Re: Portuguese Renaissance music with "microtones"?

Hello, there, and this is a question for Johnny Reinhard or anyone
else who might be acquainted with a piece from a Portuguese
Renaissance manuscript featuring "microtones," as reported in Tuning
Digest 206 (message of 6 June 1999). The source is given as Hoyle
Carpenter, _Microtones in a Sixteenth Century Portuguese Manuscript_
(Glassboro, New Jersey).

Comparing this music with the published pieces of Nicola Vicentino and
Anthoine de Bertrand could be very interesting.

Specifically, the Tuning List article refers to "microtonal
dissonances," and I'd be curious whether this means vertical intervals
altered by a diesis of roughly 1/5-tone, for example. Might this be a
matter of interpretation, with a possibility for performers to add
unwritten inflections to other parts in order to arrive at usual
vertical concords in at least some cases?

This kind of situation arises in the single known enharmonic chanson
of Bertrand, where the diesis inflections are marked for only some of
the voices, but might be supplied for others (an adjustment analogous
to the use of unwritten accidentals to avoid some augmented or
diminished intervals, although by no means all, in more conventional
16th-century styles).

Also, I would be very curious about the compass of the pieces. As I
have discussed in recent posts, the pieces of Vicentino and Bertrand
can each fit within a 24-note meantone tuning (or 24-out-of-31-tet, if
one prefers), although different pieces use different 24-note gamuts.

Any information or assistance would be much appreciated.

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net

Margo, please send me a postal address and I'll send he monograph on
Portuguese Anonymous.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM
afmmjr@aol.com