Henricus Helene

Henricus Helene, also known as Helayne, was a French music theorist attested around 1335, the year in which he appears in the record of the work. His name features in the text of the fourteenth-century motet Apollinis eclipsatur/Zodiacum signis lustrantibus/In omnem terram, where he is mentioned third, after Johannes de Muris and Philippe de Vitry, among the twelve most illustrious musicians of his time.

In 1335 he held a canonry at Sens, although this was a post that did not require his presence in the city. Of his output, a brief treatise survives, the Summula musice, transmitted in a fifteenth-century copy. It consists of an introduction and five chapters focusing above all on the elements of plainchant, with a certain speculative undercurrent. His authorities include Guido of Arezzo, Odo of Cluny and Berno of Reichenau and, as one would expect, he relies on Aristotelian doctrine.

His most distinctive contribution lies in his classification of music. Instead of Boethius's divisions into mundana, humana and instrumentalis, he proposes his own tripartition into supercelestis, celestis and subcelestis. The last of these in turn encompasses human and instrumental music, the latter subdivided into vocalis and instrumentalis, although the treatise deals only with the former. It has been suggested that he might be identified with the "Henricus" who authored the text of the motet Portio nature/Ida capillorum/Ante thronum, a hypothesis that is not confirmed, though it has been raised as a possibility.