ABSTRACT
The Latin word talea, literally meaning a cutting (as of a plant) or a rod or staff, is used and defined variously by music theorists over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, always as a companion term to, or a subset of, color (literally “embellishment” or “ornament”). Scholars chronicling the history of both terms for encyclopedias and lexicons have repeatedly drawn attention to the relative instability of their medieval usage, and even to the fact that they were apparently interchangeable; yet, despite this acknowledged murkiness, in modern usage talea stably refers to the periodic repetition of rhythm independently of pitch, in contrast to color, the repetition of pitch independently of rhythm. 1 The purported symmetry of the two terms and their respective emphasis on rhythm and pitch have proven useful for analysis and instruction, and thus the causes of variance in the medieval sources have not been subjected to extended scrutiny.
