Explanation
Background
Technical Notes
Search Engines
Future Plans
Search by Treatise
Homepage THEMA now comprises fourteen treatises transcribed from the eighteen manuscripts to which I had access thanks to the generous privileges granted me by their respective libraries. I retain microfilm or photocopies of almost all of them. Seven of the manuscript copies have been proofread during the summer of 1996 and each is appropriately marked.
The fluidity of hypertext in a peculiar way reflects that of medieval scribal-based textuality. In effect, the margins have been restored. In those margins, better known to all as hypertext links, we may include references to other manuscripts, commentary, translations, and editions. The most striking characteristic of the treatises in this database is that, with the possible exception of the Vatican Organum Treatise (not yet in hypertext), none of these texts is an "original." These are all copies, copies of copies, and in many cases copies made from two or more exemplars of same or different material compiled in a new order, with insertions, deletions, and changes that suited a purpose now beyond anything but hypothetical reconstruction. These texts simply do not conform to authorial criteria provided by a print-based technology. Hypertext recaptures something of the original context of these treatises, which are essential to restoring most of the music of the thirteenth century.
[ ] indicate text added just above a line of text (supra lineam). [[ ]] indicate marginal text in a manuscript. In some cases such material is a correction of the copyist's work; in others, it may be an addition or comment, that is, a gloss. Rubrics appear between caret (^) signs, and, where I have provided an obvious resolution or restoration, hairpins (< >) are used. { } indicate text that has been excised or corrected by a scribe. L means a notated longa, B, a brevis, and H a semibrevis; H-H-H or similar indicates a series of currentes. Ligatures are encoded with modified Ludwig abbreviation. For example, CC means a cum-cum ligature and the lower case letters following indicate pitch. Uppercase "P" indicates a descending plica and lowercase "p" indicates and ascending one. A ligature configuration that is out of the ordinary will be indicated by placing an "=" to link appropriate components (for example Bg=2OC). The percent symbol (%) indicates a reading that cannot be derived from what is inscribed but which may make sense. The asterisk means "sic."
I have retained the "punctuation" of the medieval text. Thus periods, semicolons, commas, colons, etc., do not conform to modern standards of punctuation, the modern sense for which the medieval reader would probably have relied on Latin syntax. Medieval scribal practice included a hierarchical organization of text indicated by the size of the initial character of the first word of a section, a paragraphus or mark not unlike the modern proofreading symbol for "paragraph," and rubrication, that is, the use of color (most often red) to denote sections of text. Some texts are divided into capitula, that is "chapters," and some rely on a conventional phrase such as "sequitur de...." Such visible signs for which there are no print-based equivalent became "!" "!!" and "$" for painted initial letter, extra large or historiated initial letter, and paragraphus respectively. Roman and Arabic numerals conform to the manuscript sources.
THEMA includes "@ functions." Passages in some treatises are related to some in other treatises, and I have begun to link these passages directly. Thus, if you click an@ in the treatise you are reading, you will be taken to the related passage(s) in other treatises and back again to your point of departure. This allows exploration of the more significant intertextual features of these texts.
All treatise files presently end with a polar bear image that, when clicked, will take you back to the top of the file. Eventually the clickable frog image for "explanation" in each treatise file will take you to an "explanation" for that treatise alone and not to this general information file, which will be accessible only from the THEMA homepage.
There are four ways to search for a specific word or string of text in THEMA. If you are using a high-quality web browser, you should have a "Find" function on your button bar. Scribal practice is variable, however, and if you search for a standardized twentieth-century spelling you may miss some crucial passages because the word you are searching for appears differently in the manuscript. "Hocket" presents us with a good example, for it appears with great variability.
Thus, a bar of twenty common 
Keyword Search terms is set at the head of each treatise. If you
click "hocket" within this bar in the Discantus positio
vulgaris, it will take you to "ochetus" in the treatise.
Click on the keyword within the manuscript, and it will take you
back to the Keyword Search bar. If there is more than one passage
that seemed relevant to your search, each instance has been linked
so that Keyword Search will take you to all of them and then back
to the Keyword Search bar.
Some treatises mention specific texts or music of a clausula,
motet, conductus, or chanson. Many of these are now highlighted
and when you click them you will be taken to a "background"
file that will give you information on that piece of music and
where it may be found in primary manuscript sources. If another
theoretical document also mentions that same work, you will find
a clickable link
to that passage from the background file. For example, the Alleluia.
Posui adiutorium is mentioned in three treatises and the background
file provides a link to the relevant passages in Habito de
ipsa plana musica, the De musica mensurabili, and Anonymous
4. The folios of practical sources are given in parentheses following
the siglum for the manuscript, and if you click the dolphin
on the background file screen, you will arrive at a List of Manuscripts
that will describe the source in detail if you click the siglum
on the search bar. The only way, at present, to retrace your steps
from the List of Manuscripts is to use the "Back" button
on your browser.
The final means of searching in THEMA is by the@ functions described in the Technical Notes above. @ functions were developed to search large strings of text from treatise to treatise. However, I have occasionally found them useful for encoded musical examples that are not identified by text. In this context, @ will take you to a background file.
Eventually, I would like to make this database as useful for the typical undergraduate or interested non-specialist as I hope it to be for the scholar trained in the fascinating but not widely shared exigencies of medieval textuality. Thus, I predict a growth of clickable "hot spots" (Java applets) that would provide an aural translation of the better known passages, for example Anonymous 4's description of Leoninus and Perotinus, and a "marginal" center that would guide one to them. The citations of examples will include graphics. Playback of recordings of some of the musical works mentioned in the treatises would also seem realizable in the future. References to critical editions, scholarly journals, and other material essential to understanding these texts will be made available via hypertext links, so that research will be facilitated. In short, by the time paper is largely the concern of antiquarians, the traditions of thirteenth-century music will remain, sed infinita multiplicitate, ac mira quadam flexibilitate cantui suo concordat.
Da Capo