Guido of Arezzo's 'Regule ritmice': A Verse Translation

Ken Stephenson, University of Oklahoma

Twixt musicians and mere singers, distance is not minimal.
The latter say, the former grasp, the knowledge that is seminal.
For one who does what he can't fathom, we define an animal.

Guido of Arezzo's Regule ritmice presents much of the material found in his Micrologus but in verse form. Present-day English speakers can become acquainted with Guido's ideas through Warren Babb's translation of the Micrologus and through Dolores Pesce's prose translation of Regule ritmice. But the effect of the original verse treatise can be approximated only by means of a verse translation: in metrical, rhyming lines. This new translation closely follows Guido's line plan, rhyme scheme, and figurative language.

Guido's talent and desire for teaching young people comes through in the poem. While the mathematical details of monochord division seem rushed and unclear here compared with their presentation in Guido's other work, verse treatises do not necessarily help with learning as much as with memorization.

The last lines rehearse much of the same material but in a more esoteric form: the medieval stressed iambic meter gives way to a classical, length-based hexameter, the grammar gets more difficult to parse, and the language uses a different, loftier vocabulary. The extreme difference in style suggests a second author, one who, far from thinking Guido's poem too difficult, believed that any material this important deserved a more sophisticated presentation.