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Rhetorical Aspects of the Renaissance Modes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Bernhard Meier
Bernhard Meier*
Affiliation:
University of Tübingen
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Extract

The ‘rhetorical’ character of Renaissance music – or, more precisely, of the vocal music of that period – is generally well known. Briefly: the musical segmentation of every vocal composition of that period is determined by the syntactic division of its text; each individual word that is suited to musical ‘translation’ not only renders this quasi-allegorical representation possible, but absolutely requires it; and the ability to discover such ‘allegories’, to apply them appropriately and thus to enrich the expressive vocabulary of music was regarded as the chief measure of the competence of a composer.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 115 , Issue 2 , 1990 , pp. 182 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Tinctoris, Johannes, Liber de natura et propnetate tonorum (manuscript dated 6 November 1476), chap 1, ed. Albert Seay, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 22/1 (American Institute of Musicology, 1975), 68 Heinrich Glarean, Dodecachordon (Basle, 1547, written 1519–39), book 11, chaps. 11, 25. (Note that Tinctoris's statement refers also to instrumental music)Google Scholar

2 Meier, Bernhard, Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie nach den Quellen dargestellt (Utrecht, 1974), 376–9 (trans as The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony (New York, 1988), 394–6)Google Scholar

3 Ed Bernhard Meier, in Cipriani Rore opera omnia, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 14/2 (American Institute of Musicology, 1963), 1–24Google Scholar

4 See Meier, Helga, ‘Zur Chronologie der Musica nova Adrian Willaerts’, Analecta musicologica, 12 (1973), 71–96 (pp 79–80, including music example)Google Scholar

5 Beringer, Maternus, Musicae Erster und Anderer Theil (Nuremberg, 1610, repr Leipzig, 1974)Google Scholar

6 See Meier, Bernhard, ‘Zur Tonart der Concertato-Motetten in Monteverdis “Marienvesper”’, Claudio Monteverdi Festschrift Reinhold Hammerstein, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Laaber, 1986), 359–67 (p 365)Google Scholar

7 On this point see Reichert, Georg, ‘Martin Crusius und die Musik in Tübingen um 1590’, Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft, 10 (1953), 185–212 (pp. 202, 205, 208)Google Scholar

8 John of Afflighem, De musica cum tonario, ed Joseph Smits van Waesberghe, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 1 (American Institute of Musicology, 1950), chap 18 (‘Praecepta de cantu componendo‘)Google Scholar

9 See Vecchi, Orazio, Mostra delli tuoni della musica (a manuscript dating from 1630), 9 Palestrina's madrigal is assigned to mode 2 (transposed up an octave) also by Zaccom and Costanzo Porta, whose four-voice Missa secundi toni is based on the madrigal Vestiva i colli The examples of mode 2 constructed per b-durum given by Seth Calvisius (Exercitationes musicae duae, Leipzig, 1600) also correspond to this type, as do the details of the disposition of mode 2 per b-durum in Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, iii (Wolfenbüttel, 1619, repr Kassel, 1958), 36, 40 Concerning Palestrina's madrigal in particular see Harold S Powers, ‘The Modality of “Vestiva i colli”’, Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel (Kassel and Hackensack, NJ, 1975), 31–46Google Scholar

10 A distinctive branch of modal theory, apparently represented mainly by Italian authors, regards this mode as a variant of mode 7 see Powers, Harold S, ‘Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 456–9 The variations in the nomenclature do not affect the question of its affective characterGoogle Scholar

11 See Meier, Bernhard, ‘Zu den “in mi” fundierten Werken aus Palestrinas Offertoriums-Motettenzyklus’, Die Musikforschung, 37 (1984), 215–20Google Scholar

12 Ursprung, Ed Otto, Jacobus de Kerle Ausgewahlte Werke, Erster Teil, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern, 26 (Augsburg, 1926)Google Scholar

13 See no 9 of the Preces (Domine rex omnipotens), as an example of the transposition of mode 7 per b-molle mentioned by Maternus Beringer (Musicae), Johannes Magirus (Artis musicae libri duo, Frankfurt am Main, 1596) and Johannes Nucius (Musices poeticae praeceptiones, Neisse, 1613) The versus of the same composition (Tu domine, cui) is named as an example of the same mode by Andreas Raselius in his Dodecachordi vivi exempla, an autograph manuscript dating from 1589Google Scholar

14 Zarlino, Gioseffo, Istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558), book iv, chap 32, Pietro Pontio, Dialogo (Parma, 1595), 58Google Scholar

15 The construction of a cadence on D-mi at bar 24 reflects an error in the edition.Google Scholar