Blackburn - Compositional Process

On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century Author(s): Bonnie J. Blackburn Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 210-284 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831517 Accessed: 26-04-2016 03:00 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms

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On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century BY BONNIE J. BLACKBURN Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons*

H ardly any development in the history of music has been more vital and fateful than the change from "successive composition" to "simultaneous conception." In a seminal article written more than forty years ago, Edward Lowinsky used these words to describe a transformation in the manner of composition analogous to the development of the theory of perspective in art, and he placed it in the historical context of the increasing understanding of physical space in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Lowinsky 1946). His prime theoretical witness for the recognition of simultaneous conception was Pietro Aaron, who, in his Libri tres de institutione harmonica of 1516, differentiated between the compositional method of older composers and that of the younger generation, in which he included himself, Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac and Agricola. Lowinsky linked "the new simultaneous concept of a polyphonic whole" with "the gradual transformation and eventual disappearance of the cantusfirmus technique," and he posited that "it was the small and simple forms of Italian music, such as the frottola or lauda, in which the simultaneous manner of composition was first practised," although he suggested that it might have "predecessors in the small forms of the trecento madrigal or the conductus" (1946, 69 and 70). In a subsequent article on early scores, Lowinsky proposed that "this

change in the method of writing music down coincides with a

momentous change in the technique of composition-the change from

* "Understanding is both the first principle and the source of sound writing"; Horace, Ars poetica, 309, quoted by Tinctoris in the dedication of his Liber de arte contrapuncti.

A greatly condensed version of this paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the

American Musicological Society in Cleveland on 8 November 1986 in a session

chaired by Margaret Bent, who also was a respondent. This study is dedicated to the memory of Edward E. Lowinsky, who encouraged its beginning but did not live to

see its end.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 2 I1

the successive conception of the single voices to the simultaneous conception of the polyphonic complex," and he outlined different forms of simultaneous conception-the imitative style, in which "the several parts are not actually conceived as one, but each is calculated and conceived in its relation to the others," the homophonic style, that

"cannot have been conceived otherwise than simultaneously in the literal sense of the word," and a mixed form, exemplified by the frottola, where "soprano and bass are simultaneously conceived while the alto and tenor are later additions" (1948, 20 and 21, n. 20). In a recent article he modified his view of the development of simultaneous

conception to embrace canonic compositions, particularly those with

canons at close intervals-Ockeghem's Missa Prolationum being a special and telling example-and works in which the new harmonic style, based primarily on root-position triads, comes to the fore. As the first substantial example of this style he proposed Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores, written for the dedication of the Cathedral of Florence

on 25 March 1436. In this work he saw "a combination of successive and simultaneous conception, in which the simultaneous dimension decisively outweighs the successive part" (1981 I, 191). In the present article I propose to confirm that the phenomenon called "simultaneous conception" arose early in the fifteenth century

and that it existed side by side with successive composition not only throughout this century but also the next. It was, however, viewed by contemporaries from a different angle and described in a manner that

accommodates both kinds of simultaneous conception, imitative and homophonic. The term that most closely agrees with contemporary theoretical thought is "harmonic composition." I believe that the new process of composition was the foundation for Tinctoris's delineation of an ars nova, and it was Tinctoris himself who first described it in technical terms. That this has not been recognized heretofore is due to

two obstacles: a misunderstanding of what Tinctoris meant by res facta, and the widespread acceptance of the terms "simultaneous conception" or "simultaneous composition" to describe the phenomenon. Crucial to our understanding is a determination of what the theorists meant by the term "harmony" and how they viewed the use of dissonance. Only by a close reading of the texts will we come to a clear comprehension of the compositional process involved. Technical terms used by fifteenth-century theorists do not necessarily have the meaning we ascribe to them today; some terms have no equivalent in

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212 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

current usage,' and there was even disagreement at the time over what

certain terms meant.

i. Aaron's View of "Simultaneous Conception" Aaron begins Book III of his De institutione harmonica with a definition of counterpoint, followed by a list of the consonances and dissonances. In chapter 7, "De modo componendi praefatio," he turns to composition, promising that he will treat the method used by the older composers as well as that of the newer ones: Nunc igitur de modis componendi,

Now we shall teach the precepts

deque locis ad conficiendam

concerning the methods of compos-

ordinem necessariis, non modo secundum morem veterum, sed etiam secundum praesentis saeculi consuetudinem praecepta trademus,

ing and the places necessary for constructing a composition according to the natural order, not only according to the older usage, but also according to present-day practice, to which we shall indeed bring to bear such thor-

modulationem secundum naturalem

quibus quidem tantum studium

adhibebimus, Flaminius vero nitorem sermonis, et claritatem, ut

studiosus artis huiusce, qui ea

diligenter legerit, et memori? commendaverit, nihil ultra sibi quaerendum putet.

oughness-while Flaminio will bring the elegance and clarity of style2

that the student of this art who will

study it diligently and have commended it to memory will find nothing more to be desired.

Aaron then proceeds to name the four parts of composition, Cantus,

Tenor, Bassus and Altus-this is what he means by "the places necessary for constructing a composition"-(ch. 8) and to discuss the number of voices that a composition may have-up to eleven, without exceeding normal ranges (ch. 9). In chapter io, with the heading "Unde etiam secundum veteres inchoanda sit modulatio et ubi ' See Margaret Bent's exposition of the difficulties in translating terms such as sonus, vox, corda, nota, clavis, littera, punctus, locus, situs, gradus, phthongus, psophos in

Bent 1984, 1-3Anyone interested in the problems of translation, especially from Greek and Latin, should read the interesting note on the translation in Thomas J. Mathiesen's edition of Aristides (1983, 61-63). Mathiesen had to give considerable thought to finding suitable English equivalents for Greek words that are used in many different

contexts; to have chosen "a different English word or phrase to transl, e a Greek word already used and translated in a specific sense in a technical passage" would, he felt, have spoiled the design and structure of the treatise, in which Aristides's method of exposition is intimately connected with his terminology. Professor Mathiesen was kind enough to put his expertise at my disposal by reading the present paper and making a number of proposals for refining my translations. For these and other suggestions I wish to thank him warmly.

2 The humanist Giovanni Antonio Flaminio (1466-1536), the translator of

Aaron's treatise. He was the father of the more famous poet Marco Antonio Flaminio.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 213

terminanda" ("How a composition should be begun and where ended,

according to older composers"), we reach the passage quoted by Lowinsky in which Aaron alludes to the two methods of composition, successive and simultaneous. Because this chapter lends itself to more than one interpretation, I shall give it in its entirety:

Modulatio quidem secundum

According to the practice and method

primum quidem a cantu inchoanda

must first begin with the cantus. Then the tenor should follow, the bass third,

veterum morem et institutionem

est. Subsequi Tenor debet. Tertio loco Bassus. Quarto demum, qui

dicitur Altus. Sed quia saepenumero

accidit: ut partes he quattuor in quinque in sex etiam augeantur:

Nam tenor: aut pars alia geminari

of older composers, a composition

and finally the fourth, called alto. But since it often happens that these four parts are increased to five or even sixfor the tenor or another part is usually doubled-when this occurs the com-

solet: id cum fiet: liberum com-

poser is free, once he has assigned the

ponenti est: postquam sua praedictis ordinariis partibus assignaverit loca:

positions to the aforesaid regular parts,

reliquas, ut ipsi commodius vide-

to arrange the others as seems fit (or better, as he pleases to use them). It is

compositores facile deprehenduntur:

composers of our time do not follow the custom of older composers to put

bitur, et melius: atque uti libuerit, disponere. Nostri tamen temporis hanc non servare veterum con-

easily observed, however, that the

these four parts together always in

suetudinem: ut partes, quas diximus: quattuor tali semper ordine concinn-

this order, which we ourselves often

facimus: summos in arte viros imitati

Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac, and

ent: quod nos quoque crebro

praecipuae vero losquinum. Obret.

Isaac. et Agricolam: quibus cum

mihi Florentiae familiaritas: et

do, having imitated the most outstanding men in this art, especially

Agricola, with whom I had the great-

est friendship and familiarity in

Florence. Indeed, we approve of it so

consuetudo summa fuit. Quod nos quidem in tantum probamus: ut affirmemus, ea ratione modulationem ipsam fieri concinniorem. Verum, quoniam ita facere difficilis admod-

quite difficult to do it this way and requires considerable practice and

citatione indiget, veterum morem et

method and order of the older com-

ponendum via, sequemur.

posers, in which the way to composing is easier.

um res est: et longo usu et exer-

ordinem: quo sit facilior ad com-

much that we assert that writing a composition in this manner makes it

more harmonious. But since it is

experience, we shall follow the

At first blush, it seems that Aaron begins by describing the customary order of entry of voices. Such an interpretation, however,

does not agree with contemporary practice and would presuppose a composition with an imitative beginning. Rather, Aaron is describing

the order in which the older composers wrote the voices. That he specifies the soprano as the starting point probably reflects his Italian background; a northern composer would most likely have started with

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214 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

the tenor.3 After these four voices are composed, any doubled parts are to be added. Aaron then observes that modern composers do not follow this order, but he does not explain what their method is, aside from the judgment that it produces a more harmonious composition. It would seem that a sentence is missing at this point. "Tali semper ordine" can only refer to the order of the older composers, just described. It makes no sense therefore for Aaron to immediately say "which we ourselves often do," for his point is that modern composers do not do it this way. Lowinsky translated the passage as follows: "However, it is easy to observe that modern composers do not follow this traditional manner. They conceive the four above-mentioned parts always in such order together. I myself work often in this way"

(1946, 67). It is by translating concinnent as "they conceive ... together" that Lowinsky arrived at the term "simultaneous conception." Aaron said no more than that the older composers put the parts

together in the order soprano, tenor, bass, alto. I believe that Lowinsky inadvertently translated concinnent as if it came from concino,

-ere, meaning "to sing, play or sound together, in concert or harmo-

niously" or "to cause to sound together . . . to make concordant sounds" (Harper's Latin Dictionary). This is understandable, considering the musical context. The word Aaron (or rather Flaminio) used, however, is the subjunctive of concinno, -are, "to join fitly together, to

order, to arrange appropriately." We can only guess at the Italian word used by Aaron. I suppose it was "componere." But he would have used a different word toward the end of the chapter, where Flaminio has "concinniorem." Here I believe he might have written "con piui harmonia." Flaminio could have translated both these terms with concinno, knowing that it comes from the Greek harmozo, which means both "to fit together" and "to harmonize."4 But Aaron does not

make clear in this passage just how the modern composers proceed.

Yet Lowinsky was not wrong in clarifying Aaron's elliptical statement, for he was guided by the later description in his Toscanello

(Venice, 1523; I quote from the edition of 1529), Book 2, chapter 16,

3Cf., for example, the anonymous counterpoint treatise in Tiibingen,

Universititsbibliothek, MS. Mc. 48 (second half I5th century, Germany), quoted in Sachs 1974, 126: "Nona regula . . . de compositione vera et regulari trium chorum insimul scilicet tenoris, medij et discantus . . . primo debet tenor componi a prima nota ad ultimam" (fol. 65). At least one writer, however, makes a distinction between sacred and secular music-in the former the tenor is to be written first, in the latter the discant; the source, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 410, is quoted in Bukofzer 1952, 38, n. 254 I owe this observation to Professor Mathiesen.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 215

"Come il compositore possi dare principio al suo canto" ("How the composer may begin a composition"): La imaginatione di molti compositori

fii, che prima il canto si dovessi

Many composers were of the opinion that the soprano should be composed

et cognitione di quello che si richiede

derstanding of what was necessary to

facevano assai inconvenienti ne le

unisoni, pause, salti ascendenti et

many awkward places in their compositions because they had to insert unisons, pauses, and ascending and descending leaps that were difficult

pronontiante: in modo che detti canti

for the singer or performer, so that those works had little sweetness and

fabricare, da poi il tenore, et doppo esso tenore il controbasso. Et questo avenne perche mancorno del ordine

nel far del controalto: et per6

loro compositioni: perche bisognava per lo incommodo che vi ponessino discendenti, difficili al cantore overo

restavano con poca soavith et

harmonia: perche facendo prima il canto over soprano, di poi il tenore, quando e fatto detto tenore, manca alcuna volta il luogo al controbasso:

et fatto detto controbasso: assai note

del contro alto non hanno luogo: per la qual cosa considerando solamente parte per parte, cioe quando si fa il tenore, se tu attendi solo ad accordare esso tenore, et cosi il simile del controbasso, conviene che ciascuna parte de gli luoghi concordanti patisca. Onde gli moderni in questo meglio hanno considerato: come e manifesto per le compositioni da essi

a quatro a cinque a sei, et a pid voci fatte: de le quali ciascuna tiene luogo

commodo facile et grato: perche

first, then the tenor, and after the tenor the bass. This happened because they lacked the order and un-

compose the alto. Thus they had

harmony. For in composing the soprano first and then the tenor, once

the tenor was made there was some-

times no room for the bass, and once

the bass was made, there was no place for many notes in the alto. Therefore, in considering only part by part, that is when the tenor is being composed, if you pay attention only to harmonizing this tenor [with

the soprano], and the same with the bass, it is inevitable that each part

will suffer where they come to-

gether. Therefore the modern composers had a better idea, which is apparent from their compositions in

four, five, six, and more voices, in which each part has a comfortable,

easy and agreeable place, because

considerano insieme tutte le parti et non secondo come di sopra e detto. Et se a te piace componere prima il canto, tenore o controbasso, tal modo et regola a te resti arbitraria: come da alcuni al presente si osserva: che molte fiate danno principio al controbasso, alcuna volta al tenore,

they take all the parts into consideration at once and not as described

perch6 questo a te sarebbe nel

awkward and uncomfortable for you at first, you will begin part by part;

et alcuna volta al contro alto. Ma

principio mal agevole et incommodo,

a parte per parte comincierai: non dimeno di poi che ne la pratica sarai alquanto esercitato, seguirai I'ordine

above. And if you prefer to compose the soprano, tenor, or bass first, you are free to follow that method and

rule, as some at present do, who

often begin with the bass, sometimes with the tenor, and sometimes with the alto. But because this will be

nevertheless, once you have gained

some experience, you will follow the order and method described before.

et modo inanzi detto.

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216 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

"Considerano insieme tutte le parti," "they take all the parts into consideration at once," is the phrase that is missing in Aaron's De institutione harmonica before the phrase "quod nos quoque crebro facimus." It is a matter of regret that Aaron had his treatise translated into Latin, and by a non-musician at that, for it led to a number of errors and oversights. In a lengthy preface to the De institutione,

Flaminio records the conversation between himself and Aaron that resulted in the decision to collaborate on a translation of the treatise.

Aaron had held back from publishing the book in the vernacular because he knew "how much authority, weight, and grace the Latin language could add," and he confessed that his own Latin was not adequate to the task.s In an errata sheet inserted into some copies of the treatise, Aaron thanks an unnamed reader for kindly pointing out

certain obscure passages in the treatise, some of which Aaron

attributes to the carelessness of the printer's proofreader.6 It is likely that part of the blame should be laid at Aaron's doorstep for his "small

Latin." Nor is his Toscanello free of ambiguities. In the passage just

quoted, surely the last two sentences should be exchanged, for

"questo" in the last sentence refers to the modem method, not the older method discussed in the penultimate sentence. In his preface, Flaminio refers to Aaron's decision to expand his treatise and include "many of the secret chambers of this art, never heretofore revealed,"7 and indeed the book is studded with observa-

tions that one does not normally find in theoretical treatises. Aaron's distinction between the older and newer practices is certainly one of them. But is he actually describing a method of simultaneous composition? He speaks of "considering all the parts together" in the context of laying out a work, in which each part should have its own

s ," 'Scio ... quantam illius autoritatem, pondus, et gratiam latina oratio potuerit addere.' Tunc ego [Flaminio] 'non ne,' inquam, 'latinos facere poteras?' 'Poteram,' inquis, 'sed neque mihi plene, neque tui similibus facturus eram satis' " (Aaron 15 i6, fol. 5v). The book is dedicated to Girolamo San Pietro, eques, but Aaron might have had the patronage of Leo X in mind; in the dedication of his Toscanello he speaks of certain efforts he undertook in the hope of reward that came to naught because of the death of Leo X.

6 "Quaedam lector humanissime in nostris institutionibus obscuriora quibusdam videbantur: quedam vero incuria correctoris cui impressoris errores corrigendos tradidi." See the facsimile edition (Aaron 1976), after fol. 62. 7 "te adiecturum plurima ex intimis artis penetralibus, quae a nullo ad huc vulgata fuissent" (fol. 7).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 217

"comfortable, easy and agreeable place."' Such a disposition could also result from successive composition, if the composer keeps in mind that he must leave space for the parts still to be composed. Indeed, in

chapter 31, "Ordine di comporre a piti di quatro voci" ("How to compose for more than four voices"), Aaron makes this point specifically:

... volendo aggiungere una parte quinta, sesta o settima a uno canto di quatro voci, molti inconvenienti facilmente si troverranno: et questo nasce

quando il compositore non ha con-

siderato piui di quatro voci: perche non lascia luogo che sia commodo a l'altre

S. . wishing to add a fifth, sixth or seventh voice to a four-part composition, one will easily run into difficulties when the composer did not have in mind more than four voices, because he leaves no room to accom-

parti. Adunque quando tu penserai

modate the other parts. Therefore when you set out to write a compo-

comporre un canto a cinque, sei 6 piui voci, fa che tu t'acorga di non fare una parte che prima non consideri se tutto

careful not to write a part without considering whether the remainder

il resto pub havere conmodo luogo:

can have a comfortable place, so you

acioch6 non incappi in pause, unisoni

et inconvenienti: come e manifesto nel

capitolo xvi di questo libro secondo.

sition in five, six, or more voices, be

don't run into pauses, unisons, and awkward places, as shown in chapter 16 above.

Aaron is indeed talking about a "new simultaneous concept of a polyphonic whole," but this concept does not necessarily embrace "simultaneous composition"-the two terms are not interchangeable, although they have often been so treated. Nevertheless, Aaron hints at the process of simultaneous composition of the modern composers

when he says in the De institutione that he will "follow the older method" in teaching composition and when he tells the budding composition student in the Toscanello to "begin part by part." The student, however, is advised to follow the modem practice of leaving

adequate space for each part.

In the course of the third book of the De institutione harmonica we

catch a glimpse of simultaneous composition. Unlike his fifteenthcentury predecessors, Aaron does not begin with two-part counterpoint. Instead he starts with chords, following the formula "If the soprano and tenor form a certain interval, then the bass can be on this 8 Carl Dahlhaus used this passage to support his contention that the pedagogical habit of separating counterpoint and harmony has led to an artificial opposition of the

concepts of "modaler Kontrapunkt, Intervallsatz, Tenorbezug und Sukzessivkonzeption der Stimmen" to the concepts of "tonale Harmonik, Akkordsatz, Bassbezug und

Simultankonzeption der Stimmen." But, he points out, simultaneous conception "impliziert nicht Bassbezug, Bassbezug nicht Akkordsatz und Akkordsatz nicht

tonale Harmonik"; Aaron rejects successive conception because of difficulties encountered in adding the last voices (Dahlhaus 1968, 85-86).

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218 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

or that note and the alto on these notes" (chapters 17-23). Next.he takes up chord progressions, explaining the voice-leading of bass and alto if the soprano and tenor move in parallel thirds or tenths (chapters

26-3 i) and how to handle an octave, fourth and fifth between soprano

and tenor (chapter 32). (Aaron's explanations are handicapped by the

absence of music examples; evidently his Bolognese printer, Benedetto Ettore de Faellis, had no music type-a defect Aaron corrects in his Toscanello, which was printed in Venice.) Next he takes

up cadences. Starting with the soprano clausula fa mifa, he explains how to write the tenor, then how to add the bass. Several chapters later he shows where to place the alto. He ends with a description of how to write simple imitative passages, called imitatio or fugatio (ch.

52). Imitation, of course, entails working on two parts simultaneously. In the 1523 Toscanello Aaron modified his method, placing more

emphasis on two-part counterpoint. Here he not only lists the consonances but gives them in musical examples, treating permissible progressions of perfect intervals, with advice on the rule of the closest approach to perfect consonances and the avoidance of mi contrafa, and finally he demonstrates the use of parallel thirds and sixths (Book 2,

chapters 13-15). Still, all this is very sketchy and cannot really be called a method of counterpoint.9 It is clear that Aaron has not been trained in the tradition of northern counterpoint-he never mentions with whom he studied-and that he is not interested in it. As soon as

he can, he turns to the vertical aspects of composition, taking up cadences, with music examples in four parts. As in the 1516 treatise,

the main emphasis is on chord formation, distilled into ten precepts which are then summarized in a table (chapters 21-30). Consonance tables begin to appear with regularity in treatises from the 1490os on. Helen E. Bush surveyed a number of them, from

9 The more surprising is it to read that "Hugo Riemann has characterized Aaron's work as the best introduction to counterpoint available from that time" in Bergquist

1967, ioi. Riemann in fact was speaking not of counterpoint but of "Aron's

instructions for four-part writing [that] seem in actuality very prudent and complete;

for his time, one could not expect any which would be better" (Riemann 1962, 303;

1921, 357). Riemann's enthusiasm was engendered by his discovery that "around

1523 theory also began really to understand the significance of the triad; musicians

had advanced this far in practice almost a hundred years before" (ibid.; in the

German, "Bedeutung des Dreiklangs" is italicized). This paragraph follows

Riemann's translation of Aaron's consonance tables into music examples. Bergquist himself recognizes that Aaron's "discussions of counterpoint are based largely on Tinctoris and Gafori and expand on them only slightly" (1967, ioI).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 219

Ornithoparchus (i517) to Morley (i597), in an article in 1946.10 In Aaron's Toscanello she discovered the greatest variety of chords. She found that in general the theorists agree that a chord should have a third; 90% of the examples contain one (p. 238). Doubling of voices was quite haphazard, and the spacing of voices surprisingly different from the disposition codified in later harmonic practice. Bush concluded that "enough irregular spacing is sanctioned to make it evident that although chordal consciousness had developed by the middle of the I6th century, the functional importance of each note within the

chord was not fully recognized or the idea developed until the following century" (pp. 239-40). But are we justified in looking at these tables as a series of chords? They seem rather to be tables of consonances, a schematic way of showing what notes are available to fill in a given simultaneity. I do not believe they were intended to facilitate chordal writing per se, and therefore no conclusions should be drawn about their prescriptive nature. In many of Aaron's examples the alto lies above the cantus; it can

even be placed beneath the tenor and the bass. In view of this disposition, it is clear why Aaron lays so much weight on seeing that each part has a "comfortable, easy and agreeable place" and the composer does not have to resort to unisons and pauses to escape difficult situations. For the student, however, the gap between Aaron's music examples and his verbal precepts must have been bewildering. What is comfortable about an alto that lies a thirteenth below the soprano and tenor or a bass that rises a tenth above the alto?'" These dispositions must have been included for the sake of completeness, to be used only as a last resort.

2. Counterpoint and Harmony

Curiously, one of the most innovative aspects of Aaron's 1516

treatise is omitted in the Toscanello: how to move from one chord to

another. 12 We know that Aaron's De institutione was severely criticized

10 Her earliest witness, the Ars discantus secundumJohannem de Muris, which led her

to place the beginnings of chordal formation into the first half of the fourteenth century, actually dates from at least the middle of the fifteenth century; see Sachs

i974, i79-80, and Michels 1970, 42-50. " Aaron's examples are given in Bush (1946, 243), and also in Riemann (1962, 302-3). Pitches were specified only in the De institutione harmonica; the consonance tables of the Toscanello give only the relative distances between the parts. Riemann did not make it clear that he added a clef when he transcribed the chart from the latter

into musical examples. 12 Bush remarked that "no theory book prior to the middle of the I6th century gives any information about it directly"-she did not include the De institutione in her

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220 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

by Gaffurio. 3 I suspect that Aaron's discussion of counterpoint and composition motivated a large share of this criticism. Gaffurio was trained in the northern tradition by Johannes Bonadies, a Fleming, and his exposition of counterpoint in the Practica musicae of 1496 is thorough, with numerous music examples. He must have viewed Aaron's sketchy and unsystematic treatment of counterpoint with dismay. The attempt to instruct the beginner in chord progressions must have struck him at the least as premature.

The new emphasis on the vertical aspects of composition in the early sixteenth century and the devaluation of counterpoint did not escape the critical notice of Giovanni Spataro, whose comments on the state of musical instruction in 1529 are enlightening. In a letter to Giovanni del Lago of 4 January of that year, replying to del Lago's suggestion that he publish a treatise on counterpoint, Spataro says: I have written a great deal about counterpoint. .... But I care very little about publishing it since I know that the effort and expense would be wasted because most musicians and singers no longer observe the rules and teachings handed down by venerable scholars. Your Excellency is perfectly aware that in our time the signs established by the men of old

are held in little regard; only 0 is used, and of the proportions only sesquialtera. And even without studying the precepts of counterpoint everyone is

a master of composing harmony.14 (emphasis added)

study-but she thought that the inclusion of "cadential formulas undoubtedly pointed the way towards a better understanding of chordal relations" (p. 242). Bush's comparative survey of what several generations of theorists have had to say about one

aspect of composition retains its value today, and her method could be applied fruitfully to a number of other topics.

13 See Bergquist 1964, 30-33. Bergquist discovered an exchange of letters between Gaffurio and Flaminio in March and May of 1517 (see pp. 504-1o). Gaffurio

admired Flaminio's Latin style but lambasted Aaron's musical knowledge ("Ego

libellum libentissime perlegi admiratus scilicet latini sermonis curam et elegantiam; verum quae ad artem Musicam pertinent, tot tantisque sunt involuta erratis, ut auctor

operis tam difficillima quaeque, quam ipsa quoque Musices elementa nescisse

videatur"; p. 504). The specific criticisms were directed to Spataro, since it was Spataro who had sent him the treatise with a request for his opinion. Unfortunately, this letter is lost. In his reply, Flaminio says that Spataro reviewed and criticized the

treatise before it was translated. This put Spataro on the spot, and it may have

contributed to the acrimonious tone of his critique of Gaffurio's De harmonia musicorum

instrumentorum, published in the following year. Spataro did his best to conceal his role in advising Aaron before publication; in a letter to Marco Antonio Cavazzoni of I August 1517 he blandly says that "uno Petro Aron fiorentino ha fatto stampare qui in Bologna una opera la quale non laudo ne vitupero," adding that it contains "certi errori" (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Vat. lat. 53I8, fol. 240). The letter will be published as no. 2 in Blackburn et al.

14 "De contrapuncto io ancora ho scripto molto in longo. .... Et ancora poco et quasi nula curo che siano impresse, perche certamente io comprehendo che la fatica et la spesa seria getata via, perche piui intra musici et cantori non se observano li

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 22 I

Spataro had a sharp eye for the contemporary scene. Then entering his eighth decade, he was nostalgic for the music of his youth with its complicated canons and proportions. Yet he too was infected by the growing interest in "ancient music as applied to contemporary

practice" and the search for new sonorities. To prove to a skeptical friend that the octave b-b' could be divided harmonically by using "the third chromatic note, F#," Spataro wrote a composition that included

a B major chord."1 But he was firm in his belief that the study of two-part counterpoint was an essential first step in the training of a

composer. Aaron's two treatises confirmed what he viewed as a dangerous tendency in contemporary practice, to by-pass the rules of

voice-leading and compose successions of chords that the ear found pleasing. Spataro's remarks flatly contradict a view of the compositional process of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music that has been embraced in the last three decades in opposition to the attempt to uncover the roots of tonal harmony in fifteenth-century music. I quote

one of the "few cautious voices" that espouses this position: "in the musical conception of the I8th century, harmony was held to govern

musical structures on all levels, while in that of the I5th and I6th centuries, the possibilities for vertical combination were, on the contrary, subordinate to the character and direction of the melodic motion, and . . . therein lies the fundamental distinction between

them." In this view, the intervallic nature of counterpoint is revealed in "the structural framework of two voices that was the legacy of the discant treatises of previous centuries. Time and again a pair of voices will close a phrase cadentially while the remaining line or lines serve rather to maintain the forward motion of the composition." "Consequently, it is possible and perhaps even necessary to consider the bass

progressions that are fundamental to cadential structures in tonal

music as nonstructural and nonessential in the cadence formulas that

were contrapuntally conceived." Reduced to its essentials, this theory holds that "the basic principles of structural order were melodic rather

canoni et regolari precepti da la docta antiquitai ordinati. Vostra Excellentia vede bene

che a tempi nostri li signi ordinati da li antiqui sono tenuti in poco pretio et existimatione, et che solo usano questo signo ?, et de le proportione solo uxano la sesqualtera. Et etiam senza studiare li precepti de contrapuncto, ciascuno e maestro de

componere la harmonia" (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Vat. lat. 5318, fols. 143-143v). The letter will be published as no. 17 in Blackburn et al. "5 The motet, Ave gratia plena, survives in the Spataro correspondence, attached to an undated letter Spataro sent Aaron in August or September 1532 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Vat. lat. 53 8, fols. 244-45), no. 46 in Blackburn et al.

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222 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

than harmonic."16

It is a curious phenomenon that proponents of this theory commonly urge "an investigation of the conceptual matrix from which the composer was actually working at the time: a search for the organi-

zational principles and compositional procedures that he may have employed, on a conscious level, in determining the structural plan of a musical work" (Perkins 1973, 191), and just as commonly they stop short of examining the writings of theorists who cast some light on

this problem. In a thought-provoking article published in 1962, Richard Crocker persuasively outlined the development of contrapun-

tal theory in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, showing the changing concept of consonance and dissonance and how the principles of contrary motion developed into the functional progressions of major sixth to octave, minor sixth to fifth, major third to fifth, and minor third to unison, which, Crocker said, "leads us to the center of

14th-century discant, and ultimately to the foundations of triadic harmony" (1962, 11). Indeed, "the counterpoint treatises of the I4th and early I5th centuries" do "provide a wealth of material and a fascinating variety of detail" (Crocker 1962, I5-I6) on contrapuntal practice, and it is true that many of the rules handed down by these theorists are to be found in the writings of fifteenth- and sixteenth-

century theorists, but Crocker does great injustice to an important contemporary witness when he continues: "Tinctoris's rules, for example, reveal no basic novelty when compared to earlier sources. The most important difference is the insistence on variety, with urgent prohibitions against repetition. This seems to be related to a

greater number of imperfect concords, and a relaxation of the procedures governing their use" (p. 16). On the contrary, as will be demonstrated below, Tinctoris's rules show a very different attitude toward the "art of counterpoint," and the most novel aspect has not been mentioned by Crocker. Leeman Perkins too considered it reasonable to search for the

"elusive principles of structural order" in treatises on counterpoint but, in accepting Crocker's declaration that "the contrapuntal doctrine of the late 15th or early i6th century does not differ in its essentials from the discant treatises of earlier centuries," he doubted whether

"such attempts are likely to be fruitful" (Perkins I973, I92-93). He cited Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti as a model: "In the first book

16 Perkins 1973, 196, I94, I95, and I90. The notion that one's presumed

knowledge of the compositional process should affect the way in which a composition

may be heard has been dealt with by Edward Lowinsky (i98i, 184).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 2 2 3

he defines and explains the acceptable consonances and shows how they may be used; in the second book the same is done for dissonances; and in the third he gives eight general rules to further regulate

contrapuntal combinations" (p. 193, n. 12). According to Perkins, "nowhere [in the 'contrapuntal doctrine of the late I5th or early I6th century'] is there definition of the goals toward which the voices being combined should flow or discussion of the manner in which the direction and termination of internal divisions could be made to relate

to the conclusion of a composition or to one another" (p. 193). Believing that the structure is determined melodically, Perkins turned

to treatises on the modes in search of melodic principles. Indeed, he saw "in the proliferation of theoretical writings on the modes yet another indication of the increasingly melodic orientation of polyphonic music in the course of the 15th and i6th centuries." As pieces became more complex, "the musicians of the period turned more and more to modal theory and to its embodiment in the chant in a search for principles of order and coherence capable of binding together their

more extensive compositions" (p. 198). The insistence on the melodic and linear aspects of composition in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the desire to avoid at all costs the application of "the tenets and terminology of tonal harmony" for

fear of "distorting or obfuscating to some extent the patterns of history" (Perkins 1973, 192) runs the danger of leading to greater distortion when one ignores the clear evidence of harmonic thinking to be found in the writings of theorists as well as in the music of the time. Perkins ignores Aaron's distinction between the old and new ways of writing a composition and the numerous theoretical prescriptions for constructing chords just as he does music that is clearly not built on

a two-voice framework.17 Tonal harmony having been discounted, harmony itself is barely mentioned, and for good reason. If we accept

the position that calling a conventional cadence by the Roman numerals "V-I" results in "a distortion of the compositional process by which it was obtained,"'8 we are left with only the most circumstantial way to describe fifteenth-century cadences if we do not want to 17 Lowinsky I98I demonstrated the harmonic orientation of a number of

fifteenth-century compositions.

18 Perkins 1973, 195, n. 23. This is Perkins' argument against Don Randel's proposal to use V-I as a shorthand to describe the relation of two root-position triads

(Randel 1971, 79-82). Perkins classified the cadences in Josquin's Masses (Table 2,

pp. 203-20) in the following manner: "Where the structural framework of the cadence is the contrapuntal progression of sixth to octave, the pitch in octave duplication was taken to be the cadential goal even when another pitch is written below; otherwise the lowest note of the terminating combination was given that distinction" (p. 227).

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224 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

take the extreme position of ignoring the bass as "nonstructural and nonessential." I see no problem in using Roman numerals for root position chords as purely descriptive labels. More important for fifteenth-century music is whether these chords contain a third or exhibit a suspension dissonance (this will be discussed below).

3. Spataro's View of Harmony If proponents of the linear-melodic approach to composition are not willing to recognize harmony, the contemporary theorists were. Let us return to Spataro's remark: "Even without studying the precepts of counterpoint everyone is a master of composing harmony." What did Spataro mean by harmony? Richard Crocker maintains that "the theorists," having discovered that the harmonic mean applied to the octave produces a pleasing sound of a fifth-octave chord, "reserved the term

'harmony' for a chord of three pitches; chords of two pitches were concords or discords" (1962, 18).19 For Spataro, "harmony" was entirely different. He discusses it in his Honesta defensio of i491 in the context of a reply to the "insipid words" of Nicol6 Burzio in the latter's Musices opusculum (also called Florum libellus), written "against a certain Spanish prevaricator of the truth," Spataro's teacher, Bartolom6 Ramos, in 1487.

Spataro quotes Burzio as having written: "When two strings of the instrument are plucked so that one goes higher, the other lower, this is not called harmony but consonance."20 Spataro counters:

Secundo questo che tu dici, quando si canta un canto a dui over si sona, non e harmonia ma consonantia, se

According to you, when one sings or plays a work for two voices, it is not

non come tu dici a tri o vero a quatro.

you say, it has three or four voices. This is a patent falsehood and in this

Questa e una falsiti evidente et in

questo mostri quel che sai, perche tu

dei sapere che consonantia e'

solamente a considerare lo intervallo

che e da una voce grave a un'altra

acuta et per lo contrario. Ma

harmonia se dice considerando il

harmony but consonance, unless, as

you show what you know, because you ought to know that consonance

is only the consideration of the inter-

val between a low and a high note and vice versa, but it is called harmony when considering the process

19 The only theorist before Zarlino cited for this opinion is Gaffurio. 20 "Quando lo instrumento se tocca in dui nervi per tal modo che uno va alli lochi alti e l'altro alli bassi non se dice harmonia ma consonantia" (Spataro 1491, fol. E III). Burzio had defined harmony as "diversarum vocum apta coadunatio vel est modulatio vocis et concordia plurium sonorum, quod in cantu figurato latissime patet maxime

dum cantus triplici concordia vel quadruplici cantamus" (Burzio 1975, 74-75) ("the appropriate union of different tones. Or it is a vocal modulation and a concord of many sounds, as is very evident in figured song, especially when we sing in three or four concordant parts"; Burzio 1983, 41).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 225

procedere che fanno inseme concordando: perche se non se

they make by concording together, because if they do not move, even if there are four voices, it is not called

moveno, bench siano quatro, non si dice harmonia ma consonantie, e questo intende Lactantio nel capitulo xvi de opificio dei dicendo li musici

harmony but consonances, and this is what Lactantius, in chapter 16 of De opificio Dei, means when he says

di voce in integri modi senza alcuna

tension of voice in perfect measures

dicono la harmonia essere intensione

offensione di consonantie: quasi dicat

"Musicians say that harmony is a

without any blunders in conso-

finche e finita la cantilena. ... 21

nances," as if he said until the end of

canto de consonantie e dissonantie,

ture of consonances and dissonances

Harmonia sie la mistura che si fa nel

perche 1'e ben vero che ii boni

compositori se affaticano per fare le

dissonantie nella harmonia

maravigliosamente consonare. Ma

non voglio per6 che altri intendano quello che tu ignorante intendi, cio[e]

che queste siano la terza mazor e

minore e la sexta similmente cum le

sue composite: perch6 quelle da si

medesime sonano benissimo. Ma io

dico lo tono e lo semitonio e la quarta

e lo tritono e la septima mazore e

the song. .. ." Harmony is the mixin a composition, because it is quite

true that good composers exert themselves to make dissonances marvel-

ously consonant in harmony. But I

don't want others to understand that

which you ignoramus understand, that is that these are the major and minor sixth and their compounds, because these sound very good by

themselves. But I mean the tone and

semitone and the fourth and tritone

minore. E questa tale e chiamata

and major and minor seventh. That

bona mistura e bona harmonia (149i, fol. EIII-IIIv).

mony.

is called good mixture and good har-

For Spataro, harmony is a process of consonance and dissonance, whether two, three, four, or more voices are involved. A series of

unconnected consonant chords is not harmony. These chords must move in a logical progression, with dissonances resolving into conso-

nances ("fare le dissonantie nella harmonia maravigliosamente consonare"). Without using the terms triad, tonic, or cadence, Spataro is describing functional harmony in sixteenth-century terms.22 Harmony is a principle, not a system of chordal analysis, and it can exist 21 Burzio had quoted Lactantius at the beginning of his chapter on harmony: "Harmoniam musici intentionem concentumque vocum in integros modos sine ulla offensione consonantium vocant. Hoc Lactantius, libro De opificio Dei, capitulo decimo sexto" (1975, 74). In the 1471 edition that I examined, Lactantius gives

nervorum instead of vocum.

22 Richard Crocker, in his discussion of discant, proposed that "we can proceed cautiously to speak of functions between two-note entities instead of between triads"

(1962, i6). The same principle of movement from dissonance (or, in discant, lesser consonance) to consonance is at work here; only the number of voices has changed. Spataro alludes to earlier discant treatises (and also to Burzio's own terminology-see n. 36 below) when he cautions the reader against believing that what he means by dissonances are thirds and sixths.

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226 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

in music that is contrapuntally or chordally conceived. If Spataro's failure to mention triads disappoints a number of scholars, it should not; Spataro (as all his contemporaries) simply took them for granted. Spataro's definition of harmony is valuable because it puts into technical terms a concept that had theretofore been treated rather generally. Tinctoris defined armonia as "a certain pleasantness caused by a combining of sound,""23 and he equated it with euphony (eufonia idem est quod armonia).24 Ramos sharpened the definition by distinguishing between harmony and music: Harmoniam atque musicam idem esse multi credunt, verum nos longe

aliter sentimus. Ex quorundam enim

musicorum sententiis longa

investigatione collegimus harmo-

niam concordium vocum esse com-

mixtionem, musicam vero ipsius

concordiae rationem sive perpensam et subtilem cum ratione indaginem (Ramos I901, 3).25

Many believe that harmony and mu-

sic are the same, but we have a far different opinion. From the statements of certain musicians through long investigation we deduce that harmony is the mixture of concor-

dant voices, music however the consideration of these concords or a

careful and subtle investigation by

means of reason.

Ramos distinguishes between music as sound and music as scientia in a parallel to the distinction between cantor and musicus. Later writers, such as Burzio and Gaffurio, add their own shades

of meaning to harmony. Had he not regarded Gaffurio as his opponent, Spataro might have seized upon Gaffurio's "Harmonia est discordia concors" as the epitome of his theory, although Gaffurio

23 "Armonia est amenitas quedam ex convenienti sono causata," in his Terminorum musicae ddifnitorium.

24 He also equated melody with harmony (melodia idem est quod armonia; melos idem

est quod armonia), a definition that seems surprising only as long as we consider "harmony" in the modern sense. For Tinctoris, melody could very well be defined as "a certain pleasantness caused by a combining of sound." At the discussion following Martin Staehelin's presentation, "Euphonia bei Tinctoris," in the session on "Euphony in the Fifteenth Century" at the I977 Congress of the International Musicological Society, Edward Lowinsky suggested that single consonances have "both harmonically and melodically a certain proportional character" and Tinctoris may have made this equation by basing himself on the phenomenon of proportion. Kurt von Fischer noted that symphonia est harmonia goes back to classical antiquity and "applies both for

simultaneous and for successive tones," and Walter Wiora confirmed that melody retained this meaning throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. See Staehelin 1981, 625. 25 Spataro accused Burzio of stealing this quotation from Ramos and crediting it to Boethius (1491, fol. E IIIv). Indeed Ramos has clearly modeled his definition of

music after Boethius's definition of a musician.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 227

used it only in the general musical and philosophical sense.26 Nicola

Vicentino follows Burzio in believing that harmony can only be produced by three or more voices, for "a duo is deprived of harmony."27 But the general concept of harmony as the perfect ordering of elements continues to be used throughout the succeeding century,

and indeed until today. The multiplicity of definitions developed when theorists began to read Greek sources in translation, for in them

they discovered different meanings of harmonia, one of the most problematic terms in Greek music as well, having both a general and a technical meaning.28 Perhaps the discussion of musical harmony began even earlier in the century, on the initiative of early humanists. Willem Elders, during the Symposium on "Humanism and Music" at the 1977 Berkeley Congress, suggested that Dufay's ceremonial motet Supremum est mortalibus, composed for the signing of a peace treaty between Pope Eugenius IV and the Emperor Sigismundus in 1433, shows the influence of rhetorical thought in its clear text setting and the fauxbourdon passages, which he links with "the possible influence of ancient philosophy, in particular that of Plutarch" (Elders I981, 886). He referred to moral texts, the Moralia, the Coniugalia praecepta, the De amicorum multitudine, and the De tranquillitate animi, in all of which Plutarch uses harmony as a philosophical concept. Thomas Mathiesen, at the same occasion, suggested that a more significant source might be pseudo-Plutarch's De musica, which treats music in

technical as well as philosophical terms. The treatise (considered

authentic at the time) exists in a number of fourteenth- and fifteenth-

century manuscripts, although not, as far as we know, in a Latin

translation before 1507 (Mathiesen 1981, 89o-9i). One can well

imagine that the humanists were eager to discuss these matters with

26 The motto appears in a banderole over Gaffurio's head in the woodcut gracing his De harmonia musicorum instrumentorum of 1518. Claude V. Palisca interprets it to symbolize, in the practical domain, "the union of diverse voices, pitches, rhythms, tempos and instruments in polyphonic music," but, "of greater significance," he says, "is that it epitomizes the harmony that reigns in the universe, that exists, optimally, between man and cosmos, between the faculties of the human soul and the parts of

the body, and between the body and soul" (1985, 17). 27 "Si d& pensare, che il Duo e privo di Armonia, et di compagnia, et che ogni consonanza mal ordinata, et mal posta molto si sente"; Vicentino 1555, Book 4, ch. 23 [recte 24], fol. 83v (misnumbered 80). 28 Mathiesen 1976. On the impact of the newly discovered Greek sources on Renaissance theorists, see Palisca 1985, esp. chapter 8, "Harmonies and Disharmonies of the Spheres."

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228 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

educated musicians such as Dufay and Ciconia and curious to know what possible parallels there were with contemporary music.29 4. Zarlino's Theory of Harmony Spataro's inclusion of dissonance in the concept of harmony must have puzzled many; for a long time this novel idea, stated in 1491,

seems to have had no consequence. It is only when we come to

Zarlino that we find the first substantial theory of harmony in sixteenth-century music. In chapter I2 of Book II of his Istitutioni harmoniche, entitled "Quel che sia Consonanza, Dissonanza, Harmonia & Melodia," Zarlino sets forth his ideas: Ne solamente si ritrovano due suoni

tra loro distanti per il grave et per

l'acuto, che consuonino; ma tali anco si odono molte fiate tramezati da altri

suoni, che rendeno soave concento, come e manifesto; et sono contenuti da

pii proportioni; perb li Musici chiamano tal compositione Harmonia. Onde si de avertire, che l'Harmonia si

ritrova di due sorti: l'una delle quali

chiamaremo Propia, et I'altra Non

propia. La Propia 6 quella, che

descrive Lattantio Firmiano, in quello

dell'Opera di Dio dicendo: I Musici

nominano propiamente Harmonia il concento di chorde, o di voci consonanti nelli lor modi, senza offesa

Nor do we find only two sounds distinguished by high and low that sound together, but we often hear them mediated by other sounds, re-

sulting in a sweet concord, as is

manifest, and they are comprised of

several proportions. Therefore the

musicians call this arrangement "harmony." It should be noted that there are two kinds of harmony: "proper"

and "not proper." Proper is the one described by Lactantius Firmianus in his De opificio Dei as follows: "Mu-

sicians call harmony properly the concord of strings or voices that are consonant in their measures, without

alcuna delle orecchie; intendendo per

any offense of the ears," meaning by this the concord that arises from the

ciascuna cantilena, per fino a tanto che

song make until they reach the end. Proper harmony is therefore a mix-

questa il concento, che nasce dalle modulationi, che fanno le parti di siano pervenute al fine. Harmonia propia adunque e mistura di suoni gravi, et di acuti, tramezati, o non

movements that the parts of each

ture of high and low sounds, mediated or unmediated, that strikes the

29 Mathiesen suggests that Leonardo Bruni, who made extensive translations from Plutarch, could have introduced the De musica to Dufay; three fourteenth- and several fifteenth-century manuscripts containing the treatise are still in Florence (1981, 891).

On the translation of the De musica, by Carlo Valgulio, see Palisca 1985, i6-i7, 88, and 105-10. I believe that Elders overstates his case when he tries to make a direct connection between Plutarch and fauxbourdon. Starting from the premise that Dufay wanted the text of his motet, an ode to peace, to be understood, fauxbourdon not only permits the voices to declaim the text simultaneously but is better suited acoustically to the large space in which the piece must have been performed.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 229 tramezati, la qual percuote soavemente il senso; et nasce dalle parti di ciascuna

cantilena, per il proceder che fanno

accordandosi insieme fino a tanto, che siano pervenute al fine; et ha possanza di dispor l'animo a diverse passioni. Et questa Harmonia non solamente nasce dalle consonanze; ma dalle dissonanze

ancora: percioche i buoni Musici pongono ogni studio di fare, che nelle Harmonie le dissonanze accordino, et che con maraviglioso effetto consuo-

sense of hearing sweetly, and it results from the parts of each song through the proceeding they make in

accord with each other until they arrive at the end, and it has the power to move the soul to various passions. And this harmony not only

arises from consonances, but also

from dissonances, because good mu-

sicians strive to make the dissonances

accord in the harmonies, and that

nino; Di maniera che noi la potemo

they sound together with marvelous effect. Thus we can consider it in

et Imperfetta: La Perfetta, quando si ritrovano molte parti in una cantilena, che vadino cantando insieme, di modo

perfect when there are many parts in

considerare in due modi, cioZ Perfetta,

che le parti estreme siano tramezate dall'altre, et la Imperfetta, quando solamente due parti vanno cantando insieme, senza esser tramezate da

alcun'altra parte. La Non propia e quella, che h6 dichiarato di sopra,30 la quale pidi presto si pu6 chiamare Har-

moniosa consonanza, che Harmonia:

conciosia che non contiene in se alcuna

modulatione; ancora che habbia gli

two ways, perfect and imperfect: a song that go together in such a way that the outer parts are mediated by the others, and imperfect when only two parts sing together, with no me-

diating part. "Not proper" is that

described above,30 which could more

readily be called "harmonious consonance" than harmony, since it contains no movement in itself, even

though the extreme sounds are me-

estremi tramezati da altri suoni: et non

diated by other sounds, and it has no

ha possanza alcuna di dispor l'animo a

detta Propia, la quale di molte Har-

power at all to dispose the soul to various passions, as does proper harmony, which is composed of many

monie Non propie si compone (p. 8o).

not-proper harmonies.

diverse passioni, come l'Harmonia

Zarlino's theory of harmony embraces not only the general concept of harmony derived from Greek philosophical thought but also the ideas of earlier theorists, categorizing the various elements as proper, not proper, perfect, and imperfect. Proper harmony is that

described by Lactantius, though Zarlino has translated the quotation with considerable liberty (see n. 21). Even so, he felt it did not convey

a clear meaning, so he added the explanatory words, "the concord (concento) that arises from the movements that the parts of each song

make until they reach the end." I believe he added this explanation because Lactantius's "in integros modos" ("nelli lor modi") does not express sufficiently clearly the idea of movement, which Zarlino

30 At the beginning of the passage cited, where Zarlino is defining consonance.

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230 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY renders with the term modulatione. He then recasts the same definition

in sixteenth-century terms. Proper harmony consists of a mixture of

high and low sounds, mediated or unmediated, consonant and dissonant, as they progress from the beginning to the end.31 If there are three or more parts, the harmony is perfect (here Zarlino agrees with Burzio and Vicentino). If there are only two parts, there is still harmony, but it is imperfect (thus embracing Spataro's definition of

harmony). Not-proper harmony is single consonances, whether simple or mediated, and might better be called "harmonious consonance." It is not proper harmony because there is no movement.32 Zarlino is chary in citing contemporaneous theorists, a trait he has

in common with most of his colleagues. This does not mean that he did not read them. I believe it can be demonstrated that the preceding 31 In view of this passage, I do not understand how Carl Dahlhaus can claim that "Die Dissonanz wurde im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert nicht als Kontrast und Widerpart

zur Konsonanz, sondern als eine kaum merkliche Unterbrechung der

Konsonanzenfolge aufgefasst" (1968, 113), and specifically that Zarlino does not mention dissonances, which do not become a "primary phenomenon" (Jeppesen's term for syncopation dissonances) until the end of the sixteenth century ("Die Dissonanzen erwahnt er nicht; sie wurden erst im spiten 16. und im 17. Jahrhundert

als 'primires' Phanomen des Kontrapunkts begriffen"; ibid., p. I14). As theoretical

support for his contention Dahlhaus quotes Giovanni Maria Bononcini: "II

Contrapunto e una artificiosa disposizione di consonanze, e dissonanze insieme." The same statement can be found not only in Zarlino but also in Spataro, nearly seventy

years before him. If Zarlino (in another passage) and earlier theorists excuse

dissonance because it passes so quickly, this is only a rationalization of its presence, not a characterization of its effect. As soon as theorists begin to describe syncopation dissonances and their proper placement, dissonance is truly viewed as a "contrast and

opposition." I believe that Knud Jeppesen was correct in viewing syncopation dissonance as a primary phenomenon dating back to around 14oo and passing dissonance as a secondary one originating earlier (Jeppesen 1946, 94-95). The real innovation in dissonance treatment, forcefully stated in Galilei's

counterpoint treatise of 1590, is the acceptance of dissonances for their own sake and the great loosening of restrictions on their resolution. As Galilei puts it: "In the use

of these [the dissonances] I have not sought that which Zarlino (Istit. II, xii) says practical musicians desire, namely that the dissonances blend in harmony with

wonderful effects; but rather that the sense become satisfied with them, not because

they harmonize, as I said, but because of the gentle mixture of the sweet and strong"

(quoted after Palisca 1956, 87). See Galilei 1980, 39.

32 Richard Crocker believes that Zarlino's "theory of harmony analyzes the nature

of three-part sonorities. This theory of harmony does not treat, in principle, the progression from one harmony to the next; the harmonic triads have no systematic relation, and therefore no function, one to another. His theory is about harmony, but

not about functional harmony" (1962, 20). Crocker did not take into account the above-quoted passage. While Zarlino does not treat the progression of specific harmonies, his insistence on movement shows that he clearly viewed "proper harmony" as functional. (I should perhaps make clear that Zarlino's "theory of harmony" embraces both the speculative and practical aspects, but it is the former that has received nearly all the attention to date.)

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 231I

passage was written with a copy of Spataro's Honesta defensio under his

eyes. The quotation from Lactantius could have been taken from Burzio as well as Spataro (he has, however, consulted the original), but Zarlino has incorporated in his recasting of Lactantius's definition

a phrase added by Spataro-"quasi dicat finche e finita la cantilena." Even more telling is the following passage, in which each theorist stresses the importance of dissonance to harmony:

Spataro Zarlino

Harmonia sie la mistura che si fa nel Et questa Harmonia non solamente canto de consonantie e dissonantie, nasce dalle consonanze; ma dalle dis-

perche 1'e ben vero che ii boni sonanze ancora: percioche i buoni

Musici pongono ogni studio di fare, compositori se affaticano per fare le che nelle harmonie le dissonanze ac-

dissonantie nella harmonia maravi- cordino, et che con maraviglioso ef-

gliosamente consonare. fetto consuonino.

And further, in distinguishing harmony from consonance:

Spataro Zarlino

harmonia se dice considerando il la Non propia [harmonia] ... piu' procedere che fanno inseme concor- presto si pub chiamare Harmoniosa consonanza, che Harmonia: concio-

dando: perch se non se moveno, sia che non contiene in se alcuna benche siano quatro, non si dice modulatione; ancora che habbia gli harmonia ma consonantie. estremi tramezati da altri suoni.

If Spataro was a voice crying in the wilderness, Zarlino heard it and gave his ideas consequence.33 In chapter 27 of the third book of the Istitutioni harmoniche, on counterpoint, Zarlino takes up the role that dissonance plays in harmony: As I have said, every composition, counterpoint, or [to put it in one word, every] harmony is composed principally of consonances. Nevertheless, for greater beauty and charm dissonances are used, incidentally and secondarily. Although these dissonances are not pleasing in isolation, when they are properly placed according to the precepts to be given, the

ear not only endures them but derives great pleasure and delight from

33 Not that he would have admitted it. Toward the end of Book 3 of his Istitutioni harmoniche, Zarlino dismisses books like Spataro's Honesta defensio in the following language: "There are also many tracts and apologies, written by certain musicians

against others, which, were one to read them a thousand times, the reading, rereading, and study would reveal nothing but vulgarities and slander rather than anything good, and they would leave one appalled" (Zarlino 1968, 266). In fact, by using the words "vulgarities and slander," he may very well be referring to this treatise, which is astonishing in its invective.

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232 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY them. They are of double utility to the musician (in addition to other uses of no small value). The first has been mentioned: with their aid we may

pass from one consonance to another. The second is that a dissonance causes the consonance which follows it to sound more agreeable. The ear then grasps and appreciates the consonance with greater pleasure (1968, 53).34

For Zarlino, dissonance adds "beauty and charm"; works composed without dissonance would be "somehow imperfect" (haverebbeno ... quasi dello imperfetto). He comes close to, but stops short of saying that

dissonance plays a role in the forward movement of a piece by creating tension that calls for resolution. Yet his insistence that it is movement that distinguishes harmony from consonance shows us that he understood very well the function of dissonance.35 Let us go back once more to Spataro's remark, "And even without studying the precepts of counterpoint everyone is a master of com-

posing harmony." He meant it ironically, for without counterpoint, who could learn how to lead the voices in logical progressions to create dissonances and resolve them properly? Those who took their readymade chords from consonance tables or put together pleasing chords by strumming a lute or experimenting at the keyboard were not true

composers. Composition was hard work, requiring talent and prac-

34 The words in brackets were omitted in the translation. I have restored them to show that Zarlino also used "harmony" as a comprehensive term for a work of music. He employed it in the sense of mode as well. In the fifth requirement for composition, a work "must be ordered under a prescribed and determined [harmony], mode, or

tone, as we like to call it" (Zarlino 1968, 52; again, the bracketed word has been

omitted in the translation). One sympathizes with the translators, who would prefer

to have the author use a term in only one way, but such omissions impair our

understanding. 15 Claude Palisca has provided a thoughtful explanation of Zarlino's terminology in the Introduction to The Art of Counterpoint (Zarlino 1968, xxii-xxiii). This is a task that should be a sine qua non of any translation of a theoretical treatise. I believe he misses an essential point, however, by defining "proper harmony" as one "in which two or more melodies are combined" and "improper harmony" as one "in which there

is consonance but no melody" (p. xxii) and by stating that modulatione "clearly emphasizes the horizontal aspect of a polyphonic texture as opposed to harmonia, which emphasizes the vertical. Also modulatione is a process, whereas harmonia propria is the end result" (p. xxiii). As shown above, harmoniapropia (this is Zarlino's spelling) is a process also, and it emphasizes the vertical only insofar as it requires at least two voices. Modulatione is a term even more problematic than harmonia, especially in the sixteenth century. Zarlino defines it as "un movimento fatto da un suono all'altro per diversi intervalli" (II.xiv), but prefers to apply it to polyphonic music. Since one can

have modulatione "senza l'harmonia propia, et senza alcuna consonanza, et senza la

melodia," it is a more general term than harmonia. On the history and use of the term modulatio, see Blumr6der 1983-

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 233

tice, and a knowledge of counterpoint was an indispensable prerequisite. If it is true that theory lags behind practice, Spataro is applying the term "harmony" to a phenomenon that was well established by 1491. The question then arises, how did earlier theorists describe it? If we look for "definition of the goals toward which the voices being combined should flow" in terms of eighteenth-century tonal harmony,

we will not find it. But if we look in terms of fifteenth-century functional harmony, we will. A great deal of ink has been consumed over the question of tonal harmony in early music. We can place an individual piece on a continuum that stretches from purely modal to purely tonal music; we can analyze it, at least in part, in tonal terms, and this analysis will be useful for us in understanding the piece. But a theorist such as Spataro did not conceive harmony in terms of

tonality-or modality, even though he could assign a mode to a composition. He viewed it on the level of the relations between successive simultaneities, defined as consonances and dissonances. Accordingly, it behooves us to examine the writings of earlier

theorists with regard to consonance and especially to dissonance.

5. The Theory of Dissonance Counterpoint treatises commonly start out by listing the "species," that is the intervals to be used, and then categorize them as perfect or imperfect.36 Few treatises mention dissonances, simply because they

have no place in note-against-note writing."37 The author of the Quatuor principalia states flatly: "Having observed the abovenamed concords and discords, it is necessary to consider how one goes about using perfect and imperfect concords in discant, always avoiding 36 See the chronological table illustrating the changing classification of consonance

in Crocker 1962, 7, and the expanded table in Sachs 1974, 60. Some authors use

different terms for imperfect consonances. Johannes Gallicus calls them "dissonantiae compassibiles" (1876, 385); his pupil Nicol6 Burzio follows him, although he also uses the Greek term, emmeles (1975, 117). Ugolino of Orvieto uses two sets of terminology: perfectae et imperfectae consonantiae and consonantiae et dissonantiae. The latter he considers

less appropriate, but says it is current usage: "licet non ita proprie eis competat diffinitio, tamen commune nomen ita hodierno tempore sortitae sunt" (i959-62, 2:7)On other treatises that follow this terminology, most of them unedited, see Sachs

1974, 85. 3 Not so before this period, as Franco of Cologne's prescriptions for part-writing make clear: "Be it also known that immediately before a concord any imperfect discord [tone, major sixth, minor seventh] concords well. . . . The discant begins ... proceeding then by concords, sometimes introducing discords in suitable places" (Strunk 1950, 153 and 155)-

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234 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

dissonances.""38 It is not until the later fourteenth century that theorists, while still teaching only note-against-note counterpoint, concede that dissonance has a legitimate place in music. The author of the counterpoint treatise Volentibus introduci, supposedly following the

teachings of Philippe de Vitry, lists dissonances along with the consonances and says "Because of their discord we do not use them in

counterpoint, but we do in florid writing in smaller note values, as when a semibreve or breve is divided into several notes, that is into three parts; then one of these three parts can be one of the dissonant species."" Another version of the treatise specifies that it is the middle note that can be dissonant.40

One of the most perceptive observers of musical practice of the time is the author of the Berkeley treatise of 1375, called Goscalcus in

a concordant source. Unlike many authors, he goes beyond the mere specification of progressions of intervals; after having dispatched the rules of counterpoint, he turns to the "useful" and "pleasant" knowledge of how to make a discant in note values smaller than those of the

tenor. This major source has recently been edited and translated by Oliver B. Ellsworth and the section on divided notes (contrapunctus diminutus) has been commented on extensively by Klaus-Jiirgen Sachs

(1974, 145, 148-53). It bears reexamination here, however, because the translation of the relevant passage obscures Goscalcus's meaning and the commentary has not entirely succeeded in clarifying his thought. Neither author attempted to search for examples in contem-

poraneous music that would illustrate Goscalcus's prescriptions for the use of dissonance. While the emphasis is on discanting, for which

Goscalcus uses the word "verbulare," he insists that the rules of

counterpoint be followed, and those who wish to sing "magistraliter"

must not produce the parallel fifths and octaves that some allow (Goscalcus 1984, I30). Therefore the prescriptions should be equally valid for composition. Goscalcus begins his discussion of dissonance treatment as follows:

38 "Visis concordantiis et discordantiis supradictis, considerandum est qualiter cum concordantiis perfectis et imperfectis in discantu operandum est, dissonantiis semper evitatis" (Anonymous 1876, 281). 9 "Et propter earum discordantiam ipsis non utimur in contrapuncto, sed bene eis utimur in cantu fractibili in minoribus notis, ut quando semibrevis vel tempus in pluribus notis dividitur, id est in tribus partibus; tunc una illarum trium partium potest esse in specie discordanti" (Anonymous i869b, 27; this is the treatise published by Coussemaker as Ars Contrapunctus secundum Philippum de Vitriaco that begins Volentibus introduci). On this treatise, another version of which goes under the name of Johannes de Garlandia, see Sachs I974, 170-79. 40 Pisa, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS. 606, p. 50; see Sachs 1974, 173.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 235

Item notandum est, quod quia

impossibile, vel maxime difficile et tediosum eciam esset nimis, omnes voces in concordanciis situare

vocibus diversis, licitum est earum aliquas ponere dissonantes, sic tamen quod maior pars vel saltem equalis sit consonans.

It must be noted that since it would

be impossible or very difficult (and also exceedingly tedious) to situate all syllables in concord with various other syllables,41 it is possible to

place some of them dissonant, as

long as the greater part, or at least

half, are consonant.42

"Vel saltem equalis sit consonans" would be more accurately rendered, I believe, with "or at least the equivalent is consonant." Since Goscalcus uses the word equalis elsewhere only with the meaning of "equal," Ellsworth's "half" is an interpretation rather than a translation. If Goscalcus believed that only half needed to be consonant, then

there was no point in mentioning "the greater part." Sachs accepts "equalis" as "equal," but wonders what "pars" refers to, one being larger, the other equal. He supposes it to be a semibreve, and usually the first part, the value specified in Volentibus introduci (Sachs 1974,

I48). The question is whether dissonance is considered in the

aggregate-i.e., more notes in the composition must be consonant

than dissonant, as Ellsworth's translation implies--or whether Goscalcus is referring to the amount of dissonance allowed over a single note of the tenor, as Sachs surmises. I believe he means the latter, because he continues with a discussion of how the consonance 41 The translation of vox as "syllable" results from the editor's stated policy (p. 27) that "the same term will receive the same translation each time it occurs, unless there

is a clear difference in meaning that requires a different term in English." Vox

frequently means solmization syllable and is used in this sense in the first treatise, on

modes. But in the second treatise it has the more general meaning of "sound." For example, when the author says that a major sixth can be followed by a major tenth if the tenor "descendit ad quartam vocem" or by a major third if the tenor "ascendit ad

quintam vocem" (p. 112), he is talking not about solmization syllables but relative pitches, i.e. when the tenor descends a fourth or ascends a fifth, producing two tones

an octave apart. Since no pitch is specified, solmization syllables do not enter. Solmization syllables were introduced as a guide for the singer in determining the

location of the semitone, but they are not essential to the music. In one of his letters, Spataro rails against the notion that solmization syllables are anything more than a

convenience; they are purely arbitrary, and all that matters is that the tones and semitones fall in the right places (MS. Vat. lat. 5318, fol. 149v; letter no. 29 in Blackburn et al.). In the present context, vox is a tone considered from the point of view of sound, the reason why it can also be used for solmization syllables, which represent sound in context. Nota, notula, orfigura are used to describe the rhythmic shape of a note. The difference between the two terms was stated succinctly by Tinctoris two hundred years later: Vox est sonus naturaliter aut artificialiterprolatus; Nota est signum vocis certi vel incerti valoris (Difinitorium). This is a useful distinction, but

unfortunately one that has become blurred in present-day English, though not in German. (When Dowland translated Ornithoparchus, he rendered vox with "voyce," nota with "note."). 42 Goscalcus 1984, 132-33. Hereafter the translations are my own.

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236 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

of an individual note is to be labeled, using again the words "maior pars":

Item notandum est, quod in

It should be noted that, when divid-

secundum aliquos, denominatur a

dance should be named according to

a prima nota consonante, seu in

to the first consonant note or the first

dividendo voces concordancia, maiori parte. Et, secundum aliquos,

ing sounds, some say the concor-

the larger part; others say according

consonancia existente. Et [si] tot

note appearing in consonance. And if

uno loco quot in reliquo, tunc talis

there are as many sounds according to their value in one place as in the

fuerint voces secundum valorem in consonancia mixta dicitur seu com-

munis.43

rest, then such a consonance is called mixed or common.

Here our understanding of Goscalcus hinges on the distinction he makes between concordantia and consonantia. He defines neither; the difference can only be discerned from the context.44 As Sachs points

out, consonantia refers not to consonant notes (for which Goscalcus

uses the word concordantia) but to the group of divided notes that sound together (con-sonare) with one tenor note, some of which can be

dissonant. If there are two notes, both equally consonant, then the "consonance" is called mixed or common. Maior pars, then, refers to the amount of consonance required over one note of the tenor, and not to the number of notes in a composition that must be consonant. Since there is no appropriate noun in English for "sounding together," I will

place "consonance" in quotation marks and retain Goscalcus's "concordance" as the antonym of dissonance. The central passage on dissonance treatment in Goscalcus now

follows:

Item notandum est quod licet

quamlibet consonanciam a voce dissonante incipere et finire, dum tamen illa vox sit minoris valoris medietate

illius consonancie; potest tamen esse

equalis in sincopando. Unde

sincopari dico quando reducciones aliquarum notarum diversarum ab

It should be noted that any "consonance" can begin or end with a dissonant sound, as long as that sound

has less than half the value of that

"consonance"; however it can be equal when syncopating (I call syncopation when separate notes, sepa-

invicem et distancium ab invicem

43 Goscalcus 1984, 132; si has been supplied from the two concordant sources.

Here again I feel that Ellsworth has made an interpretation not warranted by the text:

"And it must be noted that, according to some, in dividing syllables, concord

predominates for the greater part; according to others, the first note is consonant--or in consonance."

4 Curiously, the version of the treatise in the Catania manuscript (dating about one hundred years later) reverses the two terms, but not consistently.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 237

fiunt earum perfecciones compu- rated from each other, are drawn

tando.4s together in counting perfections).

Sachs interprets "equal" in this context as equal to half the value of the

tenor note ("potest esse tamen equalis [nimlich: valoris medietate] in sincopando," 1974, 149). On the face of it, a dissonant note as long as the note of the tenor seems suspect, and yet if Goscalcus had meant what Sachs believes, he should have said medietatis valoris rather than equalis.

If Goscalcus had accompanied his statements with music examples, his explanation of the use of dissonance in cantus fractus would

have been clear. He does give a set of verbula (what English writers would later call "divisions") in the various mensurations, but without

pitch and without a tenor, leaving the student to add his own-this method being, as he says, briefer and more instructive.46 However, if

we examine the chanson following his counterpoint treatise, Souviengne vous destriner a 3,47 we can find an illustration of the various

types of dissonance allowed (Ex. i).

First it must be noted that the ratio of concordance to dissonance

is not dependent on a fixed note value, as Sachs surmised, but rather on the length of the tenor note. Earlier, Goscalcus had explained how to lay out a tenor in semibreves, breves, or a mixture of both (1984, 120). In the first four measures of Souviengne vous the tenor moves in

perfect breves, and therefore each "consonance" comprises one measure, more than half of which must consist of concordance. Measure 45 Goscalcus 1984, 132. Ellsworth translates "minoris valoris medietate illius consonancie" as "a smaller value by half than the consonance"; this however contradicts Goscalcus's first statement, that the greater part of a group of divided

notes must be consonant.

46 "non intendo voces aliquas nominare, neque clavem aliquam apponere, quod facio causa brevitatis, et ut quilibet in concordando ipsa verbula diversis vocibus eque speculando pocius sit intentus" (Goscalcus 1984, I34). Goscalcus did not spoon-feed his students but left them to work out the examples on their own. The examples are found on pp. I36-45. They look as if they were meant to be for two voices, each set of verbula being followed by an ascending ligature; but, as Sachs reports, there is no

way they can be transcribed polyphonically (see his comments, 1974, 150-51).

Inexplicably, Ellsworth did not transcribe the verbula in modern notation, nor does he offer any explanation of them. 47 See Crocker 1967, 167-68, from which Ex. i, the first half of the rondeau, is taken. A facsimile may be found facing p. 164, which permitted correction of an error in the discant, m. 4. The rondeau is also transcribed in Apel 1970-72, vol. 3, no. 280. Ellsworth omitted this and a second chanson from his edition on the grounds that "the author makes no attempt to integrate either composition into his theoretical material, although they apparently were copied at the same time as the rest of the manuscript"

(Goscalcus 1984, 13). While Goscalcus does not refer to the chanson, it is legitimate to suppose that it conforms to his compositional prescriptions, especially because it is placed close after them.

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238 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY Example I Anon., Souviengne vous, mm. 1-26 (Berkeley MS. 744, P- 36)

Sou-

Contratenor I

Tenor

5

i

I

viengne vous de- stri- ner

#

#

10

I

I

vo- stre a- mant ma dou-

ce

a-

mour

qui

mon

cuer

- .. . ._ .lIV

"wI

7m

I

F

__

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 239 20

pour e- stri-

25

ne.

3, discant, shows the "maior pars" concordant with the tenor. Measure 4 shows what I believe Goscalcus means by equalis in his first

rule: the concordant notes are divided (A and F), but equivalent in value to the "maior pars." The differing opinions about naming concordances may be illustrated in measure 22: some would say the concordance is a', the larger part, others that it is f', the first consonant note. A mixed consonance is found between the

contratenor and tenor in measures I and 3. For the remainder of Goscalcus's prescriptions we will examine "consonances" where the tenor is an imperfect breve or semibreve. In Souviengne vous there is only one example of a "consonance" that begins

with a dissonance, in measure 12, but there are many in the second chanson in the Berkeley manuscript, En la maison Daedalus,48 for example: Example 2 Anon., En la maison Daedalus, three measures beginning with a dissonance (Berkeley

MS. 744, p. 62) m.

5

m.

14

m.

21

'): Iso.- -

\Elf

?"I

48 See Crocker 1967, 169-70, for a transcription.

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240 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The sharpest dissonances are reserved for cadences, a common feature. The most usual place for dissonance in a "consonance" is the

end; see, e.g., Souviengne vous, discant, mm. I, 2, 3, 4, 23, and contratenor, m. 23.

Finally, we must look for examples of syncopation dissonance in the hope that they will show us whether Goscalcus meant that the dissonant syncopated note could be equal to the value of the "conso-

nance" or equal to only half its value. In Souviengne vous only semibreves are syncopated, and they are dissonant only against semibreves in the tenor (see discant, m. 6, and contratenor, m. I I).

Syncopations against a larger note are always consonant. These

examples show us that the dissonant syncopated note is indeed equal in value to the tenor note. The dissonance itself, however, lasts only for half the value because it resolves against the succeeding note of the tenor. Throughout the piece the contratenor is more consonant with the tenor than is the discant, but there is a strong dissonance at the

cadence in measures 9-To. In terms of the mensuration, the

contratenor is not syncopated, but the composer has treated it as such

(cf. also m. I2), making the dissonant note, an imperfect breve, equal in length to the note value of the tenor. This example confirms Goscalcus's observation with regard to syncopation dissonance. Goscalcus, like Tinctoris one hundred years later, provides us with a valuable frame of reference for examining the music of his time

with regard to consonance and dissonance. In several ways he was ahead of his time, for prescriptions for the use of dissonance are rare even in treatises of the first half of the fifteenth century, and none

match the detail of Goscalcus's description. The lack of theoretical comment is especially disappointing because the treatment of dissonance changed so decisively during this period. When dissonance is allowed, theorists usually excuse it on the grounds that it passes so rapidly that it does not offend the ear.49 Later in the century we begin

to find psychological explanations of the effect of dissonance.

Guilielmus Monachus's eighth rule of counterpoint states that even though we have established twelve consonances, perfect as well as imperfect, simple as well as compound, nevertheless, according to

49 Cf. Beldomandi 1984, 58: "usitantur tamen in cantu fractibili, eo quod in ipso propter velocitatem vocum earum non sentiuntur dissonantie," and Anonymous XI:

"Notandum de dissonanciis quod dissonanciae in omni cantu ab omni autore

prohibitae sunt, et dari non debent nisi in cantu figurativo deutero in minima vel semiminima aut fusa; quibus notis dissonancia minus percipitur, seu percipi potest, racione parvae morae seu velocitatis in pronunciando . . ." (1973, 138).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 24 I modern usage, dissonances occasionally gratify us, as the dissonance of a second gives sweetness to a lower third, the dissonance of a seventh gives sweetness to a sixth, the dissonance of a fourth gives sweetness to a higher

third, and that third gives sweetness to a fifth, and this according to modern usage.50

For the first time, dissonance is described as functional; it enhances

the following consonance.s1 This is what Spataro has in mind when he speaks of making dissonances marvelously consonant in harmony. Except for the last, Guilielmus is describing suspension dissonances, which create a desire for resolution and produce the movement that is integral to Spataro's concept of harmony. The dissonances described by Prosdocimus and most other writers are passing dissonances, which have a different effect. Goscalcus's syncopation dissonances lie in the middle, for they can be dissonant on the first beat (like a suspension) or on the second. The movement from dissonance to consonance in cantusfractus of two voices and in polyphonic music parallels and develops out of the movement from imperfect to perfect consonance prescribed in counterpoint treatises. Both were viewed in terms of process-in a word, functionality. Like Guilielmus, fourteenth-century theorists commented on the psychological need for one type of sound to resolve to another. According to the author of Cum nota sit, if the contrapuntal voice were to end on an imperfect consonance, one's spirit would remain in suspense, which would not be satisfied until resolution occurred on a perfect consonance-nor, he adds, would one be able to tell that the piece had come to an end.52 Moreover, in the words of one

50 "Octava regula talis est, quod quamquam posuerimus duodecim consonantias tam perfectas quam imperfectas, tam simplices quam compositas, non obstante, secundum usum modernum consonantiae dissonantes aliquotiens nobis serviunt, sicut dissonantia secundae dat dulcedinem tertiae bassae, dissonantia vero septimae dat dulcedinem sextae, dissonantia quartae dat dulcedinem tertiae altae, et illa tertia dat dulcedinem quintae et hoc secundum usum modernum" (Guilielmus 1965, 35). 51 This explanation was not universally accepted; Tinctoris ridiculed it in the Liber de arte contrapuncti, asking whether vice should be practiced to lend virtue more resplendence, or inept words inserted in speech to make the others seem more elegant

(19752,"Nona 2:140). Zarlino, however, accepted it (see above). conclusio est quod sicut contrapunctus incipit per perfectam, sic etiam

debet finire. Ratio potest esse, quia, si fineretur cantus per imperfectam, tunc remaneret animus suspensus, nec adhuc quiesceret cum non audiret perfectum

sonum, nec per consequens indicatur ibi finem esse cantus" (Anonymous 1869a, 62). The same observation is made by Guillermus de Podio, Ars musicorum, Book VI, chap. 9: "[Species imperfectae] suspensam enim natura generant in animo auditoris modulationem. Unde quamquam supra modum illum delectent, numquam tamen donec ad perfectam declinaverint, quietum reddunt" (1978, 5).

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242 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

anonymous fifteenth-century observer, counterpoint without a mix-

ture of perfect and imperfect consonances would yield no harmony: The procedure of counterpoint is not just in continuous perfect consonances ndr in imperfect ones, but imperfect consonances must be mixed

in with perfect ones, and perfect consonances included with imperfect ones, because such a procedure would not be a composing of harmony, in which music shines, it would even result in harshness and roughness, which music flees.53 6. Tinctoris on Dissonance

Having briefly surveyed the place of dissonance in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings, we are now in a position to appreciate the true novelty of Tinctoris's counterpoint book: dissonances are not just mentioned in passing, they are given a book of their own, and it is in this

second book that Tinctoris elaborates his precepts of counterpoint, reserving Book III for the eight general rules. Tinctoris discusses both

consonance and dissonance because while "counterpoint is primarily composed of concords, discords however are permitted now and then."54

He repeats this statement as an introduction to chapter 19 of Book ii, where he first takes up counterpoint, as opposed to the exposition of intervals. All of the examples of florid counterpoint demonstrate the use of dissonance, but Tinctoris does not begin to discuss it until chapter 2 3. He now sets forth an elaborate system of placing dissonances, which has

been admirably elucidated by Klaus-Jiurgen Sachs (1974, I54-69, and condensed in i980), who rightly notes that Tinctoris's rules for dissonances "for the first time make possible an understanding of the period's compositional techniques" (1980, 839).

That the novelty and importance of Tinctoris's discuission of

dissonance treatment have escaped notice so far is due to two circumstances. In the first place Tinctoris's rules are very condensed and are couched in language that is difficult for us to understand since the theoretical framework is the mensural system, which is no longer s3 "El procedere del contraponto non e continuamente de sole consonantie perfecte ne ancho imperfecte ma ale perfecte se de interponere de l'imperfecte et al[e]

imperfecte interponere le perfecte perche tal procedere non saria compositione de armonia, de la quale la musica resplende, ancho sarebe incorere in duritia et asperita,

la quale la musica fuge" (Regule de contrapuncto in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Conv. Soppr. 388, fols. 29-34; ed. in Anonymous 1977, 5). 54 "in contrapuncto principaliter concordantiae praecipiuntur, discordantiae vero interdum permittuntur" (I.i.6 [2:14]). The Latin text in all quotations from Tinctoris is taken from the edition by Albert Seay (Tinctoris 1975); numbers in brackets following chapter citations refer to the volume and page number in Seay's edition.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 243

second nature to us. In the second place, Coussemaker, in editing the Liber de arte contrapuncti, did not score the extended music examples,

which illustrate Tinctoris's precepts in precise pedagogical order. Even so sharp a theoretical mind as Knud Jeppesen, whose monumental study of dissonance treatment in the sixteenth century-based not only on the works of Palestrina-has done so much to advance our

knowledge, did not appreciate the contribution made by Tinctoris.5

I will of necessity make only the most cursory exposition of

Tinctoris's system; the twelve chapters in which he distills his theory (Liber de arte contrapuncti II.xxiii-xxxiv) deserve a separate study. Whereas Goscalcus tied dissonance to the length of the tenor note,

Tinctoris places it in a more circumscribed context, both rhythmic and melodic. The unit of measure (mensurae directio)--minim in major prolation, semibreve in minor prolation-determines the length of the dissonance. Unstressed dissonances occur on the second half of the

unit, following a consonance; they may be the same length as or shorter than the consonance. Stressed dissonances, in the form of step-wise resolving suspensions, are reserved for cadences. Tinctoris refers to a cadence with the words descensus in aliquam perfectionem,

meaning that one voice (usually the tenor) descends at least one step into a perfection. "Perfection" is understood in two ways: as the beginning of a mensural unit and as a chord consisting only of perfect

intervals. His practice may be verified in the music examples. The example for chapter 23, Salve martyr virgoque Barbara (used as para-

digm in Sachs 1980) has 29 measures. Suspension dissonances create cadences concluding in measures 3, 5, 7, 11, 14, I6, 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, and 29. The initial sonority in all but one of these measures consists of an octave, a fifth-octave chord, or a chord with doubled fifth; in

measure 16 a deceptive cadence occurs, with the bass moving up a step instead of a fourth. All of the non-cadential measures (except measure 9, which is the beginning of a new section) have a third or ss Jeppesen quotes only Tinctoris's rules on melodic (i.e. unaccented passing) dissonance (1946, 1o7-8). Even in his book Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century, where he devotes pp. 8-i 3 to Tinctoris's treatise, he was capable of stating: "we might now [after the listing of dissonances] expect Tinctoris to explain

clearly, as he did with the consonances, how dissonances can be used with

consonances and what combinations are available. But he does not discuss this point at all-apparently because he finds dissonances so unessential that such a careful presentation would be superfluous at this point" (p. 1i). Jeppesen's first theoretical witness for the syncopation dissonance is Guilielmus Monachus (pp. 15-16), who is far less specific than Tinctoris. If Coussemaker had scored his examples, scholars might have taken the trouble to figure out what Tinctoris was saying. But they are not

easily transcribed; many of them involve complicated proportions, which even

experienced editors have difficulty with; see Blackburn i981, 42-45.

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244 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

tenth on the first beat except for measures 13 and 19, in which the tenor does not descend a step and the superius is tied over the barline.

Cadences are handled differently according to the length of the penultimate note in the tenor; if it is double the unit of measurement, it usually receives a suspension dissonance. If it is one unit long, the

first part may receive a dissonance, and so may the preceding tenor note if the counterpoint consists of a descending line. From a melodic

point of view, the dissonance is approached by step and left by step or, more rarely, the leap of a third.

Although he appears to have given no name to his theory of dissonance, subsuming it under the rubric of "counterpoint," what is Tinctoris describing if not Spataro's concept of harmony: "harmony is

the mixture of consonances and dissonances in a composition ... ; good composers exert themselves to make dissonances marvelously consonant in harmony"? But whereas Spataro was not specific about the placement of dissonance, Tinctoris is. The sharpest dissonances are reserved for cadences. Cadences are characterized not only by the

customary expansion of two voices to an octave or contraction to a unison but also by the behavior of the other voices, which ordinarily refrain from touching a third or a sixth in the final chord.56 Do we not

see here the "definition of the goals toward which the voices being

combined should flow," and are not the "basic principles of the structural order" harmonic as well as melodic?"57 No voice can be considered "nonstructural" since the voices behave in a different way

in cadential and non-cadential passages. For Tinctoris the suspension dissonance has the same function as the dominant in tonal harmony, and in many cases it not only behaves like a dominant but sounds like one. 5 That these progressions are not necessarily tonal does not mean 56 I do not mean to claim that all cadences of this period should be or are handled

this way, merely to point out that what Tinctoris says-as is so often the case-is

literally true. It holds for every one of his three-voice examples except for deceptive

cadences (all of which, interestingly, are cadences on A). But every rule has its

exception (this is the leitmotiv of the third book); see below, after Ex. 3, and Ex. 4.

Moreover, the five-voice example in chapter 20, Deo gratias, does have thirds in cadences approached by suspension dissonances. 57 See above, pp. 221-223. Starting from the theorists' prescriptions that a composition must close on a perfect consonance and be preceded by the closest imperfect consonance, Don Randel has shown that when a major sixth is used, there are only two locations possible for a third voice, a third above or a fifth below; the latter produces a V-I cadence (i971, 78). 58 In studying Josquin's Benedicite omnia opera Domini, Edward Lowinsky singled out the use of dominant and secondary seventh chords to sharpen the focus on the tonic, remarking on "the composer's awareness that dissonance was an indispensable element in endowing harmonic progressions with greater drive toward, and sharper definition of, the tonic" (i961, 20).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 245

that the composer did not hear and plan his vertical sonorities as a harmonic unit rather than solely being led where his melodic lines took him.59 The two aspects carry equal weight; according to Spataro, one cannot compose harmony without a knowledge of counterpoint.60

For Tinctoris, cadences are to be shaped by harmonic consider-

ations. That these considerations are sometimes related to the mode of

the composition is made clear by the fifth general rule of Book III: "On no note at all, whether high, middle, or low, should a perfection be made through which a modal dislocation of the composition might

occur.'"61 He gives the following example: 59 Cf. the perceptive remarks in Dahlhaus 98o0: "The assumption that the theory of counterpoint deals with the horizontal and that of harmony with the vertical dimension of music is as trivial as it is misleading. In the study of harmony, it is not just the structure of chords but also their progressions that must be dealt with; and

similarly, in the theory of counterpoint, it is a question not only of melodic

part-writing but also of the chords formed by the parts" (p. 843) and: "If harmony is understood as referring to a regulated joining together of simultaneities-and there is nothing to justify the restriction of the concept of harmony simply to tonal, chordal

harmony-then music before 16oo also bears a harmonic imprint, even if of a different kind from that of later music" (p. 844). 60 It would be interesting to know how Tinctoris's contemporaries reacted to his

harmonically-oriented counterpoint instruction. We may catch a glimpse of it, perhaps, in Gaffurio's treatment of counterpoint in Book III of his Practica musicae (Milan, 1496). One would expect enthusiastic agreement from this native of Italy, the

land of harmony. Not so. After categorizing the consonant intervals, Gaffurio

dismisses dissonances in the following words: "The remaining intervals, the second, fourth, seventh, and their octaves, offend the ears when they are played together. They do not belong to the elements of counterpoint, since they have no stable place

in songs except in a very rapid passage" (Gaffurio 1968, i24). In his third rule he

reiterates the prohibition of dissonance in note-against-note counterpoint. Then he apparently bethought himself and included a chapter on "When and where dissonances are allowed in counterpoint," in which he says "a dissonance is admitted in counterpoint if it is concealed as a suspension (sincopa) or as a quick passing tone" (p. i29). His example (in three parts) shows how "a suspended dissonance is hidden and does not offend the ears." It also shows what Jeppesen calls relatively accented passing

dissonance-a minim on the strong beat-and an unaccented fourth over the held tenor. These Gaffurio characterizes as "a very clear dissonance" which he would rarely allow, although it is found in works by Dunstable, Binchois, Dufay, and Brassart. Aside from saying that a dissonance frequently precedes a perfect consonance, Gaffurio indicates nothing about the metrical placement of dissonance. One could hardly imagine an approach more different from that of Tinctoris, although their rules of counterpoint are very similar. But Gaffurio neither defined harmony nor

considered it in the way that Spataro did, who followed the school of Tinctoris. 61 "Quinta regula est quod supra nullam prorsus notam sive media, sive superior sive inferior fuit, perfectio constitui debet per quam cantus distonatio contingere possit" (III.v.2 [2:150]). Jeppesen (followed by Gustave Reese) understood this rule to

prohibit introduction of a cadence "if it interferes with the development of the melody" (Jeppesen 1939, i2; Reese 1959, 144). Distonatio is not a classical word. Its probable derivation from dis- and tonus, Tinctoris's word for mode, makes a connection with the mode more cogent.

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246 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY Example 3 Tinctoris, example to rule concerning modal dislocation (Liber de arte contrapuncti III.

v [2:I5o])

Contrapunctus

Tenor

01i

I

I

1I

l-~

'

,

I

I

I

I

i

I

In the places marked with a sign, especially the last two, the tenor might be tempted to raise the note in a subsemitonium modi cadence, but

the counterpoint does not make the corresponding "descent into a perfection"; the tenor notes should therefore be left uninflected. In a

second example Tinctoris shows that the perfection on which a cadence occurs does not necessarily have to be a fifth-octave chord; it

can occasionally (interdum) contain a third (mm. 6 and 8), or be deceptive, with the contratenor a third beneath the tenor (m. 9). 7. Tinctoris on Counterpoint, Resfacta, and singing Super librum

If we view Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti as a manual of

harmony as well as counterpoint,62 the question arises of how 62 Edward E. Lowinsky made this point in his discussion of "The Nature of the New" (1966, 141-48). The fifteenth century saw the development of "modern

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 247

Tinctoris himself composed-did he follow the successive method of

"the older generation," or did he belong to the modems who, according to Pietro Aaron, "take all the parts into consideration at

once"?

The answer to this question lies not in any statement Tinctoris makes but in his definition and use of the terms contrapunctus and res facta. Long before Ernest T. Ferand raised the question, "What is Res

Facta?" (1957) scholars had essayed various explanations. Most recently Margaret Bent has re-examined the question in "Resfacta and Cantare Super Librum" (1983). I will not attempt here to summarize the history of this inquiry, for which I refer the reader to Ferand's article,

but will pose the problem as Ferand saw it, discuss his solution and Margaret Bent's views, and then propose a different interpretation. Ferand perceived a conflict between the description of resfacta in Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti of 1477 and the definition in his earlier Difinitorium, where one finds what amounts to a cross refer-

ence to the entry "cantus compositus": "Res facta idem est quod cantus compositus." He translated the two passages as follows: Porro tam simplex quam diminutus contrapunctus dupliciter fit, hoc est aut scripto aut mente. Contrapunctus qui scripto fit communiter res facta nominatur. At istum quem mentaliter

Counterpoint, whether simple or florid, is of two kinds: written or

mental. Written counterpoint is commonly called resfacta [one word]; but that which is mentally conceived

conficimus absolute contrapunctum vocamus, et hunc qui faciunt super

those who make it are vulgariter said

librum cantare vulgariter dicuntur.

to 'sing upon the book.'

Cantus compositus est ille qui per relationem notarum unius partis ad

Cantus compositus is that which results from the various relations of the note values of one voice to those of an-

alteram multipliciter est aeditus: qui refacta vulgariter appellatur.

we call counterpoint absolutely, and

other, and it is commonly called refacta [sic] (I957, 142).

And he described the conflict as follows: resfacta . . . may mean either a written contrapuntal composition, plain

or florid, as distinguished from improvised counterpoint, again either simple or florid; or it may mean florid, in contradistinction to simple,

harmony," "the art of concord based on the triad," and "modern counterpoint," "the art of combining two, three, four, five, and more voices in such a manner that the greatest melodic and rhythmic freedom of each single voice may be obtained in a carefully regulated harmonic sound texture." Tinctoris's "treatise on counterpoint is the classic document of the new harmonic art and the new treatment of dissonance, and should be more properly called a treatise on harmony and counterpoint" (1966, 142 and 143).

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248 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

counterpoint, whether written or improvised-depending on which Tinctoris we believe, the author of the Ars contrapuncti or that of the Difinitorium (1957, 143).

Ferand investigated later references to resfacta in the hope that they might clarify the seeming contradiction. The term itself, he believed, "was the result of a confusion with cantusfractus, because of the similar

sound of the Latin terms" (p. I50) and he cited one (late) source in which it is spelled res fracta (p. I49). But he was forced to conclude that "the term res facta had two different meanings. It signified a written, not improvised, composition in plain or florid counterpoint. And it signified also florid, not plain, counterpoint, whether written

or improvised" (p. I50). Thus, he was left with the contradiction. As Margaret Bent points out, Ferand's inquiry was unsuccessful because he failed to question his own presumptions. Once he had translated the two definitions, he did not examine in what contexts Tinctoris used the terms in his treatises. Nor did he take into account

Tinctoris's distinction between res facta and counterpoint and his comments on singing super librum.

Margaret Bent remedied this approach by first setting forth, in Latin and in translation, the twentieth chapter of Book II of Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti, in which he treats the difference between resfacta

and counterpoint and gives advice about singing super librum. She then examined Tinctoris's definitions of counterpoint (simplex and diminutus) and cantus (simplex, simplex planus, simplex figuratus, and compositus), and

finally she investigated the references to singing super librum. When we deal with an interpretation of an author's statements, this is the only way

to proceed, and I shall follow her example by presenting the crucial chapter here, departing from her translation in a few details:

Tinctoris, Liber de arte contrapuncti (1477), II.xx [2:Io7--Io]63

I. [Chapter heading:] Quod tam simplex quam diminutus contrapunctus dupliciter fit, hoc est scripto vel mente, et in quo res facta a contrapuncto differt.

2. Porro tam simplex quam

diminutus contrapunctus dupliciter fit, hoc est aut scripto aut mente.

That counterpoint, both simple and diminished, is made in two ways, that is, in writing or in the

mind, and how resfacta differs from counterpoint.

Furthermore, counterpoint, both

simple and diminished, is made in two ways, either in writing or in the mind.

63 I incorporate the correction made by Bent of "cantaverint" (a mistake that goes back to Coussemaker) to "evitaverint," found in all the sources, at the end of sentence 8. Bent writes resfacta as one word, after these sources. I prefer to retain two words,

since both are inflected.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 249 3. Contrapunctus qui scripto fit communiter res facta nominatur.

Counterpoint that is written is

librum cantare vulgariter dicuntur.

commonly called resfacta. But that which we accomplish mentally we call counterpoint in the absolute [sense], and they who do this are said vulgariter to sing upon the book.

contrapuncto potissimum differt,

counterpoint above all in this re-

quod omnes partes rei factae sive tres

spect, that all the parts [=voices] of a resfacta, be they three, four, or more,

4. At istum quem mentaliter

conficimus absolute contrapunctum vocamus, et hunc qui faciunt super

5. In hoc autem res facta a

sive quatuor sive plures sint, sibi mutuo obligentur, ita quod ordo lexque concordantiarum cuiuslibet

partis erga singulas et omnes observari debeat, ut satis patet in hoc exemplo

quinque partium existenti, quarumquidem partium tres primo, deinde quatuor ac postremo omnes quinque

concinunt.

However, res facta differs from

should be mutually bound to each other, so that the order and law of concords of any part should be observed with respect to each single

and all [parts], as is amply evident in this example in five parts, of which

first three sound [=sing] together,

then four, then finally all five.

[follows example, Deo gratias a 5]

6. Sed duobus aut tribus, quatuor aut pluribus super librum conci-

But with two or three, four or more

quae ad legem ordinationemque

singing together upon the book, one is not subject to the other. For indeed, it suffices that each of them64 sound together with the tenor

consonare sufficit.

with respect to those [matters] that pertain to the law and ordering of

nentibus alter alteri non subiicitur.

7. Enimvero cuilibet eorum circa ea

concordantiarum pertinent, tenori

concords.

8. Non tamen vituperabile immo

I do not however judge it blameworthy but rather very laudable if those singing together should pru-

ordinationisque concordantiarum inter se prudenter evitaverint.

dently avoid similarity between each

9. Sic enim concentum eorum multo

Thus indeed they shall make their singing together much more full and

plurimum laudabile censeo si concinentes similitudinem assumptionis

repletiorum suavioremque efficient.

other in the choice and ordering of

concords.

suave.

Bent sees the root of the problem in Ferand's widely-accepted belief that cantare super librum is equivalent to improvisation. "Mente"

(sentence 2), however, she notes, can equally well apply to the "thinking out" that precedes the writing down of a composition.

Moreover, the notion of improvisation is incompatible with

64 Bent: "any of them [each?]." All the contrapuntal voices must be concordant with the tenor; the conflicts arise between the added voices themselves. Tinctoris addresses this problem in the next sentence.

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250 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Tinctoris's definition of counterpoint as being a "moderated and rational sounding together" (moderatus ac rationabilis concentus), and Tinctoris himself says that those singing super librum must follow the rules of consonance and would do better to agree about what they are going to sing (sentences 7-8). Rather, she sees "unwritten and written

composition or counterpoint as stages in a continuous line of endeavor" (p. 378). When Tinctoris says that written counterpoint is "commonly called resfacta" (sentence 3), he distances himself from this

description; it is common usage that applies this term improperly. Therefore resfacta "is neither necessarily written, nor is it the same as

counterpoint, though both confusions are 'common"' (p. 380). She

concludes that

resfacta is composition, usually but not necessarily written, a completed

piece resulting from application of, and choices between, the rules of counterpoint [and in which "the parts . .. are 'mutually obliged' with respect to the law and ordering of consonances"].6s The successive

construction of those parts will still usually be perceptible in the finished product. Cantare super librum is the singing of counterpoint, following

strict rules of interval combinations in relation to a tenor and, with experience and skill, to other pre-existing parts as well. It requires

careful, successive preparation. Resfacta and singing super librum therefore differ but do not contrast in principle, and indeed their results may be so

close together as to defy diagnosis. Tinctoris can no longer be regarded as an authority for improvisatory practices, and several assumptions about the nature of early improvisation will need to be re-examined (p. 39I)-

I believe that by removing a distinction between unwritten and written music and denying the improvisatory nature of singing super

librum, Margaret Bent succeeds in obscuring rather than clarifying Tinctoris's thought. Tinctoris employs the distinction "scripto vel mente" or "mentaliter" three times in chapter 20 (sentences I, 2, 4); he must have considered it significant. Moreover, a number of questions remain: How does resfacta differ from counterpoint? In the definition of cantus compositus, what does multipliciter mean? Why did Tinctoris

think it improper to call written counterpoint "res facta"? In what sense do the singers sing "upon the book"? What was the normal way of singing super librum that Tinctoris implicitly criticizes? Are there any written examples of singing super librum? Does singing super librum require successive preparation in order for the singers to agree to avoid

65 This important qualification, missing here, has been supplied from Bent's discussion on p. 390.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 251

similarity? What does Tinctoris mean when he uses the words communiter and vulgariter in connection with resfacta and singing super

librum?

The key to comprehending Tinctoris's concept of resfacta lies in a correct understanding of what the word "counterpoint" meant to him.

The confusion over res facta has come about only because we have failed to realize that when Tinctoris uses the word contrapunctus he

does not mean what "counterpoint" signifies to us today, "the combination into a single musical fabric of lines or parts which have distinctive melodic significance" (Apel i947, 189) or "the combination of simultaneously sounding musical lines according to a system of rules" (Sachs 1980, 833). In interpreting the ideas of any writer, and especially one removed from us by generations as well as language, no term must pass unexamined. Sometimes, as in the present case, the definition must be read in the light of an author's mental outlook. Tinctoris gives the following two definitions of counterpoint, the first in the Diffinitorium, the second in chapter I of the Liber de arte contrapuncti:

Contrapunctus est cantus per

Counterpoint is a melody66 brought

punctuatim effectus.

sound punctually against another.

Contrapunctus itaque est moderatus

Therefore counterpoint is a moderated and rational sounding together

positionem unius vocis contra aliam

ac rationabilis concentus per

positionem unius vocis contra aliam effectus, diciturque contrapunctus a contra et punctus.

about through the placing of one

brought about through the placing of

one sound against another, and it is called counterpoint from "counter" and "point."

The main difference between the two definitions is that the first

considers counterpoint a melody, the second a sounding together (he sharpens the definition by saying that it should be "rational"). But in 66 After some hesitation, I decided to translate cantus in this context as "melody" rather than "song," which, I feel, carries an implication of a fixed composition and overtones of polyphony. (In other contexts, however, cantus clearly means a poly-

phonic composition; see note 77 and below, p. 254.) Tinctoris defines cantus as

"multitudo ex unisonis constituta," a "multitude constructed out of single sounds." It would seem that a word is missing here-a multitude of what? That word is vocum, which is found in the Reguleflorum musices (Florence, 151 o) of Pietro Canuzio: "Cantus est multitudo vocum ex unisonis constituta" (fol. a4v). Canuzio's rules are, as he says on the title page, "collecte ex visceribus multorum doctorum," including Tinctoris. In fact, he swallowed the Difinitorium whole. Whether the word vocum was added by Canuzio or comes from a manuscript copy of the Difnitorium that is independent of the print remains to be determined. Tinctoris gives two definitions for unisonus; one

is a sound ("quasi unus sonus")-the meaning he uses here--the other a concord ("quasi una id est simul sonans").

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252 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

both only two voices are specified, one sound (vox) being placed against the other.67 A second or third contrapuntal voice can be added, but it is set only against the tenor. One must always read

Tinctoris very literally. A man who insisted that the term

"semiminima" was wrong because the "minima," by virtue of its name, is the "least" of the note values,68 a man who could not bring himself to believe in the music of the spheres (see the prologue to the counterpoint treatise), a man who trusted the judgment of his ears69

such a man means exactly what he says. The definition does not

concern the total number of voices involved but the relation of each

voice to the tenor; the latter is "given," the former added. One sound is placed against another that already exists. This is borne out by the

examples in the counterpoint treatise in which the given voice is labeled "tenor," the added voice contrapunctus.70 Counterpoint, then,

is successive composition, one voice added to another existing voice. It can be simple, strictly note-against-note in the same time values,71 or diminished, in which several notes, of different or the same value,

can be placed against one note.72 Either kind can be accomplished in writing or in the mind (the meaning of mente will be taken up later). Resfacta differs from counterpoint in that it consists of "three, four,

or more parts" (there is one exception to this) and these parts are mutually bound to each other according to the "law and order of concords," that is, each part must follow the rules of counterpoint with respect to each other part, which is not true of counterpoint, in

which the added voice or voices need only be consonant with the tenor. Since Tinctoris had specified "three, four, or more parts," he composed an example in which three voices begin, later joined by a fourth, and finally by a fifth voice. There are two exceptions in res 67 Sachs places the beginning of the distinction between two-part counterpoint, in

which the counterpoint is considered a "Gegenstimme," and counterpoint in more than two voices, or composition, which is recognized as a "Satzprinzip," in the late fifteenth century (1974, 54-55). He states that Tinctoris uses it mostly in the sense of Gegenstimme, but refers to Satz in the sentence quoted in note 54 above (Sachs, p. 55)-

However, this sentence can apply to (two-part) counterpoint when it is diminutus; it is only with the smaller note values that dissonances can be used in counterpoint. 68 He got around the problem by calling semiminims "minims in proportio dupla";

see Blackburn 1981, 41. 69 On the novelty of this position, see Lowinsky 1966, 136-38. 70 Or, as Tinctoris says (I.ii.38 [2:i8]), when the voices are not labeled, the void notes indicate the tenor, the black notes the counterpoint. 71 Difinitorium: "Contrapunctus simplex est dum nota vocis quae contra aliam ponitur est eiusdem valoris cum illa." 72 Difinitorium: "Contrapunctus diminutus est dum plures notae contra unam per

proportionem aequalitatis aut inaequalitatis ponuntur, qui a quibusdam floridus

nominatur."

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 253

facta to following the rules for counterpoint laid out in Book I. Both show

that what is prohibited in two-part music may be allowed in three-part music. One is the ability to use a fourth between two upper voices, as long as they are supported by another voice a third, fifth, tenth or twelfth

lower.73 Indeed, such a procedure (producing a sixth chord or a fifth-octave chord) makes the composition "dulcior."74 The second exception is in the use of sixths. Tinctoris says that they used to be considered as dissonances, and that, in isolation, they still strike his ear

as somewhat harsh.7s Therefore he advises, when writing or singing counterpoint, to place several of them in a row and move immediately to an octave or tenth, giving examples with sixths above and beneath the tenor. At the end of this chapter he makes an important qualification:

these rules apply only to sixths used in counterpoint and in resfacta of only two parts; a sixth is always sweet if a third or a tenth is added beneath it, but much sweeter if a fifth or a twelfth. Such sixths can resolve to a third, fifth, another sixth, an octave, tenth or twelfth.76

In this last paragraph we come across the expression res facta duarum partium tantum, which represents an exception to the norm. Certainly resfacta in two parts must follow the rules of counterpoint, 73 Liber de arte contrapuncti I.v.5-6, 9 [2:26-27], on the diatessaron: "Concordantia non est . . . unde fit ut a contrapuncto reiiciatur. ... In re facta vero per complura loca assumitur quarta, ei non solum quinta vel tertia, sed etiam decima ac duodecima sup osita." 4 A number of years ago, Charles Warren Fox discovered a compositional principle in fifteenth-century music that he dubbed "non-quartal harmony" (Fox 1945). In these works essential fourths are not found between any pair of voices (they are allowed as passing notes, suspensions, and ornamental notes). The style is found in works by composers of the post-Dufay generation, and Fox estimates it to appear in 25% of the secular works of the period ca. 1460 to 1500 (p. 38). An easy way of producing it is to have the bass move in tenths with the superius, which is described as "a very famous procedure" by Gaffurio (ibid., 42). For understandable reasons, the

style is restricted to three-part compositions, and mainly to those in which the

contratenor lies above the tenor, as is the case in the example given by Tinctoris. In his own three-part compositions, however, the contratenor lies beneath the tenor. In this disposition, assuming that the superius-tenor duet is written first, no essential fourths can appear unless the contratenor rises above the tenor, and Tinctoris tends to avoid them except in major cadences (for a notable exception, see his Dificiles alios,

2.p., mm. io-ii, in Blackburn 1981, iio). 7 "Porro omnis sexta, sive perfecta sive imperfecta, sive superior sive inferior fuit, apud antiquos discordantia reputabatur, et ut vera fatear, aurium mearum iudicio per se audita, hoc est sola, plus habet asperitatis quam dulcedinis" (I.vii.6

[2:331).

76 "Et hic nota quod omnia praedicta tantummodo sunt intelligenda de

ordinatione sextae in contrapuncto vel re facta duarum partium tantum fienda. Nam semper et ubique sexta suavis est si ei tertia vel decima supponatur, sed multo suavior si quinta vel duodecima, ut hic probatur [follows example]. Potest igitur quaelibet

sexta post se habere modis licet variis tertiam, quintam, sextam aliam, octavam, decimam atque duodecimam" (I.vii. I2-14 [2:34-351).

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254 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

but how then can it differ from counterpoint, and why does Tinctoris make a distinction? The difference lies not in the number of voices and

not in the rules to be followed but in the compositional procedure. Counterpoint is successive. The voices of a resfacta may be composed simultaneously or successively, but in the latter case the parts must be adjusted so that no contrapuntal fault appears between them. Resfacta duarum partium is not counterpoint but a "duo," in which both voices

are newly composed, in conjunction with each other. This is not an interpretation; Tinctoris gives the definition in his Difrinitorium: "A duo is a composition of two voices only, composed in relation to each other. "77

As so often with Tinctoris, the words themselves give us a clue to the way he understands them. For counterpoint, the central words are "placing against" (per positionem ... contra); for res facta the word is

"composed" (cantus compositus).78 The parts are "put together" in a certain relationship:

Cantus compositus est ille qui per A composed work is one that is

relationem notarum unius partis ad produced through the relation of the alteram multipliciter est aeditus. notes of one part to another in multiple ways.

This is the definition of the Difinitorium. Even though Tinctoris normally uses the word cantus to mean a melody or single line, cantus

compositus denotes a polyphonic composition. He himself seems to have taken note of the inherent contradiction in this term; in later treatises he uses it infrequently, preferring res facta and compositio; these are the earliest instances where compositio means a finished work, a composition, not the act of composing.79

What does the word multipliciter in the definition of cantus compositus mean? Ferand connected it with "relation": "the various relations of the note values of one voice to those of another," which led

him to think that resfacta was equivalent to florid counterpoint (1957, 142). Bent first gave "multiple relationship of the notes of one part to

77 "Duo est cantus duarum tantum partium relatione ad invicem compositus." On the translation of cantus, see above, note 66. 78 Not all writers make this distinction. Anonymous XI, for example, says "omnis contrapunctus debet componi ex pluribus variis speciebus prescriptis" (Anonymous XI 1869, 464). 79 "quando missa aliqua vel cantilena vel quaevis alia compositio .. ." (Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum xxiv.3 [i:85]), and "ubi compositio trium aut plurium partium fit" (Liber de arte contrapuncti III.ii. 3 [2:147]). On this point, see Sachs 1974, I38-39-

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 255

another," then "the relating of the notes of one part to [those of] another in multiple ways" (1983, 379). Believing that multiplex "suggests that mensural relationships are meant here" (p. 3 80), since mutuo takes care of the harmonic relationships, she concluded that "Composition is characterized by mutual relationships between the parts with respect to consonance (C[ontrapunctus]) and by multiple relation-

ships between the parts with respect to mensuration

(D[ifinitorium])... " (p. 381). However, when Tinctoris refers to mensural relationships between the parts, he uses the term proportio.

Contrapunctus diminutus, for example, is produced "nunc per proportionem aequalitatis, nunc inaequalitatis."80 Both scholars translated the definition as if only two voices were involved. But res facta

normally has at least three voices; therefore multiplex indicates the multiple relationships between the respective parts: superius with tenor, superius with contratenor, contratenor with tenor, for exam-

ple. The more voices, the more relationships involved, which is why Tinctoris uses the word multipliciter. There remains one last problem regarding resfacta: How are we to understand Tinctoris's assertion that "Counterpoint that is written is

commonly called res facta"? As Margaret Bent suspected, this is a definition he distances himself from; the common people call any written work resfacta, no matter how it was composed. The reason is that counterpoint was better known as a performer's art, and that is

why Tinctoris connects counterpoint with singing super librum. He continues: "But that which we accomplish mentally is called counterpoint in the absolute sense,8 and those who do this are said vulgariter

to sing upon the book."

Singing super librum is a form of counterpoint, and it is in this type that Tinctoris shows that counterpoint can be made in more than two

parts. The main qualification of counterpoint is not the number of voices involved but how those voices are added to a cantusfirmus. The singer or singers stand in front of a book open to a tenor and mentally devise one or more contrapuntal lines over that tenor. The tenor may be taken from plainchant and measured in various ways,82 or it may

80 Liber de arte contrapuncti II.xix.5 [2:Io6].

81 Cf. Tinctoris's use of absolute when he is asked to give the mode of a piece: "siquis peteret absolute cuius toni talis compositio esset, interrogatus debet absolute respondere secundum qualitatem tenoris" (Liber de natura etproprietate tonorum xxiv. 3

[1:85-86]).

2 The examples in chapters 21-22 of Book II of the counterpoint treatise show six different ways of casting the tenor into a mensural pattern. One (II.xxii. 3 [2:1 19-20]) is said to follow the note forms of the chant-long, breve, and semibreve. The first

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256 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY be taken from a voice of a resfacta, which is much more difficult to sing

over because the note values are not in a regular pattern. Some are

even able to sing over two voices from a res facta. This kind of counterpoint, says Tinctoris, "requires a great deal of art and experience. Hence if it is done sweetly and knowledgeably, the more difficult it is, the more praiseworthy it is."83 Singing super librum differs from resfacta in that the added voices need only relate properly

to the tenor. In practice this could lead to disagreeable clashes between the upper voices, for example when one singer produces a

fifth over the tenor while another one sings a sixth. Tinctoris specifically warns against singing a sixth and its compounds when many are singing super librum.84 It is his delicate ears that are responsible for the rest of his advice on singing super librum: "I do not

however judge it blameworthy but rather very laudable if those singing together should prudently avoid similarity between each other in the choice and ordering of concords." This wording indicates that there are some who think singing super librum should be completely spontaneous, a kind of musical brinksmanship and absolute improvi-

sation. But if the singers do not agree beforehand on different compatible counterpoints, they might all end up singing the same countermelody, at least in some passages, and the concentus would not be "full and suave."85

Singing super librum is a performer's art, much as is the singing of musicaficta. It is a procedure, which is why there is no noun for it.86

Therefore it is not surprising that written examples have not come down to us. However, Tinctoris does give one example, showing an exception to his fourth general rule, that "counterpoint should be

made as stepwise and orderly as possible." Many who sing super

seventeen measures of the tenor agree with the first phrase of the Alleluia. Concaluit cor meum (Liber Usualis, p. 1473); the rest differs.

83 "Talique contrapunctus plurimum artis et usus requirit. Hinc si dulciter ac

scientifice fiat, tanto est laudabilior quanto difficilior" (II.xxii.5-6 [2:I20]). 84 See the example in III.i [2:146]. 85 I believe Margaret Bent is mistaken when she concludes that "singing super librum is a carefully-structured procedure in which only one part at a time can be added to what is already worked out, whether written or not" (1983, 387). Tinctoris advises collaboration, but never suggests that one part be worked out first, let alone

written out.

86 Bent noted that in discussing singing super librum, Tinctoris gives as related nouns only "the singers or the act of singing, not the resulting song" (1983, 382). But the diagram she constructed on p. 383 to explain the relationship of the various types of counterpoint and cantus, which she believes Tinctoris had "trouble expressing," is not clear because it treats counterpoint as an object rather than a procedure.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 257

librum, in order to vary the counterpoint, use larger intervals, in the

manner of composers (Ex. 4).87 Example 4 Tinctoris, example of cantus super librum (Liber de arte contrapuncti III. iv [2:"1491)

Contrapunctus

Contrapunctus .

Tenor

.

%e

V

7

I

_

_

If any doubt remains that this is an example of singing super librum, the measured tenor and the two voices, both labeled "contrapunctus,"

should dispel it. The voice labels for res facta are Supremus (or nothing) and Contratenor.88 The example shows that experienced singers were capable of a very high level of skill. This is a virtuoso piece, especially since the tenor moves in semibreves; improvisation over long note values would be much easier. Singers probably had a 87 "Quique pluribus super librum canentibus ut contrapunctum diversificent, eum cum moderatione instar quodammodo compositorum longinquum efficiunt" (III.iv.4 [2:1 491). 88 Cf. Difinitorium: "Supremum est illa pars cantus compositi quae altitudine caeteras excedit"; "Contratenor est pars illa cantus compositi. . . ." Bent noticed this difference in labeling voices, which allows one to "diagnose" undesignated music examples as counterpoint or resfacta, but felt that it did not help "to draw Tinctoris's

line between composition and counterpoint on grounds of written or unwritten, measured or florid" (1983, 384).

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258 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

stock set of figurations that would fit every conceivable melodic interval of the tenor.89 The figurations in Tinctoris's example are very complex. It is possible to discern a basic melodic skeleton underneath

them and to see where the top voice narrowly avoided consecutive octaves with the tenor (m. 4). The two upper voices skirt similarity very cleverly over notes 5-7 of the tenor. In an earlier version, the singers might have discovered that they were singing parallel octaves. As Tinctoris counsels, all fourths above the tenor (except passing ones

of a semiminim or less) are avoided.

Tinctoris nowhere says that what is sung super librum is ever written down. Contrapunctus achieved mentaliter is no different in terminology or in execution than in the sixteenth century, where it is called contrappunto alla mente in Italian sources. I see no difficulty in calling this manner of performance "improvisation," no matter if it has been rehearsed or even partially committed to memory. It is hard to

believe that any musical result could be obtained if one insists that improvisation be "spontaneous, unpremeditated" (Bent 1983, 374);90 no action can be accomplished without some mental signal. Not all scholars agree with the restricted concept of improvisation adhered to

by Margaret Bent; witness the more general definition in the New

Grove: "The creation of a musical work, or the final form of a musical

work, as it is being performed."9' If we conceive of singing super librum as analogous to realizing a basso continuo, it will not seem so mysterious and difficult to us. Nor is it irrelevant to think of the sophisticated improvisations of jazz musicians in our day. The more experience one has, the more musical the result. And we must not forget that singing super librum has a long and venerable history, beginning with parallel organum and continuing through discant and

fauxbourdon.92 Singing super librum, as Tinctoris knew it, was the

89 There is a set of these in Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS. A 71, pp. 232-35; see Blackburn 1981, 50o. This manuscript includes a number of duos from Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti. The verbula provided by Goscalcus (see above, p. 2 37) were specifically designed for cantusfractus. For other examples, see

Sachs 1974, 146-47-

90 These words are hers, not those of the definition she quotes from the Harvard Dictionary of Music: "The art of performing music spontaneously, without the aid of

manuscript, sketches, or memory." There is a considerable difference between

memory and premeditation.

91 "Improvisation," New Grove Dictionary (London, 1980), 9:31. 92 For an overview, based on theoretical sources, see Sachs 1983. In a postscript Sachs takes note of Margaret Bent's article. He remains unconvinced by her attempt to see mente and scripto as a continuum applicable both to res facta and singing super librum and views Tinctoris's specific advice to those singing super librum as underlining

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 259

pinnacle of achievement in the art of improvisation, and it continued right on through the sixteenth century, to the admiration of many,93

the despair of others,94 and the disgust of some, who could not tolerate the crudeness of less skilled singers.95

Up until Tinctoris's time, counterpoint was generally thought of as having only two voices, a tenor and a counterpoint. As early as Gaffurio we can discern the change to a wider application, not so much from his definition of counterpoint ("counterpoint is the art of

forming melodious sounds with appropriate intervals and temporal

values") as from his use of the word counterpoint in describing composition: "A counterpoint of songs composed of three or four consonant parts . . " (III.xi) or "in counterpoint the voices of a song, namely, the tenor, cantus, and contratenor, ought to move in contrary the improvisatory nature of the performance, in which a certain lack of strictness is unavoidable, although the ideal is to approach resfacta as far as possible. 93 See Bermudo 1555, V.xv: "Counterpoint is an improvised arrangement over a plainchant with different melodies. There are men so expert in it, so full of reckoning and erudition, that they so do it for many voices, and so properly and in imitation, that it seems to be the most skilful composition in the world" ("El contrapunto es una

ordenaci6n improvisa sobre canto llano, con diversas melodias. Ay hombres en ello tan expertos, de tanta cuenta, y erudici6n: que assi lo hechan a muchas bozes, y tan acertado, y fugado, que parece composici6n sobre todo el estudio del mundo"; fol. 128). Bermudo praises in particular the singers of the late Archbishop of Toledo, whose counterpoint, if written down, "se vendiera por buena composici6n," and the experts in the royal chapel of Granada, whose music surpasses his powers of

description ("que otros oydos mis delicados que los mios eran menester para

comprehenderlas, y otra pluma para explicarlas"). 94 Nicola Vicentino says, with some exasperation, that in singing "alla mente" one would do much better to write it down, and even then it would be difficult to keep out errors ("il vero contrapunto, 6 per dir meglio la vera compositione sopra il canto fermo sara che tutte le parti, che si cantano alla mente, siano scritte, et anchora il Compositore che comporra quello, non havri poca fatica " far quella compositione, corretta, et senza errori"; Vicentino 1555, IV.xxiii, fol. 83, misnumbered 8o). He criticizes three current methods of contrappunto alla mente: alternating fifths and sixths

against an ascending or descending line ("che fa brutto sentire"); the soprano singing parallel tenths with the tenor and a middle voice filling in, which he judges rather tedious; and the singing of ostinato passages, which is so distracting that one hears

nothing but the passaggi and no harmony results at all. For examples of what

Vicentino is criticizing, see Ferand 1956, I47-5 I. 95 Coclico, who insisted that the sine qua non of a good composer was that he could sing counterpoint extemporaneously ("ut contrapunctum ex tempore canere sciat. Quo sine nullus erit"), remarked that this practice was rare in Germany, "and if anyone mentions counterpoint, and demands it in a perfect musician, they unleash on him their rabid hostility, impudently affirming that many irregular and corrupt intervals occur that offend the ears and have no place in compositions" ("Ac si quis contrapuncti mentionem faciat, ac in perfecto Musico requirat, hunc odio plusquam canino lacerant, impudenter affirmantes, in contrapuncto multas pravas et corruptas species occurrere, quae aures offendant, et in compositionibus locum non habent"); Coclico 1552, fols. L2v and 14.

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260 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

motion .. ." (III.iii) (Gaffurio 1968, 117, 140, 127). By the time he published his Angelicum ac divinum opus musice (Milan, I5o8), his definition of counterpoint (IV.i) clearly reflected this new orientation: El concento overo modulatione e uno

certo corpo quale ha in se diverse parte accommodate a la cantilena

disposita tra voce distante per intervalli commensurabili. Et questo e dicto da cantori Contrapuncto.

The concento or many-voiced work is a certain organism that contains different parts adapted for singing and

disposed between voices distanced in commensurable intervals. This is

what the singers call counterpoint (Lowinsky 1946, 72).

In his article on "The Concept of Physical and Musical Space," Edward Lowinsky contrasted Tinctoris's definition of counterpoint, the successive method, and Gaffurio's, which he rightly said "is new and corresponds to the simultaneous manner of composition and the newly achieved capacity to think in harmonies" (1946, 72).96 I would only add that the definition also fits Tinctoris's concept of resfacta.

8. A Hypothesis on the Origin of the Term Resfacta I have consistently left one term used by Tinctoris untranslated: vulgariter. As Margaret Bent noted, he seems to use it interchangeably

with communiter. But does he simply find res facta "a serviceable synonym for cantus compositus (albeit 'vulgar'), just as he likewise uses cantare super librum despite the 'vulgar' qualification given it" (Bent

1983, 379-80)? Do we achieve the right tone by translating it as "vulgar," with its connotations of "plebeian, boorish, coarse"? If we examine all the uses of communiter and vulgariter in Tinctoris's writings we find that he uses these qualifying adverbs whenever he writes a word that is a substitute for a technical term in music. He even explains his procedure in the Liber de arte contrapuncti (I.ii. 33-34

[2:17]). After naming the 22 concords used in counterpoint, he

remarks: "before going any further, I intend to translate them into more common [vulgarioribus] terms, according to which, to make our instruction easier, we shall proceed. Thus the semiditone is commonly [communiter] called an imperfect third, the ditone a perfect

third," and so on.97 In the description of every interval in the counterpoint treatise he first gives the technical term, then the word 96 Gaffurio's definition was taken over by Aaron and Zarlino; see Sachs 1982,

III.2.b.

97 He makes a similar remark in the Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum of a year

earlier, but, curiously, at the very end of the treatise (chapter 5I), in which he otherwise uses the Greek-Latin terms exclusively. Could this chapter have been

added after he wrote the counterpoint treatise?

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 26I

commonly used, qualifying it as vulgariter or communiter. In the Difinitorium, apotome is called "semitonium maius vulgariter"; the punctus indicating a mora or pause "punctus organi vulgariter dicitur." In the Tractatus de notis et pausis (II.v.4 [1: 19]) the pause of a minim is

called "vulgariter suspirium." Every time Tinctoris uses the words communiter and vulgariter we can guess that these are words commonly

used in place of technical musical terms. But in what language? I believe that Tinctoris means "in the vernacular"-a regular meaning of vulgariter-but that he has translated these vernacular terms into Latin.98 Unfortunately, there are almost no vernacular treatises extant

in which we could discover the original terms. Some writers, however, are willing to slip vernacular words into their Latin treatises. The treatise ascribed to Philippus de Caserta (1869, 123) mentions syncopation with red notes, "quod dicitur secundum illos de Francia vulgariter trayn vel traynour." Egidius Carlerius (d. 1473), in his Tractatus de laude et utilitate musicae, likens musica morata to musica "morosa et temperata, quae a plerisque vocatur gallice a point d'orgue,

ab aliis, ut hic supple Cameraci, de longues" (p. II).99 Ferand already guessed that Tinctoris's "repeated use of the words communiter and vulgariter" in connection with resfacta might "indicate

that we have to look for the corresponding term in the colloquial language of the practical musicians, that is, in the vernacular" (1957, 98 See in particular the chapters on musical instruments in his De inventione et usu

musicae: "tibia que vulgo celimela nuncupatur . . .; tibiarum ... alii tenor, quem vulgo bombardam vocant ...; Quid sit lyra populariter leutum dicta ... [and others derived from it:] utpote (juxta linguam vulgarem) viola, rebecum, ghiterra, cetula, et

tambura . . .; quasdam elevationes ligneas quas populariter tastas appellant"

(Tinctoris 1961, 36, 37, 40, 42). Only once, where Tinctoris has to distinguish between the vernacular word in two different languages, does he give a non-Latin version: "ea tuba quam superius tromponem ab Italis, et sacque-boute a gallicis

appellari diximus" (p. 37). Parts of these chapters have been translated in Baines 1950. 9 This description lends more weight to interpreting punctus organi, in the late fifteenth century at any rate, as held-out notes, a point of view that has been disputed

by Charles W. Warren. He translates punctus organi as "point of organum" and considers it exclusively as vocal music, calling for ornamentation (1976). But the French expression seems rather to indicate either direct involvement of the organ (the term "organ point" exists to this day), or performance in the manner of an organ. In

this connection it is interesting that Carlerius says the term in Cambrai was "of

longs"; the Cathedral of Cambrai had no organ. Curiously, in later centuries, the term

"point d'orgue" again came to indicate an ornamental cadenza (Fuller i980, 784-85)Warren interpreted the alternate name for cantus coronatus, "cardinalis," as "the

chief or principal thing, or the point around which something turns or hinges," after

cardo. But Anonymous XII quite clearly says that the fermata sign is called

"cardinalis" because it resembles a cardinal's skullcap ("quia formatur ad modum pilei cardinalis"; see note i i of his article). A new edition and translation of Anonymous

XII by Jill Maree Palmer, based on her M.A. thesis at Brigham Young University (1975), will be published in Corpus scriptorum de musica.

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262 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

144). He found several instances of the term "chose faite" or "choses faites," none earlier than 1496, but he considered it probable that res facta was "the learned theorist's version of a popular expression" (p. 149). Since then new references have surfaced. Eloy d'Amerval, after enumerating the famous musicians of his day in his long poem, Le livre

de la deablerie (Paris, I5o8), praises the singers of cathedrals and collegiate churches for their talent to "Bien prononcer, bien gringoter

/ Choses faictes & sur le livre" (pp. 226-27).100 In a passion play performed in Angers in 1486, Mary Magdalene shows her worldliness

by singing "de choses faites ' plaisance."''1 Recently Martin Staehelin has brought to light the earliest instance known so far: in the 1477 inventory of the library of Charles the Bold appears the following

item: "Ung livre de changons et choses faictes" (Staehelin 1983, 201). 102

I should like to propose a hypothesis as to the origin of the term

chose faite. Just as the writer of a composition was known as a compositor,103 so was the poet in medieval France known as afaiseur or facteur, and what he wrote was called fais, choses rimees, compositions, ouvrages, ditz, or ditiers, and occasionally poetrie. 104 Faiseur may also be

applied to a poet-composer; in a poem addressed to Machaut's

P6ronne after the master's death, Eustache Deschamps, his pupil, calls him "Noble poete et faiseur renomm6" (Lowinsky 1984, 70), and

100 As Eloy says, he knew whereof he spoke ("Je me congnois bien en telz pas"); he was also a composer. For the list of musicians, see Reese 1959, 263101 Quoted in Pirro 1940, 127. Ferand cited Pirro for a reference to angels singing "choses faites" in a mystery play of 1496 (p. 125), but missed this one two pages later. On the source of Pirro's reference and the tradition of portraying Mary Magdalene as a musician, see Slim 1981 and the literature cited there.

102 Staehelin sees in Tinctoris's use of res facta a forerunner of Listenius's expression opusperfectum et absolutum ( 537), and he investigated three examples where one scribe copied the same piece twice to determine whether the scribes respected the notion of an opus perfectum et absolutum. The examples (ranging from ca. 1420 to 1540)

show remarkable unanimity, but they are, as Staehelin admits, a small sample, and there are plenty of other examples where scribes have altered compositions, sometimes drastically.

103 In the Difinitorium Tinctoris says: "Compositor est alicuius novi cantus

aeditor."

104 See Langlois 1902. This is a collection of seven treatises on poetic theory and practice, ranging from Jacques Legrand (d. ca. 1425), Des rimes, to the anonymous

L'Art et science de rhitorique vulgaire of ca. 1524-25. Fais and choses rimees occur in Les rtgles de la seconde rhitorique, datable between 141 and 1442 (see pp. 14, I I, and xxviii), compositions in the last treatise. Diz or ditz is by far the most common word for poetry. Chose rimee also turns up in the setting of Puis que je sui fumeux by Johannes Simon

Hasprois, although in a different grammatical form: "J'ay en fumant mainte chose

rimee" (Apel 1970-72, I:IV.)

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 263

his lament on the death of Machaut, set to music by Andrieu,0os contains the lines "clers, musicans et fayseurs en francoys" and "O Guillame, mondains diex d'armonie, / Apres vos fais, qui obtiendra le

choys / Sur tous fayseurs?" The count of Flanders, Louis de Male, included in his entourage the faiseur Hennequin d'Oudenarde who, in another document, is called "menestrel de bouche." He is listed in Les regles de la seconde rhitorique along with Machaut, Jean Vaillant, and

Jean Tapissier (Wright 1979, 20). Since these authors were poets as well as musicians, there can be some question about the applicability offaiseur to a composer who did not write his own texts. It is dispelled however by the discovery of "maker" in fifteenth-century English in a context that allows no doubt. It is found in the first line of the

discant treatise by Lyonel Power: "This Tretis is contrivid upon the gamme for hem that will be syngers or makers or techers" (Carter 1961, 256). 106 We have noted that the word "composition," denoting an individual work, does not seem to have been used before the later i470S (see above, p. 254). Before this time, such works were designated by their texts-rondeau, ballade, virelai and so forth--or more generally as missa, motetum, cantilena or carmen, the generic term for which,

according to Tinctoris's dictionary, was cantus. Cantus alone, however, does not necessarily mean a polyphonic work. One had to add a qualifying adjective-cantus mensuratus, cantusfiguratus (both of which could be applied to monophonic lines), and especially cantus compositus. But there was no term that would embrace individual works written

in different genres (in the Liber de arte contrapuncti III.viii.6 [2:I55] Tinctoris uses the word opera as well as resfacta). What then should the product of the maker be called if not "the thing made," or that of the

faiseur if not "chose faite"? As yet I have discovered no concrete evidence to support this hypothesis."07 The missing link might be the

use of "choses faites" to indicate "poems." "Maker" and "faiseur" have a common etymological origin; both are translations of the Greek word 7TrorrilTs (the maker, the inventor,

o10 The double ballade Armes amours / 0 flour desflours (Apel 1970-72, 1:2-3, and, for the text, p. xlv). 106 Carter cites a number of instances of the verb "maken" in Chaucer and others

where it seems likely that "to make" refers to the creation of music. The other references to "makers" are less compelling; they might well be poets. 107 "Faict" and "chose" do turn up in fifteenth-century documents concerning music. The chronicler Olivier de la Marche reported that Charles the Bold "fist le chant de plusieurs chanssons bien faictes et bien notees" (quoted in Kenney 1964, 15).

The two adjectives emphasize that the music was composed and written down. A music book bought for Philip the Good's chapel in 1446 contained "nouvelles chanteries comme messes, mottes et plusieurs autres choses" (ibid., 37-38).

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264 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

the author; Latin poeta), derived from wToLE, to make. The eleventhcentury grammarian Papias defined poeta as follows: "A poet is called a contriver, from the Greek 1rOLl, which means to make, to contrive,

such as a contriver of song. His poetical work is called a poem."'108 During the Middle Ages, it was considered that poets "made" their works but did not "create" them, because only God could create. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it: "To create means to produce something out of nothing."'09 Beginning in the late fifteenth century, however, the writing of poetry came to be seen as halfway between creating and making. Cristoforo Landino, a professor of rhetoric and poetics at the

Studium of Florence, described it thus in the proemio to his commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy, published in 1481: The Greeks derive "poet" from this word piin, which is halfway between

"creating," which is proper to God when He produces something out of nothing, and "making," which is proper to men in every art when they compose out of material and form. 110

Landino uses the verb "componere," which emphasizes the poet's re-working of pre-existing materials. Although the word "poet"

occurs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it seems to have been

reserved for those who were especially talented. The author of Les rigles de la seconde rhbtorique singles out Jehan Le Fevre, who "pour les

bonnes menieres qui furent en li est apelez poetes" (Langlois 1902, 13). 111 What seems to be an odd plural is in fact a transliteration of the

108 "Poeta dicitur fictor a 7rOL& graeco: quod est facere fingere quasi fictor carminis. Opus huius poema vocatur poeticum" (Papias 1476). 109 On the implications of this attitude for medieval music, see Lowinsky 1964, 476-78. 110 "Et e greci dixono poeta da questo verbo piin: el quale e in mezo tra creare che e proprio di dio quando di niente produce in essere alchuna chosa: Et fare che e de gl'huomini in ciaschuna arte quando di materia et di forma compongono"; quoted in Tigerstedt 1968, 458. The high esteem in which the art of poetry was held led Landino to assert that "God is the supreme poet and the world is His poem." Tigerstedt notes (p. 461) that this notion had already been formulated by Plotinus in his Enneads, without, however, making any claim for the poet's creative powers. "' Peter Dembowski has pointed out that Eustache Deschamps's description of Machaut as "noble poete" is one of the earliest uses of this term in French poetry; see Lowinsky 1984, 70, n. 144. The first occurrence of poeme in French is generally thought to be found in Nicole Oresme's translation of Aristotle, Ethics, of ca. 1350. However, Professor Dembowski tracked down an even earlier usage in the anonymous compilation and translation Le Fet des Romains of 1214. There, after mentioning various "ecriz" and "livres," the author speaks of "un autre poeme" ("I'Aler"), so called

from "l'aler de Rome en Espaigne" (Anonymous 1935, 1:724). This is not to be

understood, Professor Dembowski points out, as a poem in the modern sense, but as

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 265

Greek word. Angelo Decembrio (ca. i415-ca. 1466), in his Politia literaria, written in 1462 but not published until 1540, says "We call the best ones, not all kinds, 'poets,' whence the name of poet is justly

given to those writing the most learned verse, called 'maker' or 'author' and commonly 'of the first rank,' and this poem is called 'a thing made' or 'work,' and we often call God Himself by the Greek word TFroVLqrs, that is poet, even though, for the sake of custom and

the sound, we translate it more often into Latin as factor."112 The Greek poema too can be translated as "a thing made."'13 Decembrio's statement that a poem is called "a thing made" (factum), although written in Italy, suggests that the French too may have considered a

poem a "chose faite." It is perhaps significant that so many instances of the vernacular term occur in the plural. Tinctoris uses resfacta both as a term for a specific method of composing and as a synonym for individual works written in that style (in rebusfactis). He is the first theorist to describe the difference between making counterpoint and composing. I believe that he took over a vernacular term for written polyphony that was commonly used during the period of his youth, that he examined the works it covered, determined their method of composition, and then

characterized it in a more theoretically correct manner as cantus compositus, and finally that he accepted the term compositio as the most logical and proper way to designate what Listenius would later call an opus perfectum et absolutum.

9. Resfacta and "Simultaneous Conception" Margaret Bent briefly considered that "the 'mutual obligation' of the parts in resfacta almost suggests that we might find here a statement about simultaneous conception, fifty years earlier than the "a work of literature written by a Roman." I am grateful to Professor Dembowski for his trouble in tracing the reference. 112 "Dicimus autem meliores non omnis generis poetas unde merito eruditissima carmina, scribentibus poete nominum inditum est, quod factorem vel auctorem, et

fere primarium indicat, et ipsum poema factum vel opus, ac ipsum deum graeco

vocabulo W-Oo1TLfS saepe nominamus, hoc est, poetam, quanvis pro more sonoque magis latine factorem interpretamur" (fol. V). Tigerstedt discusses this passage in "The Poet as Creator," p. 469. Humanists were quite aware that the Greek poet was a poet-musician. Aristides Quintilianus includes "poesy" (poesis) within his classification of the art of music, and his ideas were transmitted in the late fifteenth century by

Giorgio Valla. The ideal of the poet-musician was revived in practice as well as in theory in the Renaissance; for a survey, see chap. 13, "The Poetics of Music," in Palisca 1985. 113 Professor Mathiesen kindly informed me that Plato used it in this sense in Phaedo 6oD and Lysis 22 ID.

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266 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

first unequivocal testimony to this way of composing in Aron's Toscanello," but she rejected this notion because "none of Tinctoris's examples of resfacta gives us a good justification for claiming that they have broken with the successive principles that so clearly apply to his

'pure' counterpoint" (1983, 387). It is my contention that Aaron and Tinctoris are indeed describing the same compositional method, but that this method is not properly characterized by the term "simultaneous conception." At the beginning of this paper I attempted to show

that Aaron's main qualification of the modern technique is that the composers "take all the parts into consideration at once." This does not necessarily mean that they compose chord by chord or even passage by passage, although the latter is surely the preferred manner

of composition in works in pervading imitation, when we can truly begin to talk about simultaneous conception. What Aaron is saying is the same as what Tinctoris said more specifically fifty years earlier: in resfacta "all the parts . .. should be mutually bound to each other, so

that the order and law of concords of any part should be observed with respect to each single and all parts." No matter how the parts are

put together, they must be carefully adjusted so that no improper dissonances appear between any of the voices. Tinctoris went beyond Aaron in showing that dissonance itself is allowed under very specific

circumstances, with special rules for cadential dissonance. This compositional process is more properly called "harmonic composition," not only because it lays emphasis on the vertical sonorities, but

mainly because it coincides with contemporary descriptions of harmony as a process of dissonance resolving into consonance. Counterpoint and res facta therefore represent two different compositional processes, the first successive, in which different voices are

added independently to a given part, the second harmonic, in which all voices are composed in relation to each other.114 As Tinctoris says, counterpoint can be produced in writing or in singing (cantare super librum). But res facta can only be made in writing because the parts have to be "put together." Since counterpoint was mainly a singer's art, common people tended to call anything written a resfacta, but this is not a proper usage of the term.

"114 Gaffurio describes this method without giving it a name or contrasting it with

counterpoint in his Practica musicae III.xi: "From the preceding examples and

explanations it is evident that each part in a composition is related to other parts in various ways according to the rules and elements of counterpoint, so that one melodic part will be concordant with every other part and will never make a full dissonance, except a fourth, which sounds well between middle and upper parts" (Gaffurio 1968, 142).

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 267

If counterpoint is a successive process and composition a harmonic one, how is one to understand a work with a cantusfirmus? Since we

are no longer obliged to accept harmonic composition as being "simultaneous," a piece with a cantus firmus could be written either way. Some might object that since the cantus firmus is "given," it cannot meet the requirement of "mutual obligation of the parts," which implies that any one part may be changed to fit the other parts.

But a composer has considerable latitude in shaping his cantusfirmus rhythmically, and this freedom allows him to adjust the tenor if necessary, unless it is isorhythmic. Isorhythm, which reached a peak in the early part of the fifteenth century, began to go out of fashion at the time when harmonic composition was gaining favor. The relation-

ship may be causal. None of Tinctoris's "modern composers" used isorhythm.115

We should be able to tell whether a composition has been written successively or harmonically by the composer's treatment of dissonance. If there are seconds and sevenths between the upper voices, they were written successively against the tenor. If there are no contrapuntal faults between the voices, then the composition was most likely written harmonically. If the upper voices form fourths with the tenor we can be sure that the composer was proceeding harmonically-assuming that a lower voice turns those fourths into consonances. Where no cantusfirmus is involved, composers probably

worked out two voices in relation to each other, then added other

voices contrapuntally to what was already written, but compared each voice against each other voice to eliminate irregular dissonances. Thus the process could begin with simultaneous conception, continue with

successive composition, and finally be refined harmonically. The introductory duos to Dufay's isorhythmic motets, with their complementary rhythms, are surely a product of simultaneous conception. As the century progressed and composers gained more practice, they were able to write three voices in relation to each other. It would be very difficult indeed to write a three-part piece in pervading imitation

without constantly adjusting one voice to another. When composers began to write in this manner we can confidently say that they were

not only considering all voices together, they were conceiving all voices in relation to each other. And it was at this time, as Lowinsky 115 Dammann 1953 stretches the concept so far that it loses its meaning. To be sure, the proportional reduction of a tenor is an outgrowth of isorhythm, but it allows a composer considerably more freedom. Works with a proportional cantusfirmus were probably composed harmonically to the extent possible, that is the other voices were

adjusted between themselves and the tenor.

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268 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

has shown, that a new tool for composing came into being, the score

(1948). As long as composers wrote music successively, there was no need of a score; they could write "upon the book," that is, look at one line of music and write another, in the same way that they could "sing upon the book.""'16 But when a composer had to obligate each voice to every other voice, the task of checking the relationships between the

voices "multipliciter" was difficult and time-consuming. If essential fourths were found between the upper two voices, the parallel spot in

the lowest voice had to be located to make sure it supported the fourth. A score was a great help. It is not necessary to believe that the composer's score looked like Lampadius's example. It was probably an

erasable slate, with ruled staves but no barlines, that allowed the composer to juxtapose the voices of each passage, without necessarily

barring or even aligning them. "117 io. Tinctoris and the "New Art"

There is no more fitting opening for a book on music in the Renaissance than the famous statement made by Tinctoris in his Liber de arte contrapuncti: "6 I am in agreement with Margaret Bent that there was no need for a score to compose music in the fifteenth century (that is, I would add, up until the time when pervading imitation became the preferred style), but I would lay more emphasis on composing in writing, with aural verification left until the composition was complete.

She proposes the following scenario: "We can surely accept that a 5th-century composer could handle a three-part song in his head. The discant-tenor duet can be invented, and then notated in separate parts. The contratenor can be thought out in knowledge of this duet and in turn written down. For longer compositions, weaker memories or weaker musicians we can put it in terms of the composer-singer-most I5th-century composers being employed as singers. He invents and writes down his melody, handing it or teaching it to a colleague who sings it while he improvises and empirically refines a tenor, which he then writes down. Another colleague then sings

the tenor with the discant while he improvises, refines and writes down a

contratenor" (1981, 626).

A written example of a composition in statu nascendi is preserved among some legal

papers dating beween 144o and 1457 emanating from the Cathedral of Cambrai; see Wright 1976, P1. XIV and p. 182 (transcription). The tenor is written across the top of the page on one line. Beneath it is the superius, which nearly fits on one line. Then follows the contratenor. A perusal of the transcription quickly shows that this work was never verified aurally, either as a whole or in pairs of voices. A correction seems to have been made at m. 2 ~ in the contratenor, with the result that the next five measures are displaced by a semibreve. Aside from these measures, the contratenor fits the tenor, but there are noticeable clashes with the superius. 117 Jessie Ann Owens has recently investigated the known references to the use of

a score, especially those referring to a cartella, in connection with an autograph manuscript of Rore that shows corrections in the composer's hand (1984). Some questions about the nature of composer's scores will be answered by the publication of the Spataro Correspondence.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 269 Although it seems beyond belief, there does not exist a single piece of music, not composed within the last forty years, that is regarded by the

learned as worth hearing.18

In the sentence that precedes this one, Tinctoris states: "I have had in my hands certain old songs, called apocrypha, of unknown origin, so ineptly, so stupidly composed that they rather offended than pleased the ear." By his twice referring to the sense of hearing, we know that

Tinctoris was judging these pieces from a point of view of their dissonance technique.119 Indeed, in another place he says "I will bypass the compositions of old musicians in which there were more discords than concords" (Liber de arte contrapuncti II.xxiii.3 [2:I2i]). The new art, he claims, had its "fount and origin . . . among the English, of whom Dunstable stood forth as chief. Contemporary with

him in France were Dufay and Binchoys."'12 How did Tinctoris set the date after which one could listen to music with pleasure? It begins more than ten years after Dufay started composing, so it would not

include all of Dufay's oeuvre, and yet many compositions by other composers that would not have pleased Tinctoris's ears fall within that period. I believe he chose a date of ca. 1437 based on one firmly dated and well known work of Dufay, Nuper rosarum flores, written for the

consecration of the Cathedral of Florence on 25 March 1436. Nuper rosarum flores is indeed an epoch-making work. It has been analyzed many times in musical scholarship.121 With one exception, these descriptions have concentrated almost exclusively on the structure. Recently, Edward Lowinsky has analyzed the aspect of Nuper rosarum flores that drew forth an ecstatic paean from a contemporary

witness, Gianozzo Manetti: the sheer magnificence of the sound (1981, I89-94). The four "lengthy sections for full choir consist of harmonies in triadic structure with the root in the bass. . . . Dufay's bold thought reaches forward to tonal conception. . . . The basis of harmony is not yet identical with the bass part. Nevertheless, the sonorous effect is the same" (p. 190). Lowinsky wondered whether Dufay used a successive or simultaneous method in composing Nuper 118 Strunk 1950, 199. Howard M. Brown chose this sentence for the opening of the first chapter of his book, Music in the Renaissance (p. 7). 119 Heinrich Besseler believed that Tinctoris was referring to the development of the new fauxbourdon style (1974, 157). Besseler's masterful study, so rich in insights,

is perhaps a little asymmetrical in its emphasis on "Vollklang" and

"Harmoniegefiihl." It is revealing that the index of his book lists only one reference

under "Dissonanz."

120 From the dedication of his Proportionale musices (Strunk 1950, 195).

121 For the literature, see Fallows 1982, 292, n. 24.

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270 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

rosarum flores. He posited that the duos "have undoubtedly been projected simultaneously" (p. 190), and that the "sections for full choir must have been conceived in a mixture of simultaneous and successive

procedures" (p. 191). He suggested that the harmonic plan was laid out first in the two tenors and motetus, and that "the triplum, although surely present in the composer's mind in outline, could have been formulated in detail only after the harmonic plan was realized. We encounter here a combination of successive and simultaneous

conception, in which the simultaneous dimension decisively outweighs the successive part" (p. 191). While one might harbor doubts as to the extent of "simultaneous conception" in Nuper rosarum, there is no problem in considering it as harmonically conceived. Indeed, if we look at it from a point of view of Tinctoris's prescriptions for dissonance treatment, we find almost

no deviations. The few exceptions bear examination (see Ex. 5)122 Example 5 Dufay, Nuper rosarumflores, passages deviating from Tinctoris's dissonance rules (after

Opera Omnia, ed. Besseler, :7o-75)

(a)

(b)

m.

Triplum o=d

\lotetusIr

Tenors _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

(c)

*

m.

<

(d)

i6i II

-W-/_. _ 122 For the edition, see Dufay, Opera omnia, x:70-75. The sources are ModB and Trent 92. I leave aside cadential dissonances, which are sharper in Dufay since the dissonance is usually freshly sounded rather than suspended. Tinctoris makes no

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 271

In (a) the dissonance is resolved improperly; it should not return to the same note.123 This is the same error that earned Ockeghem Tinctoris's reproval. However, Tinctoris himself made it on occasion.124 (b) would seem to prove that Dufay composed the parts successively, because each fits against the tenor. However, the d' in the motetus is a misprint; the manuscripts read c'.125 (c) shows a stressed dissonance on the first beat of the measure, sounding an eleventh over the tenor. In the critical notes Besseler remarks that the notes b b'-a' occur in ModB as a dotted minim

and semiminim; he changed the rhythm to a dotted semibreve and minim, following Trent 92. This is the only error Besseler found in ModB. However, I believe the error goes back to a source or sources used

by the scribes of ModB and Trent 92 and that it has been emended incorrectly by the Trent scribe. If we suppose that the error in rhythm derives from the preceding pause, which could be a breve instead of a

semibreve, the passage emerges without fault (Ex. 6): Example 6 Proposed emendation of Nuper rosarum flores, mm. 85-86

6 ; I m . ,P" .! 0

If- , f L I\---- IMF -

distinction between the two, but the suspended dissonance is the only one he uses.

The three-note cambiata figure is ubiquitous in this motet. The second note is

frequently dissonant. Tinctoris allows such a dissonance to resolve with the leap of a

third, but rarissime (Liber de arte contrapuncti II.xxxii.3 [2:141]); judging from

Tinctoris's own music, "rarissime" is to be taken relatively. When he uses the figure, he almost always gives it in a dotted pattern; Dufay prefers it undotted. 123 "Itaque si ab uno loco ascendatur vel descendatur per aliquam discordantiam, ad eundem continuo non est revertendum, nisi ipsa discordantia adeo parva sit, ut vix

exaudiatur" (II.xxxii.4 [2:141]). The "parva" discord that is allowed is a fusa. In

Besseler's edition no dissonance is apparent because the motetus is erroneously given

as c'.

124 See, for example, his Missa Sine nomine No. i in Tinctoris, Opera omnia, Gloria,

m. 904 (p. 8), Credo, m. Ioo0, 1035, Io84 (p. I8), the Missa Sine nomine No. 2, Osanna,

m. 635 (p. 5 ), etc. All of these are semiminims, however; Ockeghem's note was a

minim.

125 It was a charming dissonance, and I shall miss it. Other misprints are: motetus, m. 3o, breve rest missing; motetus, m. 1394, a should beg; triplum, m. 158,

second F should be a quarter note.

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272 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Example (d) is harder to explain. The g in the motetus must be wrong because it forms a fourth under the tenor. The c" in m. 162 of the triplum is dissonant on the first beat against both the motetus and the

tenor. Trent agrees with ModB in this passage, except that the first note of the motetus is a . However, the custos at the end of the previous staff indicates that it should bef. If we read the next two notes a third

lower we would solve the problem of the essential fourth but then create parallel fifths in the next measure. Clearly, the source for both manuscripts had an error here. Examination of the parallel passages in

the other full-choir sections (Ex. 7) will help to suggest an emenda-

tion.

Example 7 Dufay, Nuper rosarum flores, passages parallel to Ex. 5d

A m. 41 Triplum

Tenorp

Motetus Al/I

m.97

"I

-

I

iiI

I

I

-' , /': .-. I ftL

x

m. 133

I

I

Mr

I'

I

I

OpJ

First of all, the melodic contour of the motetus is correct, but the rhythm must be changed so that a coincides with c' in the tenor. Secondly, the triplum in m. 162 should read b'-g'. Thirdly, the g' on

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 273

the third beat of the triplum in m. i61 should be changed. I suggest the following emendation (Ex. 8): Example 8 Proposed emendation of Nuper rosarum flores, mm. 161-62

Triplum . -

Tenor . , -

Motetus

In addition to the discriminating dissonance technique, Nuper rosarum flores shows other signs of harmonic composition. In several places the triplum forms a fourth with the tenor (mm. 29, 41, 47, 99,

i33, 136, and final cadence). Each time, the motetus drops beneath the tenor and supplies a sixth or, more usually, an octave to the superius. Often one of the "Klangzusatznoten," the divided notes that appear frequently in the motetus, sounds a third to make a full triad.

That these divided notes are not an afterthought but part of the original conception is suggested by m. i49, in a duo section; without

the divided note the triplum and motetus would sound a bare

fourth.126

Nuper rosarumflores, as Lowinsky observed, was ahead of its time. He referred to the sonorous effect of the harmonies in root position. But it was ahead of its time in dissonance treatment as well. The real innovators in dissonance treatment in the early fifteenth century were

the English, and particularly Dunstable, as Tinctoris recognized. Manfred Bukofzer has characterized Dunstable's harmonic style as distinguished by an unusually liberal supply of perpetually consonant progressions, verging at times on monotony. ... The purging of dissonances from the harmony is a turning-point in the history of dissonance

treatment and indeed of contrapuntal writing in general. Dunstable's

innovation was therefore not the introduction of the English idiom for

which he has been undeservedly praised, but its purification from

dissonances. It was unquestionably the new concordant style that

accounted for the novelty of Dunstable's music and for the enthusiasm it

aroused (1960, I85).

While Tinctoris gave credit to Dunstable for the founding of the "new art," he declined to count any Englishmen among the moderns 126 For a tabulation of divided notes in the Trent Codices, see Mixter 1981, 640-43-

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274 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

who succeeded Dunstable, Dufay, and Binchois on the grounds that they "use one and the same style of composition," a sign, he says, of "a terrible lack of talent."127 The style was, perhaps, too consonant. Tinctoris was progressive in restricting the use of dissonance, but he did not want to eliminate it; some of his contemporaries, he remarks,

are even more fastidious than he (II.xxix [2:139]). A panconsonant style is not harmonic, in the sense that harmony was understood by Spataro and Zarlino. The latter observed that Musicians of older times held that compositions should include not only perfect and imperfect consonances, but also dissonances; for they realized that their work would achieve more beauty and charm with them than

without them. Had they composed solely with consonance, they might have produced agreeable effects, but nonetheless their compositions (being unmixed with dissonance) would have been somehow imperfect; and this from the standpoint of singing as well as of composition, for they

would have lacked the great grace that stems from these dissonances (Zarlino 1968, 54). While Tinctoris viewed the "contenance angloise" as a breath of fresh air after the dissonant style of the fourteenth century, the "concordances"

that once seemed so "frisque" had lost their charm by mid-century. In

the newer style, a regulated dissonance treatment that gave special distinction to cadences produced a more harmonious composition. i i. Res facta and Musica poetica

The art of composition, called res facta by Tinctoris and later writers who borrowed the term from him, became known in Germany in the sixteenth century as musica poetica. In i537 Listenius distinguishes between musica theorica, musicapractica, in which music is

produced but not preserved ("nullo tamen post actum reliquo opere, cuius finis est agere"), and musica poetica: Poetica [musica est] quae neque rei

Poetic is that which is content nei-

contenta, sed aliquid post laborem

ther with the understanding of the matter nor practice alone, but after effort leaves behind a work, such as

cognitione, neque solo exercitio

relinquit operis, veluti cum '

quopiam Musica aut Musicum carmen conscribitur, cuius finis est opus consumatum et effectum. Consistit

enim in faciendo sive fabricando, hoc

est, in labore tali, qui post se, etiam

when music or a musical song is composed, the goal of which is a

perfect and completed work, for it consists in making or fabricating, that is, in such exertion that, even

127 Prologue to the Proportionale; see Lowinsky 1966, 133.

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 275 artifice mortuo, opus perfectum et after the death of the maker, there absolutum relinquat (fol. a3v).128 remains a perfect and finished work.

The distinction goes back to Aristotle, who divided philosophy into "theoretical," "practical," and "poietic," praxis involving human action, poiesis "making" (Curtius 1953, 146). By using the words faciendo

and fabricando, Listenius makes a direct connection with the Greek and also, perhaps, an indirect connection with resfacta. His immediate

source is probably Quintilian, whose wording is very similar: "... aliae [artes] in agendo, quarum in hoc finis est et ipso actu perficitur

nihilque post actum operis relinquit ...; aliae in effectu, quae operis, quod oculis subiicitur, consummatione finem accipiunt" (Institutio

oratoria II.xviii). 129

From Listenius in i537 to Mattheson in 1739, German music theorists used the term musica poetica as synonymous with "Kompositionslehre" (Dahlhaus 1966, 113-15). 130 In this they differed

sharply from their Italian contemporaries of the first half of the sixteenth century, who believed that only counterpoint could be taught; composition required a certain natural instinct (an analogy with the topos poeta nascitur non fit).131 Spataro put it thus in a letter

to Pietro Aaron dated 6 May 1524: Venerable scholars (so thoughtlessly criticized by you) did not ignore anything pertinent to two-part counterpoint, but they did not go beyond the first principles because they knew that the art and grace of composing harmony cannot be taught, for composers must be born just as poets are born. Thus they taught how to compose in two-part counterpoint, first

note-against-note, then they showed how to diminish the note values. Whoever wanted to proceed beyond that needed (with the help of a teacher) to be aided by heavenly inclination and divine grace.132

128 Curiously, Heinrich Faber, after quoting Listenius's definition of musica poetica, proceeds to divide it into sortisatio (improvisation) and compositio. See Gurlitt 1942, 202.

129 See Dahlhaus 1966, 11 3. Dahlhaus alludes to Quintilian's division but does not remark on the similarity in Listenius's wording. 130 Dahlhaus shows that after i8oo musica poetica came to refer to that part of composition that could not be taught. 1 See Lowinsky 1964, 479-93, who quotes a number of contemporary observations on this subject. 132 "la docta antiquith da vui (cosi senza consideratione) reprehesa non ha ignorato cosa alcuna pertinente al contrapuncto facto a due voce, scilicet a nota contra nota, perche da loro non e stato temptato piui ultra che li rudi principii, perche essa docta antiquith sapeva che l'arte et la gratia del componere la harmonia non se pb insignare,

perch6 el bisogna che li compositori nascano cosi come nascono li poeti. Pertanto

primamente da loro era dato el modo de componere a due voce, scilicet a nota contra

nota, et da poi demonstravano de minuire el tempo. Chi da poi piui ultra voleva

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276 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The difficulty of teaching composition, as opposed to counterpoint, is a theme running through sixteenth-century treatises. It shapes the remarks of Lampadius, who was the first to say that composers used scores for composing. Likening the composer to the poet, who is moved by "a certain natural impulse," he says: the composer must first contrive in his mind the best melodies and must weigh these judiciously, lest one single note vitiate the whole melody and

tire his listeners. Then he must proceed to the working-out-that is, he

must distribute the contrived melodies in a certain order, using those that seem most suitable.133

In a recent article, Jessie Ann Owens characterized Lampadius's discussion of composition as "quite vague," and she wondered "if Lampadius was writing about something that he did not completely understand" (1984, 296-97). Lampadius understood very well what he was writing about, but his purpose was not to set forth a method of composition. He describes chords, and he gives advice about modes and ranges, with examples (mostly in two parts). He has a paragraph on composing in two parts, with a lengthy example, which is followed

by the laconic remark "And three parts of a composition should be worked out in the same manner." It is at this point that the student asks about the "tabula compositoria." Lampadius presents it as a tool

that makes it easier for composers to "distribute the contrived melodies in a certain order," and he specifically calls it an "ordo distribuendi voces sive cantilenarum partes." But he gives no further instruction in how to compose for three or more voices; his book is, as he says, an elementary manual for children.

Theorists' remarks on the difficulty of teaching composition should alert us to the fallacy of equating contrapuntal theory with compositional practice, which has led to the almost universal assump-

tion that Renaissance music is built on a two-voice framework,

whether of the superius and tenor or the superius and bass, and even that one may trace a wandering Geriistsatz, like a migrant cantusfirmus, when the example runs afoul of the assumption. 134 This skeletal view

procedere bisognava che (mediante lo aiuto del preceptore) el fusse prima aiutato da qualche sua optima inclinatione celeste et gratia divina" (MS. Vat. lat. 5318, fol. 2 io);

no. ii in Blackburn et al. Josquin, too, according to Coclico, took this attitude in teaching; see Lowinsky 1964, 491-92.

33 Compendium musices (Bern, 1537); quoted in Lowinsky 1964, 489. 134 Even sixteenth-century writers were capable of confusing contrapuntal theory with compositional practice. In one of his review letters criticizing Aaron's Toscanello,

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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 277

of music is not in accord with the theory or practice of composition.

As soon as composers began writing harmonically, whatever may have been conceived initially as a contrapuntal pair was now subject to alteration on harmonic grounds. Composers may have changed their harmonies considerably before they considered the work fin-

ished, the res "facta." The bass and alto cannot be regarded as "nonessential and nonstructural." As soon as pervading imitation became the norm it was necessary to work with more than two voices at the same time. The history of the growing ability to integrate the

texture of multiple voices while preserving good harmony is a fascinating one. It is not fully appreciated how difficult it was for composers to write four voices in pervading imitation when they had been used to writing only three. One can see the struggle with the alto in the full-voice sections of Josquin's Ave Maria ... virgo serena. And just because a voice does not fit very well is no reason to declare it a later addition; one has to view the whole composition in its historical

context.135 It was a real compositional problem, for example, to convert a cantusfirmus into a fifth imitative voice in the early decades

of the sixteenth century, and one can see more and less successful stages in this process.136 No matter whether theorists felt that composition could or could not be taught, they all recognized that there was a difference between

Spataro points out that the rule that a composition should begin and end with a perfect consonance was intended for the beginner in two-part counterpoint, not for the mature composer. Aaron was willing to allow an exception for the beginning, but not the end, following the Aristotelian maxim, "perfection in all things is found in the

end." Spataro denies the applicability of this concept to music; moreover, he says, Aaron's opinion does not agree with "modern practice," where compositions in four or more parts commonly include a third in the final chord. See the letter cited in note

132 above. 135 Of course there are compositions in which one voice is a later addition, often by another composer. As Aaron remarked (see above, p. 217), this is a difficult task.

My point is that in a period of stylistic transition it is not so easy to determine whether

an awkward voice was added by another person or by the composer himself, either during the initial period of composition or sometime afterwards. It is certainly arguable whether the sixth voice in Josquin's Huc me sydereo is "an obvious addition to

the original texture," as Jeremy Noble claims (1980, 722). If it "tends to muddy the work's transparent texture" (see program notes to the recording by the Pro Cantione Antiqua, London, under the direction of Bruno Turner, Archiv 2533 360), how do we know that Josquin wanted to have a transparent texture? Many voice parts could be omitted using this criterion. The problem seems to be especially acute in Josquin's

five-part chansons. Jaap van Benthem, in spite of having demonstrated the

unthematic and wandering character of the quinta pars in a number of them, proposed omitting the quintapars from En non saichant on the very same grounds (i970, 171-74).

136 I have made this point in discussing the last two motets of the Medici Codex in Blackburn 1970, 156-58 and 227. See also Blackburn 1976, 38-39-

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278 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

music that was achieved haphazardly and music that was a "perfect and finished work." The old division between theorists and practitioners, the musicus and cantor, was redrawn: there were now theorists,

practitioners, and composers.'37 With a correct understanding of what Tinctoris meant by resfacta, we can now push back the origin of this distinction to the fifteenth century. The practitioners are those who sing super librum or write their music successively. The composers are

those who write music harmonically by relating each voice to every other voice and thereby produce a res facta, an opus perfectum et

absolutum.

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. Music at the Court of Burgundy 1364-1419: A Documentary History.

Musicological Studies, no. 28. Henryville, Ottawa, Biningen, 1979. ABSTRACT

The change from "successive composition" to "simultaneous conception" is one of the great turning points in the history of music. The latter term, derived from Pietro Aaron's allusion to the method of composition used by modern composers, does not correctly convey Aaron's meaning. He said that

modern composers "take all the parts into consideration at once," disposing them in different ranges and thus allowing the avoidance of awkward clashes

between the inner voices. This more harmonic orientation finds confirmation

in the writings of Giovanni Spataro, whose theory of harmony, later developed by Zarlino, contradicts a current view of fifteenth-century music as purely intervallic counterpoint founded on a superius-tenor framework in which the bass is nonstructural and nonessential. The theory is grounded in the functional role of dissonance, adumbrated a century earlier in the treatise

by Goscalcus. Discussion of the new compositional process can already be found fifty years earlier in the writings of Johannes Tinctoris. That this has not been recognized is due to persistent confusion over the term resfacta. The key to comprehending this term lies in a correct understanding of what Tinctoris

meant by counterpoint: it is not what we today call counterpoint but

successive composition. Resfacta differs from counterpoint in that each voice must be related to every other voice so that no improper dissonances appear

between them. This method, "harmonic composition," could be quasi-

simultaneous or successive; the criterion is the ultimate result-the finished

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284 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY work of art. Resfacta is both a method of composition and a term that denotes a work composed in this manner, analogous to Listenius's opus perfectum et absolutum. The musicapoetica of the sixteenth century is the legacy of resfacta, and the two terms are indirectly connected. The new process of composition is the foundation for Tinctoris's delineation of an ars nova beginning about

1437, a date that may have been chosen in recognition of its first great representation in Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores.

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