Re: Frescobaldi, Doni, semitones, and 12-tET (for Ibo Ortgies)

Hello, there, Ibo Ortgies and everyone.

Please let me attempt to give my first impressions of the questions
you raise concerning the matter of the great composer Girolamo
Frescobaldi's advocacy of 12-tone equal temperament (12-tET) as the
tuning for a new church organ around the 1630's as reported by the
theorist Giovanni Battista Doni, and his supposed ignorance of the
difference between a diatonic and a chromatic semitone as alleged by
the same theorist.

Here I rely mainly on the account of Mark Lindley[1], while also
noting another curious case from this era in which a very noted
composer was accused by a learned theorist of "ignorance" in matters
of intonation.

Let us address first the matter of Frescobaldi's supposed "ignorance,"
then the question of his possible advocacy of 12-tET for at least some
keyboard instruments at some times -- a rather "radical" concept in
which some theorists of the late 16th and early 17th century took
considerable interest, for example Vincenzo Galilei, Simon Stevin, and
Mersenne.

My intuitive reaction to the charge of Frescobaldi's alleged
"ignorance" is that I wouldn't take it very seriously. Here we have
the precedent of Giovanni Maria Artusi's allegation that innovative
composer Claudio Monteverdi, whom he attacked in 1600 (citing passages
from some of his later published madrigals without mentioning the
composer's name) mainly for his unconventional uses of dissonance,
showed in his vocal madrigals an ignorance of the difference in
tunings between voices and fretted instruments such as the lute.[2]

Artusi was specifically deploring Monteverdi's use of such intervals
as the diminished fourth or seventh, although earlier composers such
as Wert (held up by Artusi as a model of the good practice being
corrupted by the "moderns" such as Monteverdi) had done the same.

Artusi suggests that Monteverdi must have tried out such intervals on
an instrument such as the lute, where the use of diminished fourths
and the like is "older than the cuckoo birds," because the equal
semitones of 12-tET make such intervals equivalent to regular major
thirds, etc. However, by writing such intervals in his vocal pieces,
Monteverdi shows himself uninformed that voices naturally incline to
the pure ratios of just intonation, not the irrational ones used in
fretted instruments.[3]

In fact, diminished fourths or augmented fifths appear also in the
meantone organ music of earlier 16th-century composers such as Antonio
de Cabezon, where I would certainly not consider them equivalent to
usual major thirds, but rather as "special" (although not too
uncommon) intervals evidently used for their unique color.

During the Manneristic Era of around 1540-1640, there was a great
fascination with the art of pleasing distortion and the musical
rhetoric of _durezze_ (dissonances or "rough spots," as one might say
in English) or unusual intervals. Monteverdi's use both of bold
sevenths and of the diminished fourth or seventh fit in nicely with
this agenda, and may suggest theoretical sophistication rather than
ignorance.

In other words, Artusi's allegation of Monteverdi's "ignorance" may
reflect a less desirable but yet understandable feature of human
nature in many musical disputes of this kind: a tendency not only to
disagree with one's opponent, but to attribute either incompetence or
outright ignorance to this opponent. The idea of honest and mutually
informed disagreement -- possibly because of differences of taste --
is sadly too rarely recognized in such debates.

Given Frescobaldi's very sophisticated musical compositions, and his
familiarity with a wide variety of keyboard instruments as you have
discussed here, I strongly suspect that he was familiar with the
difference in meantone tunings between the two semitones. As Lindley
comments, his supposed ignorance of this distinction was "an unlikely
accusation to make of a former pupil of Luzzaschi," famed as I recall
you noted in a previous article for his skill on Vicentino's
archicembalo.

The question of whether he may have advocated 12-tET as an organ
tuning, however, seems to me quite open, at least unless and until we
find writings in which he expresses his own views of the subject.

First, I would agree that Frescobaldi's music typically suggests
meantone, and that Easley Blackwood, for example, his selected one of
his keyboard compositions of an example of the chromaticism possible
within even a conventional 12-note meantone range (e.g. Eb-G# or
Bb-D#).

However, a composer's success in writing for the standard intonation
of a given era or style does not necessarily rule out an interest in
more experimental tunings. For example, I can easily imagine a
21st-century composer known for her finesse in 12-tone serialism
taking an interest in 11-tone or 13-tone serialism, and advocating
wider use of these less familiar tunings. Similarly, I would not be
too surprised to discover that in fact Frescobaldi took an interest in
12-tET as a "modern" or "experimental" alternative.

Rightly or wrongly, this form of equal temperament was widely
associated with Aristoxenos, and thus had something of the romantic
aura of antiquity. Mersenne discussed its possible use on keyboards --
its approximation being difficult on these instruments, in contrast to
the lute where an 18:17 fretting ratio in connection with the physics
of fretting pressure produced a good realization -- and some
contemporaries suggested that it might be less disagreeable if it
became more familiar.

Why might Frescobaldi, a composer whose keyboard masterpieces seem
nicely to fit the meantone system and exemplify some of its chromatic
possibilities, take an interest in 12-tET?

Having found Doni's allegation of Frescobaldi's ignorance concerning
the two semitones "an unlikely accusation," he adds[4]:

"and yet perhaps a fair indication of Frescobaldi's
attitude toward niceties of intonation. Whether his
magnificent _Cento partite sopra gli passacaglia_
was intended for equal temperament or for a
harpsichord with split accidentals for Db/C# as
well as G#/Ab and D#/Eb, the influence of
Frescobaldi's acceptance of equal temperament
is apparent in the later keyboard music of
Froberger, who was his pupil in Rome....

In other words, Lindley seems to suggest indirect evidence for
Frescobaldi's possibly acceptance of 12-tET: the later musical style
of Froberger. I would myself regard such an argument as interesting
but inconclusive.

Whatever the merit or persuasiveness of views, Lindley should be noted
for his advocacy of meantone for 16th-17th century music where 12-tET
has often been suggested or presumed: for example, the lute music of
Milan and the Elizabethan keyboard music of a composer such as John
Bull, whose famous hexachord fantasia has a 19-note range. Lindley
regards this piece as likely conceived for an archicembalo.

In short, while sharing Lindley's view that Doni's accusation of
ignorance seems most unlikely, I would consider the possibility that
Frescobaldi favored 12-tET as an organ tuning -- whether as standard
practice, or as an innovative experiment -- as an open but not proven
question.

-----
Notes
-----

1. "Temperaments," _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_
18:660-674 at 665, ed. Stanley Sadie (Washington, DC: Grove's
Dictionaries of Music, 1980), ISBN 0333231112.

2. See Mark Lindley, _Lute, viols, and temperaments_ (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1984), pp. 84-92, on Artusi's criticism
of Monteverdi's alleged intonational views in his _Considerationi
musicali_ of 1603, published three years after his better-known
polemic of 1600 on _The Imperfections of Modern Music_ against
Monteverdi's dissonance treatment.

3. Ibid., at 90-91.

4. Lindley, "Temperaments" (n. 1 above), at 665.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net