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TUBAL. Lamech's son by his wife Adah was Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ," Genesis 4:21-22. During the Middle Ages Jubal was sometimes called Tubal. The son of Lamech and Sellah was called Tubalcain, and he instructed his descendants in the art of fashioning brass and iron. Isidore names Tubal as the inventor of music before the flood and adds that the Greeks say Pythagoras was the inventor, Etym III.16. Jacob of Liège says that he wrote reasonably well on plain song, Speculum musicae VII. Both Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica, Genesis 28 (PL 198: 1079), and Peter Riga, Aurora, Liber Genesis 477-484, continue the tradition that Tubal invented music, but the Greeks say it was Pythagoras.

The Man in Black says that, although he wrote many songs, he could not make songs as well as Tubal, Lamech's son, who invented the first songs; he adds that the Greeks say Pythagoras invented the art; Aurora says so, BD 1157-1170, a reference to Peter Riga's Aurora. P.E. Beichner points out that Tubal is a variant reading in some manuscripts of Peter Riga's Aurora. [Absalon: Peter1 Riga: Pictagoras]

The name occurs in final rhyming position, BD 1162.


P.E. Beichner, The Medieval Representative of Music, Jubal or Tubalcain?; Isidore, Etymologiae, ed. W.M. Lindsay, l; Peter Riga, Aurora, ed. P.E. Beichner, I: 45-46; O. Strunk, Source Readings in Music History, 94, 98, 180-181; K. Young, "Chaucer and Peter Riga." Speculum 12 (1937): 299-303.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.

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