The manuscript Seville, Biblioteca Colombina y Capitular 5-2-25, a
composite of dozens of theoretical treatises, is one of the primary
witnesses to late medieval music theory. Its numerous copies of
significant texts have been the focus of substantial scholarly attention
to date, but the shorter, unattributed, or fragmentary works have not
yet received the same scrutiny. In this monograph, Cook demonstrates
that a small group of such works, linked to the otherwise unknown
Magister Johannes Pipudi, is in fact much more noteworthy than previous
scholarship has observed. The not one but two copies of De arte cantus
are in fact one of the earliest known sources for the Libellus cantus
mensurabilis, purportedly by Jean des Murs and the most widely copied
music theory treatise of its day, while Regulae contrapunctus, Nota
quod novem sunt species contrapunctus, and a concluding set of notes in
Catalan are early witnesses to the popular Ars contrapuncti treatises
also attributed to des Murs. Disclosing newly discovered biographical
information, it is revealed that Pipudi is most likely one Johannes
Pipardi, familiar to Cardinal Jean de Blauzac, Vicar-General of Avignon.
Cook provides the first biographical assessment for him and shows that
late fourteenth-century Avignon was a plausible chronological and
geographical milieu for the Seville treatises, hinting provocatively at
a possible route of transmission for the Libellus from Paris to Italy.
The monograph concludes with new transcriptions and the first English
translations of the treatises.
