the Cologne Schools Theory ............................................................................... 85
2.3 The First Stage: Three-voice Cadences in the Opus aureum and Musica ................................. 91
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2.4 The Second Stage: Four-voice Cadences in the Musica and Tetrachordum musices ............. 102
2.5 Triadic Tonality and Cochlaeuss Sixth Rule ........................................................................... 106
2.6 Cadential Doctrine and Compositional Practice ..................................................................... 122
2.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 137
CHAPTER 3. MID-BAROQUE CLAUSULA DOCTRINE:
PRINTZ AND HIS PREDECESSORS ..................................................................................... 140
3.1 German Cadence Theory before Printz .................................................................................... 142
3.2 A Ramist Theory of Cadence ...................................................................................................... 154
3.3 Printzs contribution .................................................................................................................... 165
3.3.1 Voice-specific Cadences ....................................................................................................... 166
3.3.2 Cadence and Mode: Propria/Peregrina .............................................................................. 171
3.3.3 Perfect/Imperfect Cadences ................................................................................................. 175
3.3.4 Totalis/Dissecta ...................................................................................................................... 177
3.3.5 Desiderans/Acquiescens....................................................................................................... 181
3.3.6 The Sedes ................................................................................................................................. 192
3.3.7 An Inchoate Theory of Phrases ........................................................................................... 199
3.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 202
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CHAPTER 4. A. B. MARX, BIOLOGY, FORM, AND CADENCE .................................................. 205
4.1 The Roles of Cadence in Music-theoretical Discourse before A. B. Marx ............................ 206
4.2 A. B. Marxs Conception of Cadence ......................................................................................... 216
4.3 Form and Cadence in Marxs Music Theory ............................................................................ 225
4.4 Organicism and Marxs Theory of Form .................................................................................. 238
4.5 Changes in the Nineteenth Century .......................................................................................... 247
4.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 258
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 264
APPENDIX .............................................................................................................................................. 283
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LIST OF EXAMPLES
Example 1.1 Tribus miraculis ornatum diem, antiphon for the feast of Epiphany ................... 44
Example 1.2 Petrus autem servabatur, antiphon for the feast Vincula Petri ............................... 53
Example 1.3 Homo quidam erat dives et,
antiphon for the feast of the second Sunday after Pentecost ................................................ 59
Example 1.4 Erat Petrus dormiens inter, antiphon for the feast Vincula Petri ............................ 61
Example 1.5 Transeuntes autem primam et, antiphon for the feast Vincula Petri ...................... 64
Example 1.6 Ecce nomen Domini, antiphon for the feast Nativitas Domini ................................ 67
Example 1.7 Melodic ending formulas from Wollick, Opus aureum, f. F4v ..................................... 69
Example 2.1 Three-voice clausulae from [Cochlaeus], Musica (ca. 1505), f. C5r ............................. 96
Example 2.2 A two-voice clausula from Ornithoparchus,
Musice active micrologus, IV.4, f. L4v ......................................................................................... 97
Example 2.3 Clausulae on mi ............................................................................................................... 100
Example 2.4 Four-voice clausulae from Cochlaeus, Musica (1507), f. F4v ..................................... 103
Example 2.5 Cochlaeuss Sixth Rule ................................................................................................... 107
Example 2.6 Additional type of mi cadence from Galliculus, Isagoge, f. C3v ................................ 121
Example 2.7 Schlick, Mein Lieb ist weg ......................................................................................... 126
Example 2.8 Isaac, I[nn]sbruck, ich muss dich lassen .................................................................. 130
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Example 3.1 Four-voice clausula from Johannes Cochlaeus,
Tetrachordum musices, f. F1r (1512) ........................................................................................... 143
Example 3.2 Ramus, Dial. lib. duo, x. (Cambridge: John Hayes, 1672 edition) ............................. 158
Example 3.3 Printz, Phrynis Mitilenaeus, I.8 (from the 1696 edition) .............................................. 164
Example 3.4 A Cadence on mi, from Phrynis, I.8, 43, p. 31 ............................................................ 174
Example 3.5 Phrygian-related cadences ............................................................................................ 185
Example 3.6 Heinrich Schtz, Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, SWV 235 (Dresden, 1661) .... 191
Example 3.7 The Sedes Subintellecta, from Phrynis, I.8, 31, p. 29. .................................................. 194
Example 3.8 Caesuras, from Phrynis, I.8, 57, p. 33. ......................................................................... 200
Example 4.1 Marxs Two Harmonic Masses ..................................................................................... 217
Example 4.2 Marxs Trugschluss .......................................................................................................... 221
Example 4.3 A synopsis of Marx's theory of form ............................................................................ 227
Example 4.4 Marxs Satz and Periode .................................................................................................. 229
Example 4.5 Marxs Period and the Piece in Two Parts .................................................................. 231
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1 Cadence Categories in Precursors of Printz .................................................................... 144
Figure 3.2 Ramus's Cadential Types.................................................................................................... 163
Figure 3.3 Clausulas with respect to mode ....................................................................................... 171
Figure 3.4 Totalis and Dissecta cadences ........................................................................................... 177
Figure 4.1 Marxs Fourth and Fifth Rondo Forms ............................................................................ 232
Figure 4.2 Marxs Fourth and Fifth Rondo Forms ............................................................................ 233
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Of all the help and encouragement I have receive along the dissertating road, David
Cohens has been the most formative. He has been a sage guide to the recesses of historical
music theory, lavish with his feedback, and selfless with his time. My thanks to him are many,
and profound. Benjamin Steege has also been a great help in my latter years of graduate school,
and Ive benefited from his graciousness, attention to argumentation, and perspective on the
field. Im very grateful for his support.
There are many other people from the Columbia community I wish to thank. Joseph
Dubiel and Ellie Hisama, for guiding my way through the program; Elaine Sisman and Susan
Boynton, for their support and their feedback on my work; Anne Gefell and Gabriela Kumar,
for their unfailing goodwill in the departmental office; and Elizabeth Davis and Nick Patterson,
for their consummate librarianship. To Kate Heidemann, David Gutkin, Nicholas Chong, Ben
Hansberry, Will Mason, and the rest of my grad school colleagues, thanks for your camaraderie.
Id also like to acknowledge the valuable experiences I had outside the walls of my
school. The classes I took with William Rothstein inform me both as a historian and an analyst,
and my dissertation is much the better for his presence on my committee. Nathan Martin has
been a wonderful mixture of mentor, colleague, and friend, and I thank him for his
encouragement and generosity. Thanks, too, to Richard Kurth for piquing my interest in the
history of music theory, and for his mentoring over the years.
To my family, both by birth and marriage, my deepest gratitude for your unflagging
support and encouragement. Most of all, to my wife, Sarah Godbehere, thank you for your
steadfast loving-kindness. Your forebearance these last years has meant the world.
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INTRODUCTION
Of all the uses to which humans have put music, of all the qualities and potencies they
have imputed to it, there is perhaps no attribution loftier than the traditional doctrine of the
music of the spheres. Beginning with Platos famous Myth of Er in his Republic and lasting even
until Keplers day, philosophers, astronomers, and musically inclined scholars held that the
celestial bodies emit sounds which create a harmonious concord.1 Since the deity was held to
motivate the spheres revolutions in their fixed, sempiternal courses,2 the celestial bodies
supposedly sounded their music endlessly, ever moving seamlessly from the end of one orbital
revolution to the beginning of the next. Yet this eternal, immutable perfection cannot be
experienced in the sublunary realm. As the fifth-century B.C.E. philosopher-scientist Alcmaeon
put it, Humans perish on account of this: they are unable to connect the beginning to the end.3
At the end of the course of our allotted years of life, we are unable to return to infancy and
begin again. Similarly, all music here on earth must come to an end.4
1 Plato, Republic, 617b.
2 . . . summus ipse deus, arcens et continens ceteros in quo sunt infixi illi qui uoluuntur stellarum
cursus sempiterni (Cicero, Somnium Scipionis, IV). All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.
3 ,
(Alcmaeon, frag. 2 [H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 1, 6th
edn. {Berlin: Weidmann, 1951}, 215]).
4 It is worth noting that even the musical performance that may come closest to escaping the
bonds of finitude, the rendition of John Cages As Slow as Possible being performed in Halberstadt,
Germany, is invariably described in the popular press in terms of when it will conclude (see, for instance,
Maura Judkis, Worlds longest concert will last 639 years, The Washington Post [November 21, 2011],
and Daniel J. Wakin, John Cage's Long Music Composition in Germany Changes a Note, The New York
Times [May 6, 2006]).
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This dissertation takes as its subject musical closure, and the diversity of ways in which,
over the centuries, writers on music have engaged with the phenomenon of the conclusions of
musical pieces and their constituent parts. It proposes a new narrative of how conceptions of
the cadence developed from the eleventh through nineteenth centuries, by drawing upon
detailed analyses of crucial doctrines of cadence found in music theory texts, and by comparing
those ideas with contemporaneous musical compositions. In doing so, it presents material that
will be of interest to a range of scholars. Those who focus on the analysis of compositions will
gain fresh insights into past conceptions of musical closure that may provide access to new
possibilities for hearing a compositions musical structure and sectional divisions. For
historians of theory, the dissertation offers a new interpretive framework for the concept of
cadence, comprising three previously unidentified periods of cadential theorizing with
important discontinuities of doctrine and practice separating them. As for modern Formenlehre,
many recent theories of form refer back to eighteenth and nineteenth-century doctrines of
formal design, either to demonstrate the superiority of contemporary perspectives, or to
challenge current theory to take into consideration historically-sensitive ways of understanding
formal types.5 Yet these sorts of appeals to the past have not occurred with respect to the
concept of cadence. To crafters of modern theories of form, this dissertation presents
opportunities both to be challenged by older conceptions of closure and to make well informed
decisions about when to depart from those conceptions in favor of modern understandings of
5 James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 605; Scott Burnham, The Second Nature of Sonata Form, in Music Theory and Natural Order
from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Suzannah Clark and Alexander Rehding
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 117, n. 8.
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cadence. Discussion of the broader intellectual contexts of these cadential doctrines shows how
the latter have not depended solely on developments in musical practice, but were also
influenced and shaped by concepts and methodological procedures drawn from their wider
intellectual environment.
Before proceeding further, a few words about the terminology of cadence and closure
are in order. The meaning of the words cadence and closure (and related terms in other
languages) varies significantly in different periods and places, and one of this dissertations
endeavors is to tease out the nuances of such terminology in different texts. For now, however,
let the term musical closure provisionally be understood to refer to the general function of
marking the conclusion of a formal unit (or other stretch of musical utterance) and establishing
to some degree a definite impression of arrival and/or conclusion, by whatever means are
appropriate to the style of the music in question.6 Cadence, in contrast, here refers to a
stereotyped succession of at least two sonorities, normally composed of three or more voices,
that produces the effect of closure, as just defined. Thus, monophonic chant cannot have
cadences, but does have musical closure. The related idea of ending will be used to
differentiate a conclusion that is not motivated by the music before it from the concepts of
closure and cadence, which are understood to close off some amount of preceding material
(though the precise amount that is thereby concluded is often ambiguous).
That is not to say, however, that all theories of cadence advance this understanding of
the concept. Indeed, many cadential theorists focus either on characterizing the function of
6 My understanding of closure here is similar to Mark Anson-Cartwrights first definition of
closure, but without his restriction to the tonal repertoire (Concepts of Closure in Tonal Music: A Critical
Study, Theory and Practice 32 [2007]: 3).
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concluding formal units, or on describing the musical configurations which constitute cadential
progressions. That is to say, they dedicate their attention to the questions of where cadences are
made, or how they are constructed. Our provisional definition of the cadence encompasses both
of these facets, of course, but it is important to note that most innovative cadential doctrines
show signs of originality in only one of these two areas, and leave the other either unstated or in
an entirely traditional form. Thus, the questions of how and where cadences are made can cast
significant light on theorists priorities and contributions, and we will return to them as we
consider different historical theories of cadence.
The contribution I seek to make in this dissertation will become clearer in the light of a
review of the scholarly literature of the past few decades that has addressed the concept of
cadence. The vast majority of this literature may be fruitfully analyzed as falling into three
broad categories: wide-ranging encyclopedia articles, analyses of musical closure in a given
repertoire, and studies of cadential doctrine in particular periods. The most thorough example
of the first category is a pair of related articles on Clausula and Kadenz by Siegfried
Schmalzriedt in the Handwrterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie.7 Schmalzriedts purpose is to
describe all the ways in which the given terms have been used over the centuries. The
crowning achievement of his articles is a table of 81 terms in Latin and Italian, followed by an
exposition of what the terms mean and who employed them. His treatment offers a valuable
overview of a great number of the meanings with which the terms clausula and cadence
(and their cognates) have been associated over the centuries, and he does not neglect peripheral
7 Siegfried Schmalzriedt, Clausula and Kadenz in Handwrterbuch der musikalischen
Terminologie, ed. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1972).
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uses of the terms, such as the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century tendency to describe a
trill-like melodic ornament as a cadence.8 Yet the concision of Schmalzriedts articles entails
several deficiencies: his focus on providing definitions for terminology minimizes the extent to
which the conception of a single term, like clausula formalis can change over the course of the
nearly three centuries in which the phrase was used. Additionally, Schmalzriedts articles are
unreliable witnesses to matters of chronology and intellectual priority: the sources Schmalzriedt
cites to demonstrate his terms often transmit the cadential doctrine of earlier theorists in nearly
identical form, yet Schmalzriedt rarely acknowledges the antecedent sources, resulting in a
misleading impression as to just when the usage in question first appeared.9
The second category of literature consists of a few works that seek to theorize the
practice of musical closure in particular corpora of compositions. One example of this approach
is an article by Kevin Moll, in which he proposes a list of ten defining elements of cadences in
French mass settings of the fourteenth century.10 He considers aspects of the music such as text
setting, pulse, counterpoint, and consonance. By appealing to his defining elements, Moll
makes claims for where and whether one should understand cadences to occur in this music.
His criteria also allow him to apply the label of cadence to progressions that are not normally
identified as fourteenth-century cadences by modern scholars. Based on this, Moll concludes
8 See, for example, Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, III, 137-9, and tienne Louli, lments
ou principes de musique, 67.
9 Schmalzriedt often cites Walthers Lexikon to define terms first proposed more than fifty years
earlier by Printz in his Phrynis Mitilenaeus, and also cites Ornithoparchuss nearly verbatim version of
Schanppecher and Wollicks cadential doctrine with no reference to the latter.
10 Kevin Moll, Voice Function, Sonority, and Contrapuntal Procedure in Late Medieval
Polyphony, Current Musicology 64 (Spring 1998): 32.
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that musical closure in that corpus is more flexible than is commonly acknowledged, though it
still adheres to an easily discernible set of music elements.11
Jennifer Bain theorizes how cadences work in a yet more restricted repertoire: the music
of Machaut. Her central contribution, like Molls, is to broaden the notion of what serves as a
cadence. She emphasizes progressions that occur at conclusions of textual units, and argues
that they should be considered as cadences even if they come to rest on imperfect sonorities.
These imperfect-sonority cadences are at once points of provisional arrival and cues
indicating that a more complete, perfect-sonority cadence is required at a later point in the
piece.12 Bain also argues for a more inclusive approach to the definition and identification of
cadences in Machauts music than is provided by the standard theory. The latter stipulates, as
required features of a cadence, a progression of imperfect to perfect dyads exhibiting conjunct
and contrary motion, and thus effectively limits cadential progressions to three: minor third to
unison, major third to perfect fifth, and major sixth to octave. Bain, however, points out several
examples in Machauts oeuvre in which both structural voices leap, or move in some other
unusual way, to a perfect consonance which is the final sonority of a whole piece, arguing that
such cases prove the existence, in this repertoire, of a broader range of cadential possibilities
than that allowed by the standard theory.
Such studies of cadential practice in specific bodies of music are mostly limited to pre-
tonal music. When it comes to music of the common-practice period, recent and current
11 Ibid., 37-40.
12 Jennifer Bain, Theorizing the Cadence in the Music of Machaut, Journal of Music Theory 47, no.
2 (Fall, 2003): 343-346.
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theoretical and analytical work does not usually attempt a redefinition of the cadence; rather,
most such work adopts without question those prevailing concepts of cadence that are the
result of a centuries-long development. One exception to this is William Caplin, who has
dedicated a substantial article to theorizing the classical cadence.13 Yet his work is markedly
different from the projects of Moll and Bain: rather than offering a novel theory of how cadences
function in a given musical repertoire, Caplin articulates how he believes the concept of the
cadence should function in discourse devoted to classical music, a functioning largely
instantiated in the theory of form published earlier in his book Classical Form.14
Two fine examples of the third category, studies of cadential doctrines of particular
authors or eras, are Elisabeth Schwinds monograph Kadenz und Kontrapunkt: Zur
Kompositionslehre der Klassischen Vokalpolyphonie, and Markus Walduras tome Von Rameau und
Riepel zu Koch.15 Schwind takes as her focus sixteenth-century polyphony, but, rather than
deducing cadential function from the repertoire, she undertakes a close reading of
contemporaneous theoretical texts to gain insight into how composers may have conceptualized
musical closure. Walduras text is less oriented towards compositional practice. Instead, he
13 William E. Caplin, The Classical Cadence: Conceptions and Misconceptions. Journal of the
American Musicological Society 57, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 51-118.
14 Idem, Classical Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
15 Elisabeth Schwind, Kadenz und Kontrapunkt: Zur Kompositionslehre der Klassischen Vokalpolyphonie
(Hildesheim: Olms, 2009); Markus Waldura, Von Rameau und Riepel zu Koch: Zum Zusammenhang zwischen
theoretischem Ansatz, Kadenzlehre und Periodenbegriff in der Musiktheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Musikwissenschaftliche Publikationen, ed. Herbert Schneider, no. 21 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag,
2002).
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aims to elucidate eighteenth-century ideas of cadence and phrase structure by investigating a
wide range of contemporaneous music-theoretical texts.
Poundie Bursteins work includes an example of a very different kind of study of the
concept of the cadence.16 Rather than surveying the dicta of multiple theorists, Burstein here
elucidates one aspect of cadence in a single theorists work, to wit, Heinrich Schenkers
auxiliary cadence (Hilfskadenz). He thoroughly investigates Schenkers texts and analytic
examples and offers a compelling interpretation of a concept that previously had been poorly
explained by commentators. Burstein finds that the essence of the auxiliary cadence is a
cadential progression in which the tonic harmony, which in Schenkers view normally initiates
cadences, is omitted. One major difference between Bursteins project and those of Schwind
and Waldura is that he aims explicitly to change analytic practice. His article contains
numerous examples of Schenkers use of the auxiliary cadence, and he structures his argument
in such a way that Schenkerians can easily put his conclusions to work in their own analyses.
The present dissertation differs significantly from these three categories of cadence-
related literature. In that it evaluates the concept of the cadence over a broad chronological
sweep, it bears resemblances to the first category, encyclopedia articles. Yet the significantly
greater depth of inquiry found in this work leads to substantial differences from such articles,
including more accurate accounts of historical precedence, concern for the relationship between
theory and practice, and scrutiny of the ways in which cadential theorists drew on non-musical
discourses. In that its primary object of study is cadential doctrine, this dissertation does not fit
16 L. Poundie Burstein, Schenkers Concept of the Auxiliary Cadence, in Essays form the Third
International Schenker Symposium, ed. Allen Cadwallader (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2006), 2-6.
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the second category, in which authors try to infer cadential functioning in a given musical
corpus. The third category is the closest match, yet this works investigation of cadential
doctrines from many different centuries results in several characteristics which are significant
departures from other examples of that category. The most notable of those characteristics are
this dissertations analysis of the history of cadential discourse into three previously
unidentified periods, and the attention paid to conceptual similarities and discrepancies
stretching across centuries. The first of these three periods comprises the pre-history of the
concept of the cadence, and it extends from the dawn of music theorizing in the West (ca. 900
CE) to the start of the sixteenth century. The second period begins with the earliest texts to
present a theory of the cadence proper (understood as a polyphonic progression) in the early
sixteenth century, and lasts about 300 years, until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
final period stretches from the nineteenth century to the present. Thus, this dissertation
features both scope and depth of investigation in a way unmatched by previous studies of the
concept of the cadence, and consequently is able to offer new insights into the object of its
inquiry.
The methodology of this work centers upon close analysis of primary texts. The
foundational body of material for this study consists of written accounts, belonging to what we
now call music theory, that theorize musical closure, and, in particular, selected texts which I
consider to be particularly noteworthy instantiations of trends in that theorization. These texts,
however, are clearly not the only sources relevant to the study of the cadence.
Contemporaneous compositions can provide important an important resource both for
clarifying ambiguities in a given text, and also for testing the degree of fit between theoretical
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pronouncements and actual practice; while they are not central to this dissertations project,
they will be drawn upon when helpful. Nor is consideration of primary texts limited to musical
texts. From their earliest appearances in medieval texts, discussions of musical closure have
been informed by other areas of knowledge, such as the trivial arts of grammar, rhetoric, and
dialectic. Consequently, this dissertation examines the intellectual traditions upon which music
theorists drew, and considers the concept of cadence in relation to developments in the broader
intellectual life of Western Europe.
The first of this studys four chapters examines the first period of theorizing musical
closure, during which a concept of a robustly polyphonic cadential progression had not yet
arisen. Focusing on the conceptualization of closure in medieval chant, it finds that discussions
of the subject from the earliest centuries of this period are limited to brief analogies between
segments of pieces and the idea of punctuation. It was not until the turn of the twelfth century,
in John of Affligems De musica, that a substantial theory of musical closure arose, in which
three different concluding phenomena are aligned with three degrees of syntactic closure in a
given chants text. We will see that Johns breakthrough is due to his adaptation of the full
conceptual richness of the late classical doctrine of punctuation, in which there are three types
of marks with different syntactical and performative implications. This chapter contextualizes
Johns ideas within that grammatico-rhetorical tradition, and also demonstrates the significant
ways in which Johns theory of closure surpassed that of his musical predecessors. It then
proceeds to consider the problematic relationship between Johns doctrine and actual chant
melodies, before concluding by tracing the centuries-long survival of Johns ideas in later
theoretical texts.
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The second chapter considers a little-known cadential doctrine that established our
second period, and the first epoch of theorizing the cadence proper. In the first period, accounts
of closure had only discussed concluding formulae being constituted of one or two independent
voices, even when three- and four-part compositions had become common. In contrast, a new
body of doctrine, of nebulous authorship, arose in early-sixteenth century Cologne that treated
what it called the clausula formalis as a simultaneous conjunction of three or even four
melodic gestures, each of which was stereotypically associated with a particular vocal part.
This conception of the cadence proved very attractive, and persisted in the German tradition for
the next two hundred years. Even longer lasting, however, was the period of cadential
theorizing that the Cologne school initiated. As we will see, a confluence of significant factors
accounts for the disjuncture separating the texts in the Cologne orbit from earlier theories of
closure. One such factor is the identification of the cadence as an important, self-standing object
of theoretical study: conclusive progressions are no longer discussed in the context of long lists
of contrapuntal possibilities, but instead have entire chapters dedicated to their explication.
Another significant factor is the aforementioned insistence on theorists part on describing
cadences as being constituted of three or four voices, even as they struggle to account for the
behavior of these newly added voices. Another significant feature is the imputation of the idea
of structural closure to contrapuntal progressions through the adoption of the term clausula (or
close). Yet in spite of the implications of this onomastic choice, the Cologne school theorists
also initiated a long-lived relational ambiguity between the function of musical closure and
those musical successions which qualify as clausulae formales. This ambiguity results from the
Cologne schools lack of articulation of an explicit connection between the clausula progression
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and the structure of an accompanying text. The second chapter tests different possibilities for
interpreting the link between the clausula formalis and the function of closure by applying them
to contemporaneous compositions; it then proposes a flexible approach to engaging with this
ambiguity that builds upon a rarely noticed contemporaneous division of clausulae progressions
into two classes: those capable of ending entire pieces, and those which are not.
The third chapter delves into the most elaborate efflorescence of the type of cadential
theorizing initiated by the Cologne school: that of Johann Wolfgang Caspar Printz. In the last
quarter of the seventeenth century Printz proposed a system of nine polyphonic cadential types,
and developed a detailed conceptual apparatus to support them. As this chapter elucidates,
part of the motivation for the profusion of cadential types in Printzs system was his tacit
adherence to pedagogical principles that trace their origin to the educational reform movement
established in the mid-sixteenth century by Petrus Ramus. Printzs doctrine also contains many
features with rich musical implications which this chapter teases out. These include one of the
earliest articulations of the idea that listeners can understand one progression to be implied,
even as they hear another (as in an evaded cadence), a related emphasis on the role of the bass
line in cadential functioning, and an incipient theory of hierarchical formal structure.
The final chapter turns to the significant change in cadential theorizing that occurred
around the turn of the nineteenth century. Ever since the days of the Cologne school, authors
had treated the cadence as an important element of music theory, devoting chapters to its
nature and proper compositional disposition. By way of a comparison of the writings of H.C.
Koch and A.B. Marx, this chapter contends that by the turn of the nineteenth century the
concept of the cadence ceased to function as an autonomous element of theoretical concern, and
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instead became subordinate to the newly ascendant concept of musical form. This change was
due in part to a growing predilection for organicist metaphors in music theory, which gave rise
to a new focus on formal concerns, and an attendant reformulation of the role of cadences in
that discourse. This chapter argues that at the end of the eighteenth century, music theory
underwent a transition analogous to the contemporaneous transformation of natural history
into biological study. By examining cadential discourse in light of this analogy, new insight will
be gained into the decreasing prominence of cadential theorizing in this third period, and the
related elevation of musical form into a central element of music-theoretical study, a status
which it continues to hold nearly two centuries later.
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CHAPTER 1
MUSICAL CLOSURE, GRAMMATICO-RHETORICAL DOCTRINE, AND CHANT:
JOHN OF AFFLIGEM
Musical discourse in the West has drawn heavily upon the disciplines of grammar and
rhetoric from the time of its medieval revival in the ninth century. Today the most famous
appropriation from these disciplines for musical ends is likely the seventeenth centurys
development of a doctrine of musical figures (Figurenlehre), borrowing from a tradition in
rhetoric.1 Yet in earlier centuries writers on music instead drew primarily upon methods of
analyzing and demarcating the structure of prose, methods which developed during Antiquity
in the disciplines of rhetoric and grammar. Rhetorical theorists focused on developing a
vocabulary for analyzing speech into its constitutive phrases and sub-phrases, whereas
grammarians formulated a system of punctuation marks to assist the parsing of written texts.
Both of these approaches proved useful to medieval music theorists as they attempted to
describe chant melodies in terms of phrases, their component parts, and their conclusions.
This chapter elucidates the first sophisticated theory of musical closure by
demonstrating its dependence on much older theories of prosal phrase structure and
punctuation. To do so, we will begin by examining accounts representative of the state of
rhetorical and grammatical theory in Antiquity, and will consider how the early medieval
reception of these ideas combined the two into a somewhat uneasily conglomerate theory of
1 See, for example, Patrick McCrelesss survey of music-theoretic appropriations of rhetorical
ideas (McCreless, Music and Rhetoric, in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas
Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 847-79.
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15
punctuation. Thereafter our attention turns to medieval discussions of music. We will see that
writers from the early centuries of the medieval efflorescence of music theorizing did not draw
upon the full apparatus of punctuational concepts and terminology available to them, tending
instead to use that apparatus merely to refer to phrases or phrase demarcations in general
terms. Indeed, it was not until the De musica of John of Affligem (ca. 1100 C.E.) that the full
conceptual power of the ancient worlds rhetorical and grammatical doctrines of phrase
structure and punctuation were put to use in the field of music, giving rise to a number of ideas
about music that continue to resonate today. Particularly noteworthy examples include
discussion of the role of performance in the delineation of musical structure, the question of
what constitutes a complete musical thought, and the earliest articulation of the idea that a
musical event can feign closure, a musical phenomenon which later developed into time-
honored progressions such as the deceptive and evaded cadences. I therefore offer a careful
consideration of Johns treatment of grammatico-rhetorical concepts and musical closure,
examining the particular strands of thought upon which he drew, the alterations he made to
those ideas, and the innovative development in the theory of music which resulted; the
relationship between Johns theory and musical practice is also examined. The chapter
concludes with a demonstration of the surprising longevity of the analogy between different
forms of punctuation and musical endings first developed by John of Affligem, finding that
theorists were still articulating variants of it as late as the middle of the eighteenth century.
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1.1 The Analysis of Speech Structure in Classical Rhetoric
Given the connotations of duplicity and self-serving manipulation of the audience that
the term rhetoric invokes today, it may come as a surprise that the origins of the field of
rhetoric are inextricably linked to pedagogy. The first practitioners of rhetoric for whom
historical attestation exists were itinerant wise men, or sophists ( [sophistai]), who
traveled the Greek-speaking world of the fifth century, B.C.E., and were famously critiqued and
lampooned by Plato in many of his dialogues. Because they were not natives of the cities to
which they traveled, they could not seek direct political power. Rather, they delivered show
piece speeches in public, in which they attempted to attract paying students, and instructional
speeches in private to those students.2 A recurring claim of many of these self-proclaimed
sophoi, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, was that they could convincingly argue either side of an
argument, and, thus, that they could teach their students to deliver compelling speeches and
gain political power.3
This first generation of rhetoricians seems to have guarded the secrecy of their teachings
for reasons of financial self-interest, and this appears to have been the governing model well
2 On the pedagogical and commercial orientation of the sophists, see Laurent Pernot, Rhetoric in
Antiquity, trans. W. E. Higgins (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 12-15.
3 Indeed, many of the show piece speeches demonstrated the orators skill by attempting to
accomplish the seemingly impossible, often by facetiously rehabilitating the image of reprehensible
characters or casting aspersions on heroes. This genre of praising or blaming came to be known as the
genre of epideictic, or display, oratory. For more contextualization of the early sophists and their
thought, see George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994), 17-21.
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17
into the fourth century B.C.E.4 Indeed, the Greek tradition of writing handbooks (
[technai]) addressing the subject of rhetoric in detail only began with the Rhetorica of Aristotle
(384-322 B.C.E.), which he likely wrote in the years about 330 B.C.E. In this treatise and in
similar texts from following generations, Aristotle and later rhetoricians develop a theory of the
structure of speech ( [lexis]), analyzing it into sentences and constituent phrases. Aristotle
proposes a hierarchy of two levels. The higher level of syntactic unit he calls the period
( [periodos], pl. [periodoi]), which he defines as follows: I call the period an
utterance () that has its own beginning and end, and an easily comprehensible
magnitude.5 These periods may be made up of shorter clauses, called colons ( [kla],
sing. [klon]), that is, members, as of a body; alternatively, periods can also be simple
( [aphels]), consisting of a single colon.
At some point in the following two centuries a new, still shorter unit was added to the
hierarchy of period and colon.6 This was the comma ( [komma], pl.
[kommata]), that is, a cutting, incision, or articulation of the utterance into brief segments.
These concepts clearly establish a hierarchical organization of word grouping, but they are far
from strictly defined. Given the amount of information provided in Aristotles treatise and the
4 It was not until the early fourth century that the first formal school of rhetoric was founded, by
Isocrates (436-338 B.C.E.), and his letters, the sole contemporaneous extant source, merely hint at his
pedagogical program.
5
(Aristotle, Rhetorica, III.9, 1409a34-b1).
6 Perhaps the earliest extant Greek texts to use the term colon is the De compositione verborum of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. 20 B.C.E.), but the presence of the concept in the Roman tradition of
rhetoric in the later second century B.C.E. makes it clear that Dionysius was not the first author to use the
term (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum, XXVI, ll. 12-3).
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18
scanty number of extant Greek rhetorical works which survive from the following three
centuries, one cannot reconstruct with certainty precisely how any author would or would not
employ these concepts in practice. Rather, the vagueness of the definitions offered suggests that
students learned the concepts of period, colon, and comma not primarily through such
definitions, but empirically and inductively, through their instructors examples and gradual
honing of the students intuitions.7 Consequently, we should not expect lucid, precise
explanations of this conceptual triad, but rather we should hold fast to its basic hierarchical
relationship while attending to the broader implications of the terms definitions.
Perhaps surprisingly, the concepts of the period, colon, and comma were not often
introduced in later rhetorical treatises as a broadly applicable means of breaking down and
comprehending entire passages. Instead, they usually served as a tool in discussions of literary
style, which was one of the chief concerns of rhetorical education in Greco-Roman Antiquity.
Since young students of rhetoric learned to recognize and create different kinds of style through
analyzing exemplary passages and composing imitations of them, it was important to be able to
recognize common techniques of manipulating normal speech to produce heightened effects.
The most well-known of these techniques became codified in lists of tropes (tropoi) or figures
of speech (exornationes verborum), such as antithesis, asyndeton, and climax. Yet from the time
of Aristotle rhetoricians had used the period and colon (and later the comma) as another means
7 For instance, Augustine of Hippo employs the comma, colon, and period to analyze scriptural
excerpts in his De doctrina christiana, but offers only examples of their use, rather than substantive
explanations of the terms (De doctrina Christiana, IV.7, 11, 13). This passage circulated widely by the
tenth century as an appendix to many copies of Cassiodoruss Institutiones (R. A. B. Mynors,
Introduction, in Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937],
xxx-xxxix).
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19
of describing unusual, marked structuring of words, including successive colons of similar
length (parisosis or isocolon), clauses containing antithetical thoughts (antithesis), and similarity
or dissimilarity of the final syllables of successive phrases (paromoiosis).8 Consequently, later
rhetoricians, such as pseudo-Cicero, often set their treatments of the period, colon, and comma
in the midst of lengthy lists of these figures of speech.9
Despite the paucity of extant Greek treatises from the first and second centuries B.C.E.,
our knowledge of rhetorical doctrine during that period is not impoverished. Starting in the
later second century B.C.E. a Roman tradition of rhetoric arose which doubtless borrowed
heavily from Greek rhetoric of the day. As Harry Caplan notes, the rhetorical treatises written
during the initial decades in which that field was being established in Rome have not survived
intact, and thus the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium (ca. 90s B.C.E.) is the oldest
Roman rhetorical text to survive in its entirety.10 This treatise presents and explains in detail a
fully formed doctrine embracing the conceptual triad of period, colon, and comma, or
continuatio, membrum, and articulus, as the anonymous author translates the terms. Because of
the longstanding erroneous attribution of the Rhetorica ad Herennium to Cicero, this work was
tremendously influential in the medieval period; consequently, it is worthwhile to investigate
its transmission of Greek rhetorical doctrine in some detail.
8 Aristotle, Rhetorica, III.9.
9 [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, IV.xiii.19-xliii.56.
10 [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan in Loeb Classical Library 403 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1954), vii.
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20
Adhering to tradition, Pseudo-Cicero presents the three terms as a hierarchy in which
commas compose colons, which in turn compose periods. Concerning the comma/articulus
(which Cicero calls incisum,) pseudo-Cicero writes: It is called a comma (articulus) when
individual words are separated by pauses in choppy speech,11 e.g. By [your] sharpness, voice,
expression, you terrified your enemies.12 This stipulation that every comma is comprised of
an individual word (by your sharpness is one word in Latin) is much more restrictive than
the Greek conception of commas as merely being shorter than colons. As for the
colon/membrum, pseudo-Cicero invokes a two-colon norm reminiscent of Aristotles first type of
period (the ): Colon (membrum orationis) means an element (res) that is
briefly concluded without the articulation of the complete thought (sententia), which is
continued with a fresh start by another colon, in this way: You were at once benefiting your
enemy . . . That is what we call one colon. This should then be taken up by another [colon], in
this way: and you were injuring your friend.13 The last category, the period/continuatio, is
11 Choppy speech is my rendering of caesa oratione. Lewis and Shorts A Latin Dictionary glosses
this phrase as asyndeton, which is the rhetorical device in which conjunctions are omitted (s.v.
caedo). The examples given by pseudo-Cicero all exhibit asyndeton, but adopting that word in the
translation would give an incorrect impression that the Latin text involved that degree of technical
terminology.
12 Articulus dicitur cum singula verba intervallis distinguuntur caesa oratione, hoc modo:
Acrimonia, voce, vultu adversarios perterruisti ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, IV.xix.26). Translation
adapted from Caplans edition, p. 295.
13 Membrum orationis appellatur res breviter absoluta sine totius sententiae demonstratione,
quae denuo alio membro orationis excipitur, hoc pacto: Et inimico proderas. Id est unum quod
appellamus membrum; deinde hoc excipiatur oportet altero: Et amicum laedebas (ibid.).
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described much more concisely: A period (continuatio) is a compact and uninterrupted
crowding together of words with completion of the thoughts.14
The definitions of these latter two, the colon and the period, both employ the concept of
the sententia (thought or idea), which merits discussion. Through the rest of Antiquity and well
into the Middle Ages rhetorical theorists relied on a poorly defined set of terms having to do
with meaningmost notably sententia, sensus, and significarein their discussions of both
rhetorical and grammatical matters having to do with the analysis of speech. No consistent
differentiation exists in the grammatical corpus between the nouns sententia and sensus; while
some authors, like Isidore of Seville, do attempt to employ them in distinct ways, other authors
use them interchangeably. One of the most common usages of these terms is to invoke the
semantic referent of a given group of words. Another important one refers to a thought, with
overtones of something resembling our modern sense of syntactic structure. For instance,
Pseudo-Ciceros definition of the colon stipulates that it concludes without the articulation of
the complete thought (sententia). To my knowledge, authors from Antiquity and the medieval
period never spell out what distinguishes completion from incompletion in the realm of
thought and meaning. Many authors do, however, provide examples of complete and
incomplete thoughts, and in each example which I have evaluated the authors indication of
whether the thought is complete aligns with my intuition of whether the syntax of the text is
closed off. Due to the lack of conflicting evidence, I choose to assume that the meaning of
completion and incompletion in these texts roughly corresponds to ours. (An important
14 Continuatio est densa et continens frequentatio verborum cum absolutione sententiarum
(ibid., IV.xix.27).
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22
proviso, however, is that grammatical texts from Antiquity and the medieval period do not
appear to have a direct correlate to our modern idea of the simple sentence. The nearest
analogy to our sentence is the concept of the periodus, but classical orators often developed
tremendously long periods, which we would identify as compoundor even run-on
sentences.) Thus, the sententia or (sensus) of a collection of words like The severed hand of
Cicero, being displayed in the Rostra is Ciceros hand itself, but the words also would be
considered to comprise an incomplete sententia. It is also worth noting that some authors seem
to employ sententia or sensus to indicate the verbal entity itselfthe ordered series of
wordsrather than the referent of those words. The verb significare and its derivatives are used
to denote the action of words whereby they represent, express, or convey a thought. From text
to text the precise nuances of these terms can vary, of course, so we will reflect upon their
meanings when the implications are significant.
Through the rest of Antiquity rhetorical theorists increasingly came to rely upon these
ideas of meaning and sense when discussing the comma, colon, and period. For instance, even
though Quintilian (ca. 30-ca. 100 C.E.) adapted these terms to serve his description of prose
rhythm, in which orators or writers employ formulaic metrical patterns at the ends of sentences,
he still describes the comma and colon as thoughts (sensus).15 More specifically, the colon is
an incomplete thought that is rhythmically closed, whereas the comma is a thought that is not.16
15 The subject of prose rhythm is addressed in more detail in the next chapter, section 2.1.
16 In my opinion a comma is a thought which is not closed off by a finished rhythm, and which
commonly is a part of a colon (comma est, ut mea fert opinio, sensus non expleto numero conclusus,
plerumque pars membri) (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IX.4.cxxii); a colon is a thought which is closed
off by rhythms, but is disconnected from the whole substance [of the speech] and completes nothing in
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23
Martianus Capella (fl. 410s-20s C.E.) further intensified the role of signification, and thus
thought, in his definitions of the period, colon, and comma, describing both the colon and
comma as a portion of a speech which signifies (pars orationis significans). The former signifies
in many words (i.e., more than one) something complete, and the latter signifies something
incomplete in fewer words.17
These conceptions of the comma and colon demonstrate the increasing importance of the
role of thought (sententia) in these late-antique definitions. Pseudo-Ciceros description of the
comma as a word distinguished by pauses has completely disappeared, and his rather
mechanical focus on the grouping of more or fewer words in the colon and period has been
largely suppressed in favor of a more insightful description of thought-units that comprise
more or less information, and have greater or lesser degrees of completion. Of course, in both
conceptions the main criterion for judging between period, colon, and comma ends up being the
conclusion (or lack thereof) of the meaning of the words in question; nevertheless, some authors
present their concepts as consisting primarily of analyses of verbal structures per se, while
others more explicitly take account of the semantic content of the thoughts expressed. This
shifting emphasis between analyzing words and analyzing thoughts will continue to be
important in the consideration of punctuation immediately to come.
itself (membrum autem est sensus numeris conclusus, sed a toto corpore abruptus et per se nihil
efficiens) (ibid., IX.4.cxxiii).
17 A colon is a part of speech which expresses in many words something completely (membrum
est pars orationis ex pluribus verbis absolute aliquid significans) (Martianus Capella, De nuptiis, V, 528,
p. 184); a comma, however, is a part of speech which expresses in two or more words something not yet
complete (caesum autem est pars orationis ex duobus aut pluribus verbis dum quicquam absolute
significans) (ibid.).
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1.2 The Grammatical Doctrine of Punctuation in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
From a modern readers perspective, the development of a system of punctuation would
seem to have been almost necessary for classical culture. Greek scribes, and Roman scribes
from the second century C.E. onwards, wrote in continuous script (scriptura continua), in which
all the letters of a text were spaced at roughly equal distances from each other, a practice that
gave no indications of distinctions between words, let alone larger sense units.18 In a context
like this, scribes could have relied on punctuation as a way to help readers intuit the texts
syntactic structure, or even to give aspiring orators indications of appropriate points at which to
breathe or to pause for emphasis. And indeed, such a system of punctuation was developed
and propounded in grammatical textbooks, as we shall see. Yet it is crucial to note that the
practice of punctuation in Antiquity was very different from that of our day. As the
paleographer M. B. Parkes has shown, punctuation marks were never written concurrently with
texts by the original scribes before the sixth century C.E.; rather, they were added to texts by
readers as they attempted to parse the string of letters presented to them in the scriptura
continua style of writing.19
Given this ad hoc nature of early punctuation, it is perhaps unsurprising that in
Antiquity and the medieval period there was often a large discrepancy between the practice of
punctuation and contemporaneous explanations of how punctuation functions. Scribes in
18 Concerning the Latin adoption of scriptura continua and gradual adoption of word spacing in
the medieval period, see Paul Saenger, Space between Words: the Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, Cal.:
Stanford University Press, 1997), 9-17.
19 M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 9-13, 16.
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different locations and periods employed many different signs in a wide variety of ways, and
could even vary their practices substantially within a single manuscript. Although the doctrine
of punctuation developed by grammarians was widely transmitted and conceptually neat, it
did not adapt by expanding to include the variety of functions that scribes desired, so it became
increasingly irrelevant in the medieval period. The development of the practice of punctuation
from Antiquity to the Renaissance has been masterfully explained by Parkes, and music
historians like Leo Treitler have proposed compelling theories of the dependence of early
musical notation on medieval punctuation marks.20 Yet as we shall see, the most sophisticated
medieval theories of musical closure utilize the concepts developed in the doctrine of
punctuation, and largely ignore the complexities of scribal practice. Consequently, we will turn
our attention on this doctrine, focusing on the watershed punctuational theory of the late
Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus (fl. mid-fourth century C.E.).
Before proceeding, there are two things one should note about terminology: first, in this
chapter I retain punctuation-related terms in their original language because authors choice of
terminology is often significant and reveals trends of word selection and doctrinal influences.21
Translating the substantial number of synonyms using the same English words or phrases
would obscure the differences; translating the synonyms differently would suggest to the
20 Parkes, Pause and Effect; Leo Treitler, The Early History of Music Writing in the West, Journal
of the American Musicological Society 35, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 269-73; ibid., Reading and Singing: On the
Genesis of Occidental Music-Writing, Early Music History 4 (1984): 186-208.
21 For example, in Latin texts, earlier authors use both the terms positura and distinctio, with
a tendency to prefer positura when discussing the general phenomenon of punctuation marks. In
Isidores writing the term distinctio has fallen out of fashion, but by the time of John of Affligem
distinctio has replaced positura as the term of choice.
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26
English reader a greater variety of concepts than is actually in play. Secondly, most
grammatical authors use the term distinctio (originally stigm in Greek) to indicate all three
punctuation marks in general, and also to refer specifically to the most final punctuation mark,
the plena distinctio (teleia stigm).
As is the case with Latin rhetorical theorists, Donatus drew upon a much older Greek
tradition in the creation of his grammar textbook. This tradition stretches back to Dionysius of
Thrax (ca. 100 B.C.E.), whose Ars grammatica (Treatise on Grammar) was the foundational text of
the Greco-Roman grammatical project, and contains the oldest extant theory of punctuation.22
Surprisingly, despite the path-breaking stature of Dionysiuss Ars grammatica, its teachings on
punctuation do not appear to have become integral to the art of Greek grammar: virtually none
of the extant Greek grammatical works transmits any form of its punctuation doctrine, other
than the Byzantine-era family of commentaries specific to this text.23 Indeed, it was not until the
flourishing of Roman grammar in the mid-fourth century C.E. that the doctrine of punctuation
was again discussed in a clear and thorough fashion. At least six independent treatises from
about this period contain statements concerning punctuation, and many more treatises gloss
and amplify those six. Of the six treatises, the Ars maior of Aelius Donatus was by far the most
influential in later times, and its treatment of punctuation contains all the elements of classical
theory that were employed by authors in succeeding generations.
22 Dionysius of Thrax, Ars Grammatica, 6.
23 Several fragments attributed to a certain Melampodos transmit pieces of this doctrine, but they
are not sufficient to explain the system of punctuation on their own. These fragments are printed in M.
Hubert, Corpus stigmatologicum minus, Archiuum Latinitatis Medii Aeui (Bulletin du Cange) 37 (1970):
13.
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27
Because Donatuss account of the punctuation marks presents largely the same
information as that of Dionysius Thrax, but in an expanded and clarified fashion, we will
proceed directly to his account:
There are three positurae or distinctiones, which the Greeks call (theseis)24: distinctio,
subdistinctio, and media distinctio. A distinctio is where a complete thought (sententia) is
finished; we place its mark by the top of the letter. A subdistinctio is where not much of
the thought remains [unsaid], which [remainder], although necessarily separate, is soon
to be provided (inferendum); we place its mark by the bottom of the letter. A media
distinctio is where almost as much of the thought remains as has already been said, and
yet it is necessary to breathe; we place its marks by the middle of the letter. In reading, a
complete thought is called a period; its parts are colons and commas.25
At the core of the doctrine of punctuation which Donatus borrows from Dionysius Thrax is a
system of three marks (positurae;26 stigmai, sing. stigm in Dionysiuss Greek). All take the
form of simple dots, like the period in modern punctuation, and differ only by their position on
the page: one sits beside the top of a [capital] letter (), another beside the bottom of a letter (.),
and the final beside the middle of a letter (). The first of these, the distinctio, seems to
correspond quite closely to the modern sense of the period mark: it indicates the conclusion of a
24 Curiously, no Greek texts seem to survive that use the term in this manner (The Greek-English
Lexicon of Liddell, Scott, and Jones offers only Donatuss Latin text as a source for this meaning of the
term [s.v. ]), which suggests that Donatus (or an earlier scholar) was drawing in part upon
a non-extant Greek textual tradition.
25 Tres sunt positurae uel distinctiones quas Graeci uocant, distinctio, subdistinctio,
media distinctio. distinctio est, ubi finitur plena sententia: huius punctum ad summam litteram ponimus.
subdistinctio est, ubi non multum superest de sententia, quod tamen necessario separatum mox
inferendum sit; huius punctum ad imam litteram ponimus. media distinctio est, ubi fere tantum de
sententia superest, quantum iam diximus, cum tamen respirandum sit: huius punctum ad mediam
litteram ponimus. in lectione tota sententia periodos dicitur, cuius partes sunt cola et commata
(Donatus, Ars grammatica 612).
26 Although Donatuss introductory sentence treats positura and distinctio as equivalent, I prefer to
employ the term positura when discussing this grammatical doctrine, and reserve distinctio to refer
specifically to the mark that concludes a complete thought.
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28
complete thought (plena sententia). Here the term sententia functions in multiple ways,
referring to the words on the page beside which the mark is place, to the semantic referent of a
group of words, and to the quality of closure exhibited by those words. The distinctio, in
contrast, refers to the written mark itself, and not to the semantic or verbal unit that it
demarcates. The second mark, the subdistinctio, indicates a minor division in the flow of the
thought, and Donatus suggests that it comes towards the end of a given thought.27 The last
type, the media distinctio, refers to breathing. In contrast to the previous two positurae, which
mark minor or major divisions of thought, the media distinctio comes into play at the point when
suitable thought divisions are furthest away: when almost as much of the phrase remains
[unsaid] as has already been said. Donatuss further association of this mark with breathing is
noteworthy, since it inserts seemingly incongruous performative concerns into a doctrine that,
at least explicitly, is concerned explicitly with the realm of thought and meaning, and the
analysis of the degree of something resembling syntactic closure. This importation of issues of
breathing into punctuational matters is doubtless due to the Greek traditions conception of the
analogous mark (called the mes stigm), in which the sign is used to indicate where one should
breathe.28
The last sentence of the passage by Donatus merits special attention, because it lays the
ground for a new conceptual relationship between the positurae and rhetorical analysis that
music theorists later exploited. (In the ancient and early medieval grammatical and rhetorical
27 Donatuss description of the subdistinctio adds to Dionysius Thraxs description of the
analogous mark, which describes it merely as the sign of an incomplete thought (Dionysius of Thrax, Ars
Grammatica, 6).
28 Ibid.
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29
texts no such relationship is to be found: the two conceptual triads of period, colon, comma and
distinction, subdistinction, and medial distinction seem to occupy parallel universes, isolated
from each other.) In our excerpts final sentence, Donatus briefly mentions the period, colon,
and comma, and states that the first consists of the latter two. Although this simple statement
does not assert any explicit connection between these rhetorical terms and the doctrine of
positurae, Donatuss decision to place it immediately after his discussion of punctuation suggests
that he sees some connection between the two terminological triads. And indeed, there are
intriguing similarities between the first two positurae, in particular, and the concepts of the
period and colon, in that both categories make reference to the concept of the thought and its
completion or incompletion; the positurae could be used to indicate the period, colon, and
comma. Yet there are two significant reasons to be wary of these conceptual similarities. The
first has already been mentioned: there is no evidence that authors before Donatus had drawn
any connection between the two. The concepts of the period and colon belonged to the study of
rhetoric, whereas the punctuation marks arose in the field of grammar; the fact that the concepts
belonged to different disciplines may be responsible for the lack of connections made between
them.29 The second reason is that the rhetorical and grammatical concepts do not correspond
perfectly to each other. Period and colon were primarily used in the analysis of figures of
speech in the heightened language of oratory or orations, and refer either to a given group of
29 This is one of several respects in which Donatus blurs the strict delineation between the fields
of rhetoric and grammar that had been championed by Quintilian (Institutio II.i.4-6, cited in James J.
Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974;
reprint ed. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001], 33). For more
on Donatuss blending of rhetoric and grammar in book III of the Ars maior, see Murphy, Rhetoric in the
Middle Ages, 32-4.
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words or to the thought that those words express. The distinctio and subdistinctio, in contrast,
appear to have served a more pedestrian function: they seem to have been invented to assist
readers in their attempts to sound out the text by parsing the string of letters into words and
units of thought. The terms do not signify a group of words or a thought; rather, they refer to
physical marks, which in turn indicate either the end of an incomplete component of a thought
or the word that completes a thought.
Surprisingly, this fleeting incursion of rhetorical concepts into a grammar text proved to
be tremendously long-lived, which can be seen in the fact that practically all accounts of the
positurae in the seven centuries after Donatus at least preserve his mention of the period-colon-
comma triad.30 But many do more than that. For the mere implication of a relationship
between that rhetoric-derived triad and the positurae made by Donatus did not remain long
remain the status quo, due to the wide circulation of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (ca.
560-636). Here, in a dramatic change from all extant punctuation doctrine prior to this, each
kind of punctuation simply is a different phrase type, and yet at the same time is also the
written mark that indicates the phrase:31
30 M. Hubert discusses the grammatical reception of these three terms and other related triads
exhaustively (Le vocabulaire de la ponctuation aux temps mdivaux: un cas dincertitude lexicale,
Archiuum Latinitatis Medii Aeui [Bulletin du Cange] 38 [1971-2]: 80ff.).
31 R. W. Mller speculates that this aspect of Isidores doctrine may, in fact, be older: he posits
that it could come from the lacuna in Charisiuss grammatical treatise, or perhaps from the Bobbienser
Mischhandschrift. Unfortunately, Mller does not elaborate his claim or provide any support for it.
Based on this authors acquaintance with Isidores discussion of music and its substantial divergences
from earlier musical texts, it seems entirely possible that Isidore himself is responsible for the innovations
found in his treatment of punctuation. Thus, this author sees no reason to accept Mllers hypothesis as
it stands (Rudolph Wolfgang Mller, Rhetorische und syntaktische Interpunktion: Untersuchungen zur
Pausenbezeichnung im antiken Latein, Ph.D. diss., Eberhard-Karls-Universitt zu Tbingen, 1964, 75).
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31
A positura is a mark written to distinguish meaning (sensus) through colons, commas,
and periods. When it is added appropriately, it shows us the meaning of a reading.
They are called positurae either because they are notated with positioned (positis) points,
or because the voice is lowered (deponitur) there for a [brief] span of time appropriate to
the distinction. The Greeks call them , and the Latins positurae. The first positura
is called subdistinctio, and also comma. The media distinctio follows; it [is] also [called]
colon. Last is the distinctio, which closes an entire thought (sententia); it [is] also
[called] period, the parts of which, as we have said, are colons and commas. The
difference [between these colons and commas] is shown by points placed in different
positions. For when at the beginning of the utterance there is not yet a complete unit
with regard to its meaning, and yet it is necessary to breathe, a comma is made, that is, a
sense fragment; its mark is placed by the bottom of the letter, and it is called a
subdistinctio, from [the fact] that it receives a point below (subtus), i.e., by the bottom of
the letter. Where, however, in the sequel the group of words (sententia) manifests its
meaning, but something of the groups fullness yet remains left over, a colon is made;
we mark the middle of the letter with a point, and we call it a media distinctio, since we
place the point by the middle of the letter (ad mediam litteram). But when, speaking step
by step, we effect a complete closure (clausula) of the thought, there is a period; we place
a point by the top of the letter, and this is called a distinctio, that is, a disjunction, since
it has marked off (separavit) a complete thought.32
As this account of the positurae demonstrates, Isidores association of punctuation marks with
closure of thought, or lack thereof, is traditional, and one can see similarities between it and the
classical punctuation theory that stretches all the back to Dionysius Thrax. Yet Isidores
conflation of rhetorical phrase with punctuation mark leads to fundamental differences from his
32 Positura est figura ad distinguendos sensus per cola et commata et periodos, quae dum ordine
suo adponitur, sensum nobis lectionis ostendit. Dictae autem positurae vel quia punctis positis
adnotantur, vel quia ibi vox pro intervallo distinctionis deponitur. Has Graeci vocant, Latini
posituras. Prima positura subdistinctio dicitur; eadem et comma. Media distinctio sequens est; ipsa et
cola. Ultima distinctio, quae totam sententiam cludit, ipsa est periodus; cuius, ut diximus, partes sunt cola
et comma; quarum diversitas punctis diverso loco positis demonstratur. Ubi enim initio pronuntiationis
necdum plena pars sensui est, et tamen respirare oportet, fit comma, id est particula sensus, punctusque
ad imam litteram ponitur; et vocatur subdistinctio, ab eo quod punctum subtus, id est ad imam litteram,
accipit. Ubi autem in sequentibus iam sententia sensum praestat, sed adhuc aliquid superest de
sententiae plenitudine, fit cola, mediamque litteram puncto notamus; et mediam distinctionem vocamus,
quia punctum ad mediam litteram ponimus. Ubi vero iam per gradus pronuntiando plenam sententiae
clausulam facimus, fit periodus, punctumque ad caput litterae ponimus; et vocatur distinctio, id est
disiunctio, quia integram separavit sententiam (Isidore, Etymologiae I.20).
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predecessors. In the classical punctuation doctrine of Donatus and others, the full distinctio
indicates the end of a completed thought. In Isidores theory, the term distinctio all at once
refers to the mark (figura) which is placed after a given word, to the collection of words
(pronuntiatio) that is thus demarcated, and therefore also to the completed thought (tota
sententia) which those words express. Once the positurae take on these additional meanings of
word-group and thought, Isidores retention of the performative implications of breathing for
the comma seems all the more incongruous. Indeed, grammarians in the four centuries after
Isidore tended to minimize this aspect of the traditional punctuation doctrine, often going so far
as to omit it entirely.33
Isidores account of the positurae is also noteworthy because it strives toward a more
complex understanding of sensus and sententia than in earlier texts. As we have noted, authors
like Donatus and Cassiodorus use the terms in practically indistinguishable ways, to refer to the
referents of a group of words, something resembling the syntactic structure of those words, and
to the words themselves. Isidore often exhibits a similar degree of ambiguity. For instance, in
the opening sentences of the quotation one could translate sensus as meaning, or, just as
plausibly, as structure. Similarly, his definition of the distinctio as something that closes an
33 Four related Donatus commentaries from the ninth century all minimize the concept of
breathing, and each does so in a different way. Sedulius Scottus gives the Donatus lemma, but does not
mention breathing at all in his commentary; he later quotes the entirety of Cassiodoruss account of the
positurae, which is one of the few pre-Isidore sources not to mention breathing (In Donati artem maiorem
52-3). Murethachs only acknowledgment of breathing is that he glosses it is necessary to breathe
(respirandum sit) with pause (repausandum), which shifts the emphasis from respiration to the
articulation of the meaning (In Donatem 44). The Ars Lavreshamensis does not include the phrase and yet
it is necessary to breathe in the lemma, so the issue of breathing never arises (185). Lastly, Remigiuss
commentary rephrases Donatus, rather than giving lemmas, and he never mentions breathing at all
(Commentum 230-1). See the bibliography for full citations of these sources.
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entire sententia could equally well refer to group of words or thought. Yet later in the
passage, Isidore clearly attempts to articulate a more sophisticated understanding of these
ideas. There, he establishes what seems to be a mutually exclusive contrast between
sententia, which refers only to a collection of words, and sensus, which indicates the
semantic referent of those words: Where, however, in the sequel the group of words (sententia)
manifests its meaning (sensus), but something of the groups fullness yet remains left over, a
colon is made . . . Here it makes little sense to think of sententia and sensus being
interchangeable; instead, a group of words invokes those words semantic referent, but it is
lacking the words necessary for it to attain the fullness (plenitudo) of something approaching
syntactic closure. Unfortunately, Isidore does not consistently employ these terms in a way that
reinforces this sophisticated understanding, but this passage does demonstrate his efforts to
articulate notions of groupings of words, meaning, and syntactic structure as distinguishable,
though related, concepts.
In spite of all this theorizing abou