A Chant Treatise in the Service of Two Monastic Traditions of the Modern Era

Abstract

The present study discusses a chant theory treatise preserved in the Carthusian compilation manuscript (CZ-Pu I F 17) and based on the Franciscan Hermann Mott’s Musices Choralis Medulla (1670). It sheds new light on the background of the Carthusian arrangement and its connection to the Franciscan original by comparing both versions and trying to discover why the Franciscan treatise was chosen as an exemplar, who the author of the Carthusian treatise was, when and where the Carthusian version was written and used, and finally, through a study of its context and the information given in its manuscript source, how it could be transmitted and what it meant for the Carthusian order.

Keywords

• carthusians
• franciscans
• plainchant
• music theory
• hermann mott