Re: Intonation and repression in the meantone era

Hello, there, and in a recent and very fascinating post on historical
issues, the well-tempered and most eloquent advocate and paragon of
key color Ed Foote writes:

> I am not claiming that total consonance was the meantone
> composers objective, but rather, it was their current state of
> accepted intonation. During the early part of the meantone era, one
> could be burned at the stake for spurning church doctrine, and the
> definition of the scale was something that the church seemed to have
> strong feelings about. Secular composers had to have some idea of
> what was acceptable, not only to the church, but also their
> audiences.

Here two issues are raised: the attitude of late 15th-17th century
composers and theorists to consonance and dissonance in tuning, and
the interplay between theology and musical (including intonational)
style.

To begin, I would certainly agree that "the early part of the meantone
era" (say 1450-1600) was indeed, most tragically, a high point of the
Inquisition, and also, during the Reformation/Counter-Reformation of
the 16th century, of religious wars. How ironic that the treatise of
Ramos (1482) preceded by only two years a famous Papal declaration
lending impetus to the anti-witchcraft mania, a madness which was to
lead to the mass murder and torture of women and men in Protestant as
well as Catholic Europe during the next two centuries and a bit more.

In the late 15th-century Spain of Ramos, the 5-limit monochords and
new meantone keyboards which this theorist reports were sadly
accompanied by the triumph of intolerance under the Spanish
Inquisition of Torquemada, the expulsion of the Jews (1492) and Moors
(1498) who would not convert to Christianity, and the start of a hunt
for "covert Jews" who espoused Christianity but might retain some of
their Jewish customs and ceremonies. This reign of inhumanity was a
dramatic step backward from the 13th century, when all three religions
were recognized and tolerated in both Catholic and Islamic parts of
Spain.

In such an area as astronomy and cosmology, around 1440-1460 the
Bishop Nicolas of Cusa could describe a universe not only with the sun
at the center of our solar system, but with many such solar systems,
many inhabited by possibly superior forms of life. In the era of
Galileo, as we know, by 1616 the "teaching or defense" of heliocentric
views could indeed cause one to be charged and convicted of heresy.

However, to my best knowledge, questions of musical intonation were a
matter of professional rather than theological "heresy," with the
negative consequences much like those faced by European and other
musicians of various eras when they dare to champion the new and
unconventional.

Thus a century after Marchettus of Padua (1318) had advocated a tuning
system for voices which could be read to divide the whole-tone into
five equal parts, Prosdocimus of Beldemandis (1425 or later) wrote as
another mathematician to correct the "errors" of this departure from
traditional Pythagorean integer mathematics. However, these errors are
presented in musical and mathematical rather than theological terms.

In 1482, when Ramos described a monochord with 5:4 and 6:5 thirds, he
became the center of professional controversy and acrimony --
involving to my best knowledge other music theorists, however, rather
than the Inquisition. Adding fuel to the fire -- fortunately, a
figurative expression rather than a literal _auto de fe_ -- was his
rejection of Guido d'Arezzo and conventional solmization, iconically
revered in the musical tradition of the time. This professional stance
of irreverence led to professional rather than ecclesiastical
consequences.

In the 20th century, also, musicians such as Charles Ives were not
exempt from such a fate. Interestingly, while Pythagorean vs. 5-limit
mathematics were an important part of the controversy, Gafurius, the
great rival of Ramos, recognizes in 1496 that keyboards are in
practice tempered in meantone.

When Nicola Vicentino (1511-1576) espoused his music based on the
chromatic and enharmonic genera (the latter realized in his 31-note
division of the octave), he found himself in a disputation with
Lusitano (1551 or thereabouts) in which he was judged the loser -- and
thus prodded to write his great treatise of 1555 on _Ancient Music
Adapted to Modern Practice_. In 1558, without mentioning his name,
Zarlino condemned the "chromaticists" in the strongest language,
directly addressing the issues of the Vicentino-Lusitano controversy,
but does not accuse Vicentino and his followers of theological (as
opposed to musical) heresy.

In fact, theologians curiously may have been more open than many
musicians (including a radical theorist such as Vincenzo Galileo,
father of the astronomer who _would_ have problems with the
Inquisition) to Vicentino's chromaticism, since he took a reverent
attitude to Church music and was concerned about the frivolous
treatment of the liturgy and of sacred texts.

While the Council of Trent devoted much attention to liturgical music,
I am not aware of any special concerns with intonation: the curbing of
"worldly" styles, and the easy intelligibility of the text, were major
themes, along with the trimming back of much of the diverse medieval
repertory of chants.

Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo of Milan remarked that he was open to
various styles of the "intelligible music" championed by the Council,
and would be ready to hear a chromatic Mass by Vicentino.

Tragically, there was no need for the Inquisition to delve into
questions of musical intonation in order to keep itself busy: in late
16th-century Milan, for example, the people were told that it was
their religious duty to inform against neighbors suspected of heresy;
and even in Venice, known for its religious diversity and tolerance,
those convicted of heresy were sometimes executed (secretly by
drowning in this maritime Republic) in response to political pressure
with its arbitrary caprices. Four hundred years later, the lesson that
governments should not premeditatedly kill their own citizens has yet
to be learned in some "civilized" societies.

Turning now to the question of consonance and intonational motivations
in the meantone era, I would say that temperament was generally
regarded as more of a practical necessity than a deliberate quest for
slightly impure intervals.

However, in additional to the enthusiastic cultivation of new
intervals such as the near-11:9 "proximate minor third" by Nicola
Vicentino, composers did sometimes use "odd" meantone intervals such
as the diminished fourth or augmented fifth to give special color to
the music. This can be heard in the keyboard music of Cabezon, and
also in a vocal Psalm setting of the era around 1600.

In describing a tuning which might be described as a
"semi-well-temperament," Arnold Schlick (1511) advocates that Ab be
tuned so as to serve as a marginally acceptable G# in quick cadential
passages; the idea seems to be a practical compromise rather than a
search for modal color or the like.

There's much more to be said here, but maybe this is a starting
point for discussion, and I welcome any corrections or amendments to
my impression that intonational style was not in itself a matter for
religious persecution in this often all-too-intolerant age, although it
often could be and was a topic for various theological analogies and
allegories.

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net