Hucbald
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Hucbald (Hucbaldus, Hubaldus) (c. 840 – June 20, 930) was a music theorist, composer, teacher, writer, hagiographer, and Benedictine monk. He wrote the first systematic work on western music theory, incorporating the differences between contemporary and ancient practice.
He was born at the monastery of Saint Amand near Tournai, in or about 840. He studied at the monastery, where his uncle Milo occupied an important position. Hucbald made rapid progress in the acquirement of various sciences and arts, including that of music, and at an early age composed a hymn in honour of St Andrew, which met with such success as to excite the jealousy of his uncle. It is said that Hucbald in consequence was compelled to leave St Amand, and started an independent school of music and other arts at Nevers.
In 860, however, he was at St Germain d'Auxerre, bent upon completing his studies, and in 872 he was back again at St Amand as the successor in the headmastership of the convent school of his uncle, to whom he had been reconciled in the meantime. Between 883 and 900 Hucbald went on several missions of reforming and reconstructing various schools of music, including those of St. Bertin and Rheims; but in the latter year he returned to St Amand, where he remained to the day of his death on June 20, 930.
The only work which can positively be ascribed to him is his De harmonica institutione (probably written about 880). The Musica Enchiriadis, published with other writings of minor importance in Gerbert's Scriptores de Musica, and containing a complete system of musical science as well as instructions regarding notation, has now been proved to have originated about half a century later than the death of the monk Hucbald, and to have been the work of an unknown writer belonging to the close of the 10th century and possibly also bearing the name of Hucbald. This work is celebrated chiefly for an essay on a new form of notation described in the present day as Dasien notation.
The author of the De harmonica institutione wrote numerous lives of the saints and a curious poem on bald men, dedicated to Charles the Bald.
[edit] Weblinks
- musicologie.org Complete note. Writings on the music, sources, bibliography, documents. In French
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
