le Bede was the light of the eighth century, and the glory
of the Anglo-Saxons. His treatise upon music, however, deals in
theories and generalities, throwing no light upon the music of his
day. The elevation of his ideas may be seen in the following sentence,
with which he introduces his subject: "It is to be remarked that all
art is contained in reason; and so it is that music consists and
develops itself in relations of numbers." ("_Notandum est, quod omnis
ars in ratione continetur. Musica quoque in ratione numerorum
consistit atque versatur._")

Only two treatises upon music have come down to us from the ninth
century. The first is by a monk, named Aurelian, in the abbey of Reome
or Montier-Saint-Jean, in the diocese of Langes, who appears to have
lived about the year 850. His book, called "_Musicae Disciplina_," in
twenty chapters, is a compilation of older anecdotes and theories,
throwing no light upon the actual condition of the art in his day. The
sole remaining work of this period was by Remi, of Auxerre, who had
opened the course of theology and music at Rheims in 893, and
afterward at Paris in the earlier years of the tenth century. His
book, like the preceding, is wholly devoted to the ideas of the
ancients.

II.

This brings us to the first writer on music, during the Middle Ages,
whose work throws any important light upon the actual practice of the
art in the period when it was written, namely, Hucbald, a monk of the
convent of St. Armand, in the diocese of Tournay, in French Flanders.
Gerbert gives two treatises upon music, as having come down to us from
this author. Nevertheless there is reason to doubt the genuineness of
one of them--whereof presently. The first of these, the so-called
"Treatise," from a manuscript in the library of the Franciscan convent
at Strassburg, collated with another from Cesene, bears this title:
"_Incipit Liber Ubaldi Peritissimi Musici de Harmonica Institutione_."
The other is called "_Hucbaldi Monachi Elonensis Musica
Enchiriadis_," or "Manual of Music, by the Monk Hucbald." The former
work is of little interest, and if a genuine production of Hucbald's,
probably belongs, as M. Fetis suggests, to his earlier period, when he
was still teaching at Rheims, along with his former classmate, Remi,
of Auxerre.

The manual of Hucbald is not to be regarded as a complete treatise
upon music. It has three principal subjects, namely: The formation of
a new system of notation, t