Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Bede

Bede, surnamed "the venerable," was born in 672, in the diocese of Durham, in England, and was brought up in the monastery of St. Paul, at Yarrow, in which he passed his whole life. He was ordained deacon at the age of nineteen, and priest at thirty. He is believed to have died in his convent, in 735, at the age of sixty-three. An edition of his works was published at Cologne in 1612, (8 vols. folio,) in which we find two treatises upon music, one entitled "Musica quad-rate seu mensurata," (Music squared or measured,) and the other "Musica Theoretica." Burney ands Forkel both think that the first of these treatises must have been the work of a later writer. Yet it is not proved that no notions of measured music existed among the northern nations in the eighth century. In his "Ecclesiastical History," Bede mentions a harmony in two consonant parts, of which there were examples in England in his time. His two works on music have been united under the title, "Venerabilis Bede de Music� Libri Duo," (Basle, 1565.) The book is exceedingly rare. In the eighth volume of his works is found a little essay entitled, "Interpretatio vocum rariorum in Psalmis, quibus instrumenta musica eel aliae species singulares denotantur," (Interpretation of the usual names by which musics; instruments, &c., are called in the Psalms.)