FRANCO di COLONIA. — Theorist and composer of music, who lived in the 13th century (ca. 1250–80). From manuscripts of his works it is known that he was chaplain to the Pope and praecceptor of the hospital of S. Giovanni Gerosolimitano in Cologne (C. Coussemaker, L'art harmonique au moyen âge, Paris 1865, p. 22).
His activity as a composer is mentioned by Jacques de Liège, who, in Book VII of the Speculum musicum, says that he heard in Paris a triplum (a composition for three voices) attributed to F. di C. (C. Coussemaker, Scriptores, II, p. 402).
As a theorist, he gave his name to a new period in the history and notation of music, insofar as he codified the pre-existing rules and introduced others concerning the division of the breve into three semibreves, ligatures, consonances and dissonances, etc., in the Compendium discantus
magistri Franconis (op. cit., I, pp. 154–36) and especially in the Arc cantus mensurabilis (M. Gerbert, Scriptores, III, pp. 1–16; C. Coussemaker, op. cit., I, pp. 17–18). This latter treatise was formerly attributed to Franco di Parigi, a poorly defined figure who was perhaps only slightly earlier, to whom a passage by Coussemaker’s anonymous IV (op. cit., I, p. 342), mentioning two Franconi, refers. The theoretical work of Franco di Parigi may perhaps be connected with a commentary and three compendia, all with the same beginning, evidently analogous to the original (“Goudent broviste moderni”), published by C. Coussemaker himself (op. cit., I, pp. 202–96, 303–19, 319–27, 383–403). Modern mensural notation is based on the Franconian system, which in its broad outlines was used through the end of the 16th century.
The principal manuscripts of the Franconian treatises are found in Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale), Oxford (Bodleian Library), London (British Museum), Milan (Biblioteca Ambrosiana), etc.