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The Alia Musica And The Carolingian Conception Of Mode, Matthew R J Nace

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Alia musica is perhaps the most idiosyncratic of the early treatises on the ecclesiastical modes. It is a composite made up of at least three independent treatises and additional commentary, and the majority of the scholarly attention that it has thus far received has been devoted to questions of dating and authorship, as well as to the place of the Alia musica in the development of the octave species paradigm of modality. However, the majority of the treatise is dedicated to the explanation of a complex harmonic numerology that applies the fundamental relation 12:9:8:6 (which generate the intervals of …