Re: Lucca -- Bb/A# or G#/Ab? (for Leonardo Perretti, Ibo Ortgies)

Hello, there, Leonardo Perretti and everyone, and thank you for your
very important comment regarding a possible miscopying or misreading
of the text of the contract for the Lucca organ (1480) regarding an
extra key for _la tersa del fa delle f_.

Here I would like much to emphasize that my own impressions of this
question are based on some general musical assumptions about likely
accidental usage near the end of the 15th century, and about known
dispositions of other split-key instruments in this epoch, or
theoretical discussions on this topic.

However, as your article may suggest, such assumptions should not be
taken as a substitute for a critical reading of an obscure and
ambiguous text itself, which may, when correctly interpreted, itself
change our view of "likely practice" at the time.

Thus in offering more comment on why I might find Ab rather than A# a
"likelier" choice around 1480, I focus on the question of which
proposal seems more probable in the absence of a clear reading of the
text. If we find that the original text in fact specified "the third
of the # of F," then the plain Italian words must take precedence over
such general assumptions.

In interpreting such a critical text, I will happily defer to fluent
speakers of the Italian language familiar with the musical parlance of
the time. If a clear interpretation of the Lucca contract is possible,
then we may happily exchange a doubt for a certainly, to borrow a
phrase from the Spanish author Lope de Vega Carpio.

In the absence of such a firm reading, two factors might cause me to
lean toward Ab rather than A# in the epoch around 1480, especially
assuming some kind of meantone temperament (as does Lindley):

(1) The discussions of the Ab/G# question as the main
issue regarding the choice of accidentals or split
key tunings by Ramos (1482) and Schlick (1511); and

(2) The possibly more likely use of Ab rather than A#
both in written compositions of this era (the
epoch of the later Ockeghem, Josquin, and Isaac)
and in transpositions by keyboard players.

On the first point, Ramos in 1482 describes what Mark Lindley
persuasively argues is a meantone keyboard, advocating Ab-C# as a more
"provident" 12-note tuning than Eb-G#, and discussing the Ab/G#
question at some length. At one place he also touches indirectly, on
the question of a D# key; Lindley interprets another passage about
sonorities in Phyrgian as involving Eb/D#, although I read it as more
likely presenting another side of the Ab/G# question.

For a discussion of Ramos, please see, for example, my article at

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/hex.html

Schlick in 1511, like Ramos, prefers Ab to G#, and proposes what might
be termed a "semi-well-temperament" for a 12-note instrument in which
this accidental is tuned so as to be a serviceable Ab or a marginally
playable G# in rapid cadential passages. Like Ramos, he considers Ab
as the more important note to include.

However, I am not aware of any mention of A# in this era, although it
is included in the 17-note Pythagorean schemes of Prosdocimus (1413)
and Ugolino (c. 1435), and an F-A# tuning may have been in use, as
Mark Lindley suggests, for the repertory of Breslau (c. 1430).

Moving from theory to practice, I am not aware of the use of A# in any
written composition of the era around 1480-1520, with the possible
exception of something like Willaert's chromatic quartet (first known
to 20th-century musicologists as a duo) which seems designed more as a
kind of "puzzle piece" for singers than for playing on a keyboard.

In contrast, Schlick himself uses Ab, and it might easily occur in
certain relatively frequent transpositions.

For example, in music around this period and somewhat earlier
(e.g. the Old Hall Manuscript of c. 1370-1410 in England), one may
find lower voices with a signature of two flats, Eb and Bb. Scholars
such as Margaret Bent and Andrew Hughes have suggested that in such a
transposition of the gamut, the usual fluid step B-fa/B-mi (or better,
in the German mode of notation, B-fa/H-mi) becomes A-fa/A-mi, that is,
A/Ab.

Such a situation would also result if the Dorian mode on D were
transposed down a whole-tone to C, as Zarlino (1558) suggests may have
been not uncommon, with Bb and Eb as natural degrees of the mode.
Again, the usual fluid degree of D Dorian, B/Bb or H/B, becomes A/Ab,
with a split key at Ab/G# (or G#/Ab) facilitating this transposition.

For example, in a usual composition in D Dorian (the First Mode), we
might have a cadence such as the following (here I use an octave
numbering system with C4 as middle C):

D5 C#5 D5
G4 A4 A4
D4 E4 D3
Bb3 A3 D3

Musically, this type of cadence might be interpreted as a kind of
chain of two cadential progressions, both involving the expansion of a
major sixth to an octave. In the first, the sixth Bb3-G4 resolves to
the octave A3-A4 -- and the major third Bb3-D4 to the fifth A3-E4 --
thus leading into a suspension of the higest voice at a minor seventh
above the tenor or next-to-lowest voice (E4-D5) and at the eleventh
above the bass (A3-D5). These suspensions then resolve (7-6, 11-10)
followed by a concluding progression between the tenor and highest
voice from major sixth to octave.

The first M6-8 resolution involves descending semitonal motion, and
the second ascending semitonal motion -- respectively _remissa_ and
_sostenido_ (one might say in English "flat" and "sharp"), as Tomas de
Santa Maria (1565) will describe and contrast these two varieties of
cadences.

If we transpose Dorian down by a whole-step or a major second, with
the final now on C rather than D, we get this progression, using the
German "H" to indicate the cadential B-natural in the highest voice:

C5 H4 C5
F4 G4 G4
C4 D4 C4
Ab3 G3 C3

This kind of extemporized transposition, as well as the use of written
Ab in some pieces of the time, makes Ab an obviously useful accidental
in an epoch when the tendency may have been to experiment more in the
flatward than the sharpward direction.

By around 1550, the situation was changing: Orlando di Lasso uses A#
as well as D# and Ab in his _Prophetiae Sibyllarum_, with the
Prologue, for example, exactly fitting an Eb-A# tuning like that your
proposed reading would indicate for Lucca.

As Ibo Ortgies has noted, a later organ at Lucca, Accademia di Tomaso
Raffaelli, dated to "before 1609" does feature Bb/A# as well as G#/Ab
-- and also Eb/D# for at least part of the instrument's range. In view
of the use of A# in music of the later 16th and early 17th centuries,
this choice _might_ be more likely around 1580 or 1600 than around
1480; but then, again, there might also be a local tradition here.

My initial reaction that Lindley's reading of _tersa del fa delle f_
to mean a "flat third" above F (Ab), seemed attractive, should not
take precedence over a sound reading of the Italian text -- and
possibly the emendation of that text. In 1606, Cima refers to a sharp
note as a _diesis_, a medieval and early modern term for a usual
diatonic semitone as well as the special smaller interval of
Marchettus of Padua (1318) or Vicentino (1555).

Another line of inquiry, _absent a clear reading of the Lucca contract
text_, might investigate how common a split-key arrangement with Bb/A#
but without Ab/G# (or G#/Ab) might have been in the era of 1480-1540
or so, before the accidentalism of composers such as Rore and the
young Lasso may have made extreme sharps more common.

However, what I am describing is an exercise in the art of guessing,
and a more confident reading of the text might not only make such
guesses unnecessary but revise my estimate of probabilities for other
instruments of this epoch.

In the exact sciences, as the experience of Lise Meitner and her
colleagues in the discover of nuclear fission may suggest, a too-ready
willingness to dismiss anomalies or discount puzzling results may
delay the recognition of a more fruitful theory.

The question of split-key instruments may be similar, and your focus
on the question of how best to read an Italian text -- regardless of
preconceptions about "likely" choices in 1480 -- seems of critical
importance in resolving or at least clarifying this question.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net