ABSTRACT
The discipline of music theory is as much a profession of teaching as it is of research and publishing. The history of theory is full of currents of oral teaching that amount to a subterranean world of "hidden" theory that can easily elude our historical accounts. If the examples of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius and Johannes Hollandrinus show how fragile textual stability may be in pre-modem music theory, there is another example of music theory pedagogy from the 18th century that seems to pass textual codification altogether. In the case of Boethius's work on music, the earliest manuscript we have is from the late 9th century. Many copies of Boethius's texts—as with other canonical manuscripts of the Middle Ages—are laden with glosses. The example of Boethius's Institutio offers a forceful reminder that music theory texts are used by readers.
