Saint-Maur · 1673

La science et la pratique du plain-chant

dom Pierre-Benoît de Jumilhac · Paris, Louis Bilaine · one quarto volume, eight parts

Chant taken as a measurable thing before it is taken as a taste. The full title states the programme: where everything belonging to practice is established by the principles of the science — intervals, proportions, modes, and the authorities, ancient and medieval, printed at length so that the reader can check them.

Authordom Pierre-Benoît de Jumilhac, 1611-1682 — the book itself names only “a Benedictine of the Congregation of Saint-Maur”

First editionParis, Louis Bilaine, 1673

ExtentOne quarto; XIV, VIII and 400 pages, with music

AfterwardsReprinted once, Paris, 1847, by Alexandre Le Clercq and Théodore Nisard

Read itBnF, Arsenal, 4-S-3844, digitised on Gallica (ark:/12148/bpt6k1042625s)

A book without a name on it

The title page names no author: Par un Religieux Benedictin de la Congregation de S. Maur. The congregation published in that manner often enough, and readers supplied what the printer had left out. On the Arsenal copy an early hand has written, immediately under the printed byline, (Jumilhac, bénédictin). On another copy a reader was more precise still, sending whoever came after him to page 184 of dom Le Cerf de La Viéville’s bibliography of the Maurist authors, printed at The Hague in 1726.

Pierre-Benoît de Jumilhac was born in the Limousin in 1611 and died at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris on 21 March 1682. He had governed houses of the congregation — Saint-Julien at Tours, Saint-Nicaise at Reims, Chelles — before coming to Paris in 1666, where the book was finished. It was printed for Louis Bilaine, whose shop stood in the great hall of the Palais, at the sign of the Grand César and the Palm; eight years later the same bookseller paid for Mabillon’s De re diplomatica.

Two pages printed as one table: the Greek system of tetrachords and the hand of Guido of Arezzo — Pages 314-315, printed across the opening: the Greek system of tetrachords drawn as nested arcs, and the hand of Guido of Arezzo with the solmisation syllables written along the joints of the fingers.Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arsenal, 4-S-3844 · public domain

Eight parts, and the evidence apart

The first six parts move from the nature and the antiquity of the science to sounds and intervals, the measure of the notes, the modes, the cadences and their silences, and at last the practice of singing. The seventh is unlike the rest: headed Des notes & authoritez, it prints from page 204, in double columns and in Latin, the passages that the small figures in the margin of the French text point to — Aristoxenus, Guido, Mersenne, Glareanus, Gaffurius, each quotation closed by its reference. A reader who doubts an assertion in the argument can turn to the back and read the sentence it rests on.

The eighth part holds the examples: the tables of the gamut and its hexachords, the twelve modes natural and transposed with the Greek names of the strings in the margin, and the species of the octave set in square notation on four-line staves. It is the fullest seventeenth-century account we have of how these melodies were understood by the men who sang them daily.

Tables of the twelve modes, natural and transposed, printed across two pages — Pages 317-318: the tables of the twelve modes, transposed above and natural below, ruled column by column and annotated with the Greek names of the strings.Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arsenal, 4-S-3844 · public domain

Why it is here

Because the Studium teaches chant the same way round: the practice first, in the mouths of men who sing it every day, and behind the practice the reasons — the intervals, the modes, the manuscript evidence. The course of October 2026 is given by two Benedictine monks; what Jumilhac set out to prove in 1673, that the practice can be grounded and not merely inherited, is the assumption on which the UNESCO dossier for Gregorian chant is being prepared.

Page 328: the species of the octave set in square plainchant notation on four-line staves — Page 328: the species of the octave in square notation on four-line staves, each with its solmisation syllables beneath, and below them the Latin verses that summarise the nine intervals proper to melody.Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arsenal, 4-S-3844 · public domain

SourcesThe four pages reproduced here are from the copy of the first edition in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, shelfmark 4-S-3844, digitised by the Bibliothèque nationale de France on Gallica, ark:/12148/bpt6k1042625s; the work is in the public domain. The collation and the shelfmark follow the BnF catalogue. The manuscript attributions quoted are those written on the Arsenal copy and on the copy at Lyon.