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Although it is not expressed in the title, this new book by professor Matjaž Barbo deals with the aesthetics of music; its chapters discuss classical topics of musical aesthetics, emphasizing to some extent issues that have dominated recent philosophical discourse on music.

In his seminal work Vom Musikalisch-Schonen Eduard Hanslick came to the conclusion that the ancient world did not know music in the proper sense of the word. In Hanslick's view it was essential for a piece of music to exhibit “sonically moving forms”. As may be seen from the analysis of the appropriate passages in the Platonic corpus, nothing comparable to that concept of Hanslick’s existed in the ancient philosophy of music; it was by quite other qualities that the ancient world assessed the instances of mousike.

V poglavju, ki je v Heglovih Predavanjih o estetiki namenjeno glasbi, se je filozof ukvarjal tudi z vprašanjem glasbene vsebine. Po njegovem mnenju glasba sicer lahko izraža različna človeška razpoloženja, vendar to ni njeno bistvo. Pomembneje je, da se človek, subjekt v njej srečuje sam s sabo. Kot taka je glasba neodvisna od zunanje vsebine. S tem je Hegel v svojo estetiko sicer vgradil staro teorijo afektov, a jo je tudi presegel.

Historically, the harmoniai, presenting the central concept of Plato’s discussion of music, should be interpreted as musical scales. Yet it is difficult to explain, in which way musical scales could assume ethical characters, as asserted by Plato. Socrates, while acknowledging his ignorance of the harmoniai, asserts that there is a need to retain two harmoniai representing two different ways of life. This wording suggests that rather than commenting on music of his time, Plato just by way of theoretical speculation envisaged a need to introduce a concept by which the differences in music could be explained. Thus, rather than the actual scales, the harmoniai appear to be a concept without a specific meaning; a concept that would be able to assume any technical characteristics of music, not yet explored in Plato’s time, however, that could explain the ethical characters of actual melodies.

The numerous musical scenes in Iliad are approached from three different aspects: (i) to a limited extent they allow the technical description of the music played or sung; (ii) they are discussed from the viewpoint of the music's social function; (iii) they disclose the conception of music in the homeric world and its aesthetic impact on homeric people.

Proceeding from some discussions of the topic from the last two decades (T. C Mark, G. Tomlinson, P. Kivy, R. Scruton) the following three theses are developed and proposed: 1. The differences between music and non-interpretative arts (literature, painting etc.) are not as substantial as generally assumed. It is essential to art in general that it allows and even calls for interpretation. Thus, the disparity between literature (and other non-interpretative arts) on the one hand and music on the other appears to be limited to the fact that in the former the reader assumes the role of her or his own interpreter as well, whereas in the latter it is to professionals that performing and interpreting is entrusted. 2. The early music movement has discovered practices and set up standards without which it is nowadays inconceivable to perform musical works from the time before the middle of the 18th century. However, according to P. Kivy, searching for authentic meaning of a musical work cannot be confused with reconstructing its hypothetical, historically authentic performance. Taking into account the nature of a musical work, its intrinsic meaning necessarilly lies beyond its historical sound image. 3. Following T. C Mark, a performance should be considered as an intentional act. As such it is unpredictable as well as irrecoverable. However, because of the inspirational freedom necessary in interpreting the works of art, the history of performances of a given musical work cannot be necesarilly understood as approaching the alleged original, composer's meaning of the work; it may equally lead away from it, proceeding way into not yet experienced areas. Such a view cannot be reconciled with the Platonistic conception of performances as instances or tokens of a universal.

Bach's music, whose characteristics were well recognized in his own time as can be seen from Scheibe's writings, became regarded as the work of an outstanding composer only a century after his death; yet in the process of his becoming a musical oracle of the past, Bach began to be understood and conceptualized in terms foreign to his own historical surroundings. As a consequence, a gap between the real historical Bach on the one side and his canonized picture on the other came into being. In scholarly literature on Bach there are various suggestions and observations in respect of the exceptional value of his music. A closer, scrutinizing examination of such observations reveals that they may point to the outstanding characteristics of his music, whose aesthetic essence, however, still cannot be conveyed in terms of logical verbal expressions. There is nothing in Bach's life that could be considered particularly outstanding, and his music, having been composed for the most part for special occasions, cannot be understood as the expression of the inner self of an exceptional human being. A historical approach to his music does not have the means to measure its value as compared to his predecessors and contemporaries apart from subjective critical judgement. The alleged religiosity of his music pales when juxtaposed to the standards of ordinary church music making in his own time. Rather, it is only from the standpoint of the modern secularized society that the religious quality of his music becomes evident. The hidden messages of his musical symbols do not impact the aesthetic qualities of his music; attesting rather to the composer's attitude towards himself they do not convey anything to the listener. As for the analytical approach, it was the Schenkerian analysis that promised to reveal the depths of Bach's music; yet according to Scruton 's critical judgement, the Schenkerian analysis might be understood as an analysis of the experience of Bach's music rather than an objective analysis of the music itself. Thus the music of Bach cannot be comprehended and appreciated except within the domain of purely musical experience.

The paper concerns a bifolio fragment from the National and University Library in Ljubljana, which contains sections of two treatises by Guido of Arezzo: Chapter 17 of his Micrologus and most of his Prologus in antiphonarium. According to its paleographic features, the fragment was part of a manuscript from the 12th century. In the transcription of the Ljubljana manuscript, which is given in the appendix to the article, the missing or illegible sections and characters have been restored from the critical editions of both texts (Corpus scriptorum de musica 4; Divitiae musicae artis A III), and are given in italics. The critical apparatus shows: 1. the differences between the Ljubljana text and the text of the critical edition; 2. the differences between the Ljubljana text and that of Wolfenbuttel 334, to which of all existing manuscripts the Ljubljana source is the closest. The variants of the Ljubljana manuscript, that are not to be found in any other existing source, are underlined twice; similarly, the unique variants of the Wolfenbuttel manuscript are marked in such a way, that the siglum of this manuscript - i. e. W2 - is underlined twice. Variants, that are of all extant sources common only to the Ljubljana and W2 manuscripts, are underlined once. Footnotes for which no source is given refer to the Ljubljana manuscript.

Our contribution presents the choral melodies for Christ 's last words in the Passions of three Ljubljana manuscripts. On the preserved fragment of missale plenarium, which comes from the time before the second half of the 13th cent., there is written the melody for Christ's last words on the cross according to St. Matthew Passion (Example 1, A). This melody is related to the melody for the same words in the manuscript Cod. B 50, kept in the Vallicellana library in Rome (Example 1, B), as well as to the melody quoted by Stablein in MMG as a frequent one in German sources (Example 1, C). The fragment of missale plenarium is privately owned. The lectionary kept in the Episcopal Archives in Ljubljana (SAL, Manuscript 5) comes from the 14th cent. and was probably used in the parish church at Kranj. For Christ's last words on the cross according the St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke it has the same melody. On the fringe of the folio, where the melody in St. Matthew Passion is written down, there is also the later diastemic rendering of the first three musical signs of the melody (Example 2). The manuscript kept in the National and University Library in Ljubljana, Ms 248, contains the text and the music of all four Passions. Christ's last words on the cross have in all four Passions a longer melismatic melody (Examples 3-6).

The Seminary Library in Ljubljana, founded in 1701, keeps 17 fragments from destroyed choral books. These are fragments accidentally preserved as paper-material used on the backs and on the inside of book-covers of younger, bound manuscripts and prints, 14 fragements are written in the Gothic notation (Hufnagelschrift), 3 in the square one. The choral books from which they come are by type graduals, sequenciaries and antiphonals, from the time extending from the 2nd half of the 14th until the end of the first half of the 15th century. For five of the fragments it is possible to believe that they come from five native, in Ljubljana originating, choral manuscripts, while the source of the remaining ones as yet cannot be more exactly identified.

The article is a presentation of the treatise under the same title defended in 1988 at the Philosophical faculty in Ljubljana as doctoral dissertation (cf. Muzikoloski zbornik XXIV). There are 151 fragments in Ljubljana depositories meeting the specifications stated in the title. These fragments, preserved as paste-up strips or sheets on the covers or spines of some later bound books, i.e. as bookbinder's material, represent the remains of 69 manuscripts originating from mid- 14th- to mid- 16th-centuries and having been destroyed after the reforms of the Council of Trent. 30 books have been preserved in a single folio of each, whereas some of the large-size remains consist of 12 to 39 folios. The comparison of the contents preserved with several medieval sources including the late-15th-century prints from Aquileia permits of the conjecture that some of the 69 fragments represent the remainder of books of the rite of Aquileia which continued in force also in the Slovene ethnic territory to the south of the Drava river throughout the Middle Ages. However, for the very inconsistency of the medieval divine service, the exact liturgical provenance of the fragments under discussion remains uncertain. The discussion of the system of notation is based on copying out allnotationalsigns. The criterion as met by all 69 fragments is as follows: (1) the use of punctum, or the use of punctum and only rarely of virga, as the signs for the only tone over a syllable, the use of punctum and virga in signs for more than one tone; (2) a marked tendency towards thick-lined, calligraphic strokes. From the point of view of music in its narrow sense, only tones have been discussed for methodological reasons. The antiphonal psalmody of the Office contains a total of 53 (or 55, if two transpositions are to be taken into account) different terminations. However, some of them may prove to be misspellings, and some logical variants. The comparison of individual tones displays a considerable degree of inconsistency. 43 fragments have been preserved in connection with some books which are certain to have been bound in Carniola. This gives rise to the conjecture that the manuscripts to which these fragments used to belong must have been originated here as well.

Fragmenti srednjeveških koralnih rokopisov s poznogotsko notacijo v Ljubljani

The article presents the alleluias of the Paschal Time as written down in the medieval Mass manuscripts, graduals and missals, kept in Ljubljana. In addition to one partly preserved and three fully preserved manuscripts, numerous fragments of once integral, but later destroyed manuscripts are taken into account. The Missal of Kranj (Archives of the Diocese of Ljubljana, MS 19, 15th c.) contains the same series of Paschal alleluias as the printed missals of Aquileia from the late 15th and 16th c.; the Franciscan Gradual (The Library of the Franciscan Monastery, inv. no. 6773, early 16th c.) contains the same series of Paschal alleluias as the printed Roman missals from the late 15th c. The presumably Carthusian Gradual (National and University Library, MS 22, 13th c.) contains a rather indistinct series of Paschal alleluias, while the 59-sheet fragment of a gradual (Archives of the SR of Slovenia, Coll. I. 1., 12th – 13th c.) is presumed to have belonged to a Cistercian manuscript on the very basis of the preserved series of its Paschal alleluias. Of the two neumatic fragments, the former containing partly preserved Mass formularies of the Paschal Time is supposed to have belonged to the rite of Aquileia, while the identity of the latter remains unascertained. Other fragments contain only a small number of Paschal alleluias each; most of them are supposed to have belonged to manuscripts of the rite of Aquileia.

The article is a presentation of two sheets of paper from the late 15th century containing 3 fully, and 4 partly preserved polyphonic musical pieces. The identification has been completed successfully only in three of these, namely the Sanctus-Agnus Dei pair by G. Binchois, and the motet Vere quia, which have also been preserved in the Trent Codices. Added is a thematic catalogue of the pieces preserved, together with a commentary on the musical notation which is often ambiguous and faulty. The two sheets, which are only fragments of a larger manuscript unit that has been lost, have been preserved as stick-on paper on the covers of a Latin manuscript from the 14th or 15th century which is almost certain to have originated from the Slovene ethnic territory.