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Overview
In this collection, the same subject is seen from several angles, and thus gives a rich context for further exploration. Haar was one of the first to recognize the value of cultural study. His work also reminds us that the close study of the music itself is equally important. The articles contained in this book show the author's conviction that a good way to address large problems is to begin by focusing on small ones.
Originally published in 1998.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691608402 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2014 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #380 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 408 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
Read an Excerpt
The Science and Art of Renaissance Music
By James Haar, Paul Corneilson
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1998 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-02874-3
CHAPTER 1
A Sixteenth-Century Attempt at Music Criticism
A complaint sometimes made about theorists, at least about those active before the middle of the nineteenth century, is that their concerns are too exclusively prescriptive, that they rarely describe music, much less evaluate it. As musicians we can enjoy what we take to be timeless aspects of the music of the past, and we feel to a certain extent confident in our ability to distinguish level of quality and degree of attractiveness in it—in short to make it live as part of our own musical culture. As scholars we can learn a good deal about the musical life of a period such as the Renaissance. As analysts we can take almost any music apart and reassemble it, using theoretical writings of the appropriate period as manuals wherever they are helpful. But as historians concerned not only with cultural artifacts but also with the intellectual and artistic outlook of the past we want to know not just how music was made but why it took the shapes it did, and especially how it was heard and criticized by those who first performed and listened to it. Not how everyone heard it, of course; if we look at the general reception of art music in our own time we can see that random sampling of opinion would not get us far, and there is no reason to sentimentalize about a past when everyone understood and loved contemporary culture. We do want to know what those critics have to say who are equipped by training and temperament to give sympathetic judgment on modern music; and it is a group of this sort, comparatively large in some periods and very small in others, that we would like to have speak to us from the past.
Very few of them do so. For the Renaissance we have, besides a large number of theorists, various descriptions of music and musicians, seen and heard on state occasions and even in social gatherings. But, as we know, we hear the praise of musicians—usually in vague terms—much more than that of the music itself, and we usually count ourselves lucky to find a piece so much as mentioned by name. In the whole of Antonfrancesco Doni's Dialogo della musica, in which the music sung by the assembled company is printed along with their conversation, we get little more than a passing remark that the piece just sung was beautiful or was the work of a dependably good composer. A more informative source is Vincenzo Giustiniani's Discorso sopra la musica, with its references to the compositional novelties of Marenzio and Giovannelli in Rome, of Gesualdo and Fontanelli in Ferrara, of a group of Neapolitans, and finally of Monteverdi. But Giustiniani was clearly more interested in singers and instrumentalists, about whom he speaks in some detail, than in the music itself; and indeed his remarks, such as that on the contrapuntal rigor of Gesualdo's music, would indicate that he was not much of a connoisseur of compositional technique.
If we turn to the theorists, we find that from Tinctoris through Zarlino and his disciples we get fairly frequent mention of composers and even of individual works, but pieces are usually named because of a single feature such as choice of mode or canonic artifice, and composers are cited only to receive general praise for their skill or, on occasion, blame for what the theorist defines as a Satzfehler. Coclico praises Josquin but does not go into detail about his music; Glareanus is concerned largely with mode; Zarlino finds that everything the complete musician should possess in the way of art is contained in the work of Willaert, but he does not really show us how to study that work. We know that theorists were aware of stylistic change, which they praised or damned by turns, and sometimes they give us specific information about it; an example is Finck's contrasting of the dense counterpoint of Gombert to the more open polyphony of Josquin. Instances of this kind of direct dealing with music itself are unfortunately all too rare.
It is clear that music was a favorite topic of conversation in sixteenth-century Europe. And when people spoke of the subject it could not always have been in such superficial terms as those of Doni. On the other hand dialogues such as Bottrigari's Desiderio, concerned largely with the tuning of instruments, or Zarlino's Dimostrationi harmoniche, in which the assembled interlocutors, including Willaert and Francesco Viola, listen to long, abstruse, and lamentably dull arguments in support of Zarlino's senario, could not be thought to resemble the real conversation of real people. Such conversations, it would seem, were never recorded.
There are a few exceptions, and I want to concentrate here on one passage that I find of special interest. It occurs, apropos of nothing in particular, in the second part of Lodovico Zacconi's Prattica di musica, a volume written and published in the theorist's last years but reflecting the concerns, tastes, and views expressed thirty years earlier in the first part of his treatise:
It is both clear and certain that the gifts of the Lord, however manifold (not to say infinite), are divided and distributed by His Divine Majesty in such a way that very often one who possesses one gift does not have another. And work at it as he may, if [the Lord] has not granted it to him by way of nature, or through special grace, he fails in it and ends, as the saying has it, by pounding water in his mortar. We see examples of this in every faculty, every profession, and in music we see and touch upon it as well.
And since I wish to treat of the various styles, modes, and manners of different compositions I say that musica armoniale is distinguished by seven particular aspects: that is, by arte, modulatione, diletto, tessitura, contraponto, inventione, and buona dispositione. Each of these things is necessary to the composer; and to however small or great degree one finds them in one composer, a single quality will stand out more than another, and from this a composer will make his name and become famous. In this regard, and without offense to anyone, I remember that in the year 1584 there was a conversation on music one day held in the presence of many musicians gathered before Don Gioseffo Zarlino; and as the talk turned to the style of this and that composer, he made the above distinctions and then came down to particulars, saying, "What would you have me say? He who has one of these lacks another, and even he who is distinguished in two or three cannot have them all. My own genius (he said, speaking of himself) is given over to regular tessitura and arte, as is that of Costanzo Porta, who is here present. Striggio had a talent and gift for charming modulatione; Messer Adriano was distinguished by great arte and judicious dispositione. Morales had arte, contraponto, and buona modulatione. Orlando Lasso possessed modulatione, arte, and bonissimainventione; and Palestrina had arte, contraponto, ottima dispositione, and a flowing modulatione. From this it follows that once one has heard the works of these composers, when their music is sung on another occasion one can immediately say, 'This is the work of such-and-such'; and indeed so it turns out to be, for when one has heard the works of one author several times, one can distinguish them at once when hearing them with other works and say that it is the work of such-and-such an author."
This passage, along with a number of, but by no means all, the other anecdotes that are sprinkled through Zacconi's work, and especially the seconda parte—making a reading of it full of pleasant surprise and relief—was cited by Friedrich Chrysander some ninety years ago. Chrysander called Zarlino's little speech as reported by Zacconi extremely valuable, and praised it as a "sure guide to the aesthetic currents of his century"; but he did not attempt to explicate it. Zacconi's anecdote has been familiar to students of Renaissance music ever since, but I am not aware of any effort to define his seven categories, which appear on the surface to be vague and overlapping to the point of repetitiveness. Although I cannot claim that I know precisely what Zacconi meant or even that he intended each category to have precise and separate meaning, I think the passage deserves a closer look and will presently proceed with an attempt at clarifying it.
Zacconi's second treatise is chiefly concerned with rules, copiously illustrated, for counterpoint on a cantus firmus "in cartella & alla mente" ("written [on barred staves] or improvised"), as its title page says. His pace is leisurely and there are many asides, including references to musicians he had known in Mantua, Venice, Munich, and the Habsburg court at Graz. There are familiar admonitions to students about proper attitudes, proper study habits, proper modes of performance. It is tempting to follow Chrysander's lead by giving examples of all this, and I shall in the spirit of Zacconi's work succumb briefly to this temptation before getting to the passage that is our central concern.
There are many references to older music in both of Zacconi's treatises—more, for instance, than one finds in the writings of Zarlino. Zacconi admired the craft of both the antichi, by which term he meant Josquin and his contemporaries, and the vecchi, who included not only Willaert and Rore but also Zarlino and Palestrina. He cites older compositions by name, and even says he leafed through a copy of the Odhecaton with pleasure and profit. Although he was too young to have known Willaert, Zacconi got information about him from Zarlino, including an account of Willaert improvising a third voice to a written duo, then doing it again in order to improve it. This is of more than anecdotal interest since it gives evidence that performing contraponto alia mente was a real feature of musical life, even that of great composers, in the sixteenth century.
Palestrina was probably known to Zacconi only by reputation; he was admired for the appropriate style of his sacred music, in Zacconi's view as fitting as the style of Marenzio and Monte was for the madrigal. Zacconi also says of Palestrina that his music and that of Victoria can be studied in error-free copies since they, unlike many of their contemporaries, carefully supervised the publication of their work. One word of criticism is ventured; had Palestrina sought his advice Zacconi would have cautioned him about setting the Cantica as he did, for "Dio sa con qual animo & intentione" these works are performed by singers.
A number of composers, including Rore, Ippolito Baccusi, Francesco Rovigo, Monte, Porta, Striggio, and one among the moderns, Monteverdi, are mentioned admiringly but only in passing. Zacconi says that he was a student of Andrea Gabrieli, but unfortunately he has nothing to say about his master's personality or teaching method. Lasso was, to judge from the tone of Zacconi's remarks about him, not only his senior colleague at Munich (in the years 1591–94) but also a friend. One reference to Lasso deserves mention here although it is well known. This passage, in which the aging Lasso speaks humbly of his daily compositional exercise, of his holding himself in readiness in case a new commission from his master should come, is instructive about a composer's attitude toward his craft; and it is touching when one remembers that it must originate from Lasso's final period of activity, the time when the magnificent Lagrime di San Pietro was written.
Among the many bits of advice to young musicians given by Zacconi several are worth mentioning here. A person wishing to succeed in music, or indeed any worthwhile pursuit, must have certain qualities, namely, voglia, studio, perseveranza, deliberatione, and emulatione (desire, study, perseverance, resolve, and a sense of rivalry). For composers a healthy spirit of emulatione is particularly important, and we are told that Costanzo Porta set out to rival his great master Willaert; that Baccusi during his years at Mantua did all he could to perfect himself in emulation of his colleague Wert; and that Tiburtio Massaino, having met Baccusi in Venice, modeled his compositional activities on the latter's work.
Musicians need to study music if they wish to excel in its practice; in his first book Zacconi warns that a person could study Boethius and Augustine for ten years and "never learn to compose." What aspiring musicians should do, first of all, is acquire and study thoroughly all the good music they can get hold of; next they should score it, a tiresome but necessary task if the secrets of the music are to be thoroughly revealed. In doing this students not only learn a lot, but they also acquire a stock of passages useful in their own work, just as "gioveni innamorati" copy poems into notebooks for ready use in their own impromptu verse-making. No less a composer than Francesco Rovigo solemnly assured Zacconi that he copied and scored passages of other composers' work so as to have a ready stock of ideas and techniques. The young composer should arrange his commonplace book so that under each scored passage there are empty staves; thus he can add thoughts of his own, or can vary those of the compositions before him by exchanging entries, lengthening or shortening rests, adding another point of imitation. In this passage the technique of parody composition, so dear to sixteenthcentury musicians but so little referred to by theorists, is described in a thoroughly believable way.
Zacconi, whose instructions on the art of vocal improvisation in the Primo libro are well known, has many hints for singers in his second book. Among them are instructions to set the pitch of any piece at a comfortable level for all voices; to change the pitch level when a piece in another mode than the one just sung is chosen; to choose a tempo neither too slow nor too fast, being especially careful about the latter since performers tend to fall behind the beat if it is too fast (elsewhere Zacconi says, however, that one can place the beat slightly late in an artistic manner to give special emphasis); to accommodate one's voice to those of the other singers; and to ornament only where appropriate.
The composers whom Zacconi admired presumably did all the things he thought necessary to achieve proficiency; their inborn talent, nurtured by careful study and practice and sharpened by emulation of their peers, gave them excellence. Yet their music is not identical in nature, perhaps not even equal in value. If we examine the passage with which we are centrally concerned we see first the sententious observation that nature's gifts are not evenly distributed, and that some musicians when compared with others show greater talent in one aspect of composition, less in another. There are in musica armoniale, Zacconi's general term for polyphonic mensural music, seven aspects in which excellence can be sought: arte, modulatione, diletto, tessitura, contraponto, inventione, and buona dispositione. Zacconi apparently thought that the meaning of these terms was self-evident and that they were distinct one from another; otherwise he would have been breaking his own rule, stated only a few pages before the passage here under consideration, that one should never propose terms to students without defining them thoroughly. To a modern reader the meaning and, especially, the distinctive nature of each of the seven qualities are not so clear. Close reading of both of Zacconi's treatises brings partial enlightenment, as we shall see; but the theorist could have helped us more than he did here.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Science and Art of Renaissance Music by James Haar, Paul Corneilson. Copyright © 1998 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Editor's Preface
Bibliographical Abbreviations
Ch. 1 A Sixteenth-Century Attempt at Music Criticism 3
Ch. 2 The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione's View of the Science and Art of Music 20
Ch. 3 Cosimo Bartoli on Music 38
Ch. 4 The Frontispiece of Gafori's Practica Musicae (1496) 79
Ch. 5 False Relations and Chromaticism in Sixteenth-Century Music 93
Ch. 6 Zarlino's Definition of Fugue and Imitation 121
Ch. 7 Lessons in Theory from a Sixteenth-Century Composer 149
Ch. 8 Josquin as Interpreted by a Mid-Sixteenth-Century German Musician 176
Ch. 9 The Note Nere Madrigal 201
Ch. 10 The "Madrigale Arioso": A Mid-Century Development in the Cinquecento Madrigal 222
Ch. 11 Giovanthomaso Cimello as Madrigalist 239
Ch. 12 Notes on the Dialogo della Musica of Antonfrancesco Doni 271
Ch. 13 A Gift of Madrigals to Cosimo I: The Ms. Florence, Bibl. Naz. Centrale, Magl. XIX, 130 300
Ch. 14 The Libraria of Antonfrancesco Doni 323
Ch. 15 Berlioz and the "First Opera" 353
Ch. 16 Music of the Renaissance as Viewed by the Romantics 366
Index of Names 383