John Dunstaple Reading Boethius

John Dunstaple’s Annotations to Boethius’s “De institutione musica” in the Manuscript Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 118

Original author John Dunstaple Edited by Elzbieta Witkowksa-Zaremba

Book cover: John Dunstaple Reading Boethius

Extent: 250 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Series: Epitome musical

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(July 2026)

ISBN: 9782503624884

Price: $94.00

Out of stock

The edition introduces the reader in the world of music theory developed by Boethius, the most influential theorist of Latin Europe, as explained by John Dunstaple, the foremost English composer of the Late Middle Ages.


European theory of music up to ca.1550, in many respects, presents a history of the reception of Boethius’s treatise De institutione musica (before 510). The annotations introduced to this treatise by John Dunstaple (d. 1453), eminent composer of the late Middle Ages, add to our knowledge of the English chapter of this history. The first part o the volume includes the edition of Dunstaple’s annotations paralleled with relevant parts of Boethius text and provided with the introduction comprising a detailed information on manuscript Oxford, Corpus Christi College 118 and the study of Dunstaple’s hand. In the second part of the book, the selected glosses which have the strongest interpretive potential are translated and examined in a large context of music theory of Middle Ages. They present Dunstaple as a careful and competent reader of Boethius’s arguments and a composer well-read in music theory current in his time.

  • Original author John Dunstaple
  • Edited by Elzbieta Witkowksa-Zaremba