Talk:Anonymous IV

Anonymous IV?
My apologies if this is a stupid question, but why 'Anonymous IV'? What is he the forth of? I was wondering if an expert on the subject could clarify this in the article.Rob 20:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure in this case, but often when one manuscript or codex is written by multiple scribes, scholars distinguish them with names like "Scribe A," "Scribe B," etc., or "Hand 1," "Hand 2," etc. In this case the write is probably the fourth unknown write in the particular manuscript and that modern scholars have simply designated him as "Anonymous IV." --Cassmus 08:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I expanded the first footnote to answer this question. Because Taruskin is hardly the only one who has objected to use "AnonIV" to refer to the author, I waded into the weeds about how the term originated. Too much information? And if someone thinks Scriptorum should have a formal bibliographic citation, please feel free to do so. --Hebeckwith (talk) 05:34, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

BIO
Anonymous IV doesn't get a bio assessment, because if we knew even one thing about him he wouldn't be called anonymous IV. It's not a stub, it's not a person! -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:35, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

"he"?
I know it's a pretty pedantic point, but isn't it possible they might have been female? --86.152.125.20 (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Anonymous IV was a student at Notre Dame in the 1200s. I don't think women were allowed to go to school back then. --Ye Olde Luke (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.52.204 (talk) 02:44, 13 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not that hard to play the pronoun game and use words like "they", "their", and so on, to make the article gender-neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArchytasLyre (talk • contribs) 14:53, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

- He's called Anonymous IV because in the Middle Ages composers (or even writers) didn't use to sign their own names on their work, believing their work to be 'for the glory of God' and not of the self. So why is he not simply called 'Anonymous'? Apparently because there have been a number of 'anonymous' people who have developed a distinctive style that can be differentiated from works by other 'anonymous' people during the same period. My guess is that Anonymous IV was just the 4th guy to get discovered. (See my edit discussed above under "Anonymous IV?" --Hebeckwith (talk) 05:37, 26 August 2022 (UTC))

As for the 'he' question, I think it's pretty safe to say that it's a he. Even though women could receive education at home (if their parents were rich and hired tutors) and in convents (the most prolific composer in the Renaissance was a nun who wrote for her convent) they weren't allowed to go to the 'official' schools. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.132.250.9 (talk) 17:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice discussion! The Notre-Dame School was like the "école polytechnique" today, a posh elite school which educated the new rulers of the country. For this simple reason we can exclude that "Anonymous IV" was a woman. It would have been such a revolution that we knew, if he was a woman. The first female Parisian student was Héloise, but she was educated in private. As a compensation, the American ensemble which has named after him, is a vocal group with female singers only. Platonykiss (talk) 09:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Request for further articles on two other medieval scholars
I am not qualified to write anything about medieval music but I was wondering if someone familiar with Anonymous IV would consider a new article.

There was a medieval scholar who explained that if you sang an E-major chord in a song in C-major the "G# note that is the major third of the E-major chord is a note that doesn't occur in the C-major scale, so it sounds wonderful, especially if you jump up to high notes on that chord. (C-major is just an example. It could be done in a G-major song, in which case the chord is B-major.)

Another idea he had was singing a G#-major chord in a song in C. The note G# is really remote from the C-major scale, but the D# (the G#-major chord's fifth) is the C-major key's blue-minor third and the major third of a G# major chord (C) is in fact just the root of the key. Again he advocated jumping to a high note when singing it. Again C-major is just an example. In an E-major song the chord would be C-major.

The name of this medieval scholar, about whom I wish there was a Wikipedia article, was Fab IV, and as was the case with Anonymous IV and Anonymous 4, there was, in the 20th century, a group frequently referred to as the Fab 4. With the "the", this time.

Another medieval scholar who lived just before Fab IV has been termed, logically, Pre-Fab IV. He extensively explained a song (I'm a Believer) which I gather is some kind of affirmation of the Christian faith.

How soon might we see Wikipedia articles on them?69.86.131.77 (talk) 09:36, 7 February 2013 (UTC)Christopher L. Simpson
 * Clearly a non-humorous joke. -- kosboot (talk) 13:24, 7 February 2013 (UTC)