Thomas Ravenscroft and Hildegard of Bingen on The Essay

[Despina dello Stagno]

Yes - I understood the "actual" (in "perhaps the earliest actual composer in Western Music") to imply composers who are known to have written Music and that the Music that they are known to have written is still around. (Bit of a mouthful - you can see why they went for the pithier soundbite! )

EDIT: Postscript - Blimey! I'm now responding to posts before I see them!

I think this must merely mean composers whose names are recorded.
Winchester supposedly had an organ in the 10th century with 400 pipes, requiring 2 players and 70 bellows operators (concurrent, not consecutive). Surely they cannot have been content with "noodle til ready" or "trad arr. anon"

[Serial_Apologist]

I suppose it also would imply that their music is extant - otherwise it's assumed (isn't it?) that Guido d'Arezzo was a composer and I would think there was a 'monkish' tradition going back a lot earlier.

Oh he would be The Loneliest Monk.

(See what I did there?)

[Serial_Apologist]

Well there was Greg Orianchant.

Ok, i've got my cloakroom ticket......

(all sounds good stuff though )

Well, I at least appreciate your GSOH, teamsaint!

[french frank]

I'm sure I have seen a CD containing music written by Notker the Stammerer (9th Century).

Grove only allows him to be a poet - though there are surviving manuscripts of settings of his texts.

Peter Abelard was a younger contemporary of Hildegard; I have an LP recording by the Hilliard ensemble containing his Planctus David, which I have also heard in concert in the early 1980s.

Abelard (1079-1142) would seem to qualify. Grove says:

"Some time after 1130 Abelard composed a hymnbook for Heloise, who was by that time Abbess of the convent of the Paraclete. While Bernard of Clairvaux was having a hymnal composed for the Cistercians from the traditional material, Abelard was creating one which was totally new and homogeneous in style. He grouped the hymns by metre, and thus managed with only a few melodies. The hymnbook was not widely used and only one of the melodies has survived: that of the splendid hymn of Saturday, O quanta qualia. It is in the Dorian mode and in AAB form, yet it is shaped in wide-ranging melodic arches. The verse is iambic, but the placing of melismas is as irregular as is usual in hymns of the period."

Failing whom (if he was not the composer), there's Adam of St Victor (d. 1146), though attribution of several existing musical works is likely but 'speculative'.

[doversoul1]

I'm sure I have seen a CD containing music written by Notker the Stammerer (9th Century). He is best known as a biographer of Charlemagne but appears to have written monodies as well. Peter Abelard was a younger contemporary of Hildegard; I have an LP recording by the Hilliard ensemble containing his Planctus David, which I have also heard in concert in the early 1980s.

Early Music Show had a programme on Notker the Stammerer although I cannot remember the music played was claimed to be by him.
Lucie Skeaping explores the Abbey of St Gall, its role in the development of medieval chant, and how one of the Abbey's most famous sons - a young monk named "Notker the Stammerer" - came to write a revolutionary kind of music there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kjt5k

[subcontrabass]

Are there any earlier named composers (people who invented and wrote down their Music) from anywhere in the world? (All genuine questions, by the way - I don't know of any Music whose composer's names we know before Hildegard. For once, perhaps, the "big claim" is justifiable?)

Kassiani (c. 805-865), writing in Constantinople, is somewhat earlier than Hildegard. Like other hymn writers in the Byzantine tradition she wrote both the words and the tunes for her hymns. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassia .

There are other named hymn writers from earlier dates, but whether the tunes used for their hymns are what they originally composed is not clear.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Kassiani (c. 805-865), writing in Constantinople, is somewhat earlier than Hildegard. Like other hymn writers in the Byzantine tradition she wrote both the words and the tunes for her hymns. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassia .

Brilliant, subby - I'd never heard of Kassiani before, but she fits all the requirements for an "actual composer" - and 200 years before Hildegard!

[Despina dello Stagno]

There are other named hymn writers from earlier dates, but whether the tunes used for their hymns are what they originally composed is not clear.

Not everyone, mayhap, may be au courant with the finds coming out of Vindolanda this year. I believe the extraordinary timber survival has been documented http://www.vindolanda.com/_blog/pres...at-vindolanda/ but the discovery, beneath this object, of a papyrus fragment, is as yet little regarded. It appears, from internal references, to date from the period after the introduction of Christianity to Northumberland, i.e. post c.200 A.D. and from a time when social cohesion was fragile, but not fragmented, i.e. pre 410 A.D. As such it is the earliest extant pre-English lyric and is worth quoting in full:

"Iamiam ego anticristus sum ego sum civis seditiosus turbulentusque. Nescio quod ego volo sed scio quomodo impetrem volo disperdere
transeuntes quia volo esse licentia in urbe, licentia in VK venit aliquando fortassis. Dabo malum tempum teneo funiculum plaustrarum somnium tuum et futurum schemam emptendam est quia volo esse licentia in urbe, nisi ut esse. Quot modis ut quid vis optimus utor caeteris et hostibus
(videlicet Novo Musicalo Espresso) uti licentia quia volo esse licentia in urbe. Vade mecum. Estne hic M pla estne hic Uda estne hic Ira putabam esse VK aut nisi aliam terram aut aliam tenantiam civitatis et volo esse licentia, et volo esse licentia, et volo esse licentia, et volo esse civis seditiosus et turbulentusque. Bibite destrueteque, matlocus putridus coquus iones""."

The reverse of the document comprises what appears to be a system of musical notation (as yet untransliterated) and it bears what is considered to be the name of the composer (a woman!): Fallacia Trichordata.

[jean]

Now there's an example of vulgar Latin if ever I saw one.

[Despina dello Stagno]

Sorry for the vulgarity, jean. Try as I might, I could not find a link to Vindolanda's lavatory seat. "Carlisle and all of Hadrian's wall as far as Wallsend" is, quite literally, non-U.
And the penny has dropped (pardon the expression in the circs) as to why all mention of Fallacia Trichordata has been excised from the Guardian.

[french frank]

VI pistoles erant, vt mi videtvr, hoc ille, hoc ille, hoc ille, VI pistoles erant, vt mi videtvr ad lib