Vicentino, 16th century "polymicrotonalist"

I didn't have ANY general background on Vicentino... some others on
the list may be in my position.

This is from Knud Jeppesen's _Counterpoint_, which I'm diggin':

"Vicentino's famous work _L'Antica musica ridotta alla moderna
prattica_, published in 1555, states excellently the typical
contrapuntal theory of the sixteenth century. Even the title "The
Music of Antiquity Reduced for Modern Practice," is characteristic.
Don Nicola Vicentino, a priest from Vicenza and a pupil of Adrian
Willaert, the famous Netherland chapelmaster at St. Mark's church in
Venice, was a zealous advocate of everything which he considered
ancient music. In 1546 he published a collection of 'chromatic'
madrigals, as he called them, and in the theoretical work just
mentioned he demonstrated, according to the ancient models, not only
the diatonic but also the chromatic and enharmonic tonal systems...
[cut]... Vicentino emphasizes, for example, that in the composition
of madrigals, among other things, little depends upon the pedantic
maintenance of the mode and the like; most important is to see that
life and breath be given the text by the tones and that the music
express the passions and feelings, bitter as well as mild, cheerful
as well as melancholy..."

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Joseph Pehrson