Re: Response to Paul Erlich: early 17th-century modality

Hello, there, and in response to my recent remarks in "Modality,
Tonality, Transpositions, and Tunings" concerning "the rise of the
major/minor key system around the epoch of Corelli (say 1680)," Paul
Erlich <PErlich@Acadian-Asset.com> writes:

> I wrote something in a recent post suggesting that the major/minor
> key system arose around 1600 with Monteverdi. I could have been
> gravely mistaken. I guess I was going by the high-school
> delineations of Renaissance=modal=1500-1600, and
> Baroque=tonal=1600-1750. Can you straighten me out?

Please let me begin by acknowledging that this is indeed a very common
traditional chronology, and that the idea of a Manneristic Era
combining what would traditionally be called the Late Renaissance and
Early Baroque (say 1540-1640) has become more popular during the last
few decades.

In fact, the question of whether the Early Baroque or Late Manneristic
epoch -- the early 17th century, in either case -- should be viewed as
modal, tonal, or something else is very much up for grabs, and may
remain so, since so much of the issue depends on analytical tastes and
preferences, reflected in how one defines the problem and applies that
definition to the music at hand.

Given that our focus here is on tunings, I will try to keep my
discussion _relatively_ brief, and to give some weight to the possible
role of intonational changes as "markers" of stylistic and conceptual
changes in the music itself.

First, let us give the traditional chronology its due. Around 1600,
two events occur which do mark a significant change. The first is the
advent of the figured bass (continuo or thoroughbass), which tends
often to appear in new soloistic forms where the upper melody and bass
line are accompanied by tertian consonances. The second is the
introduction of novel and bold dissonances by composers such as
Monteverdi and Gesualdo, many of which would become features of the
major/minor key system.

While these factors would be noteworthy in any case, the traditional
view of the major/minor system as the natural and logical culmination
of music history made it understandable that historians would focus on
aspects of Monteverdi's style shared in common with the later
17th-century key system as developed by such composers as Stradella
and Corelli, and codified somewhat later by Rameau (1722).

From this musicological viewpoint, Renaissance modality was a kind of
barrier to the full realization and music, and by using new
dissonances, Monteverdi became a champion of "progress." It was
assumed that because late 17th-century composers such as Corelli
incorporated these dissonances into a major/minor key system, this was
Monteverdi's agenda also. Similarly, the figured bass was seen as a
"liberation" from a supposed 16th-century orientation to complex
counterpoint as a musical norm.

Before presenting the case for an alternative viewpoint, I should
confess my own biases. A standing joke, my own, has it that while most
analysts explain 16th-century progressions in 18th-century terms, I
tend to explain them in 14th-century terms, so that one might seek a
balanced view by a certain law of averages <grin>.

To support a viewpoint that the early 17th century is still modal in
its approach, the opinions of early 17th-century composers and
innovative theorists themselves may be of interest. Thus in their
manifesto of 1607, Claudio Monteverdi and his brother Guilio Cesare
Monteverdi describe themselves as exponents of a _seconda prattica_ or
"Second Practice" originated by Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565) and
illustrated by various madrigalists during the later 16th century.

Also, they describe and defend Claudio's compositions as mixing
different modes in the best tradition of Josquin, Striggio, Rore, and
Willaert -- the first and last of special interest, since they
represent the classical Renaissance tradition or _prima prattica_
("First Practice") as opposed to the newer or Manneristic one.

In my view, it is unfortunate that the Monteverdi brothers omitted
from their lists of composers of the newer style the name of Nicola
Vicentino (1511-1576), who in his famous treatise of 1555 defended the
use of any dissonance or unusual melodic leap for the sake of textual
expression, and who also advocated an artful commingling of modes both
for "architectural variety" and as a means of expressing a text.

Turning to the music itself, recent scholars such as Carl Dahlhaus
have pointed to the fluid modal aspects of music around 1600,
including the radical madrigals of Monteverdi. Here "modality" should
be taken to mean not only the variety of octave species, but the
continued use of vertical progressions guided by such two-voice
resolutions as major third to fifth, for example (with C4 as middle C,
and higher numbers showing higher octaves):

E4 F#4
B3 D4
G#3 A3
E3 D3

Here we have a progression between two complete 5-limit sonorities
harmoniously related by a two-part motion "to the nearest consonance"
between the lower pair of voices (M3-5). Such progressions might often
be difficult to fit into a later 17th-century key scheme, but are
routine in what I might term modal/combinative practice, where motion
between tertian sonorities is often guided by such conjunct
progressions. Note the local accidental inflections which may make a
third before a fifth major, for example. This is one instance of how
the flow of 5-limit sonorities in Monteverdi or Gesualdo may be guided
by 3-limit progressions going back to the 13th and 14th centuries.

Also, Monteverdi's or Gesualdo's use of new note-against-note dissonances
such as seventh sonorities can be seen in an early 17th-century
context as a kind of poetical or rhetorical device, as Dahlhaus as
well as a 17th-century theorist such as Christoph Bernhard (c. 1655)
notes. Again, an intervallic or "combinative" approach rather than a
scheme of later key functions may fit best:

1 2 & | 1 ...
C4 B3 C#4
A3 G#3 A3
D3 E3 A2

m7 5 -
5 4 - M3

Here we have a striking minor seventh between the outer voices which
resolves by stepwise contrary motion to the fifth as the lower two
voices form a 4-3 suspension. Such a combinative viewpoint may best
fit the early 17th century, although in Stradella or Corelli or later
the same progression might fit into some scheme of key functions of
the kind later described by Rameau and his followers. Dahlhaus points
out that these dissonances might be used from either stylistic point
of view.

From an intonational view, by the way, Vicenzo Galilei, a champion of
these novel dissonances in the 1580's, argues that dissonance is a
part of the nature of music: just as an octave at 2:1 is concordant,
so a minor seventh at 9:5 is naturally dissonant. In 1/4-comma
meantone, such sevenths would be midway between 16:9 and 9:5, nicely
fitting a stylistic ethos in which sonorities mixing these intervals
with ideally blending thirds express a mixture of "the sweet and the
strong."

To finish the nonintonational part of the argument, another point
would be that early 17th-century continuo may have at least as much in
common with 16th-century approaches to note-against-note writing or
improvisation as with the key system of Stradella or Corelli in
practice and Rameau in theory.

For one fine statement of this point, see Miguel A. Roig-Francoli,
"Playing in consonances: A Spanish Renaissance technique of chordal
improvisation," _Early Music_ (August 1995), pp. 461-471. This article
focuses especially on Tomas de Santa Maria's treatise of 1565 on the
art of playing _fantasia_, likely meaning improvisation on keyboard or
other polyphonic instruments. Santa Maria describes a system for
moving between four-voice sonorities with the principal intervals
measured between the upper voice or treble (_tiple_) and bass, the
other parts serving only to "fill the space" between these voices and
to add accompanying consonances.

In fact, I find that Santa Maria's analysis can apply nicely to some
Spanish vocal music of around 1500 with mostly note-against-note
motion, as well as to the keyboard styles which he describes.
Roig-Francoli emphasizes that not only for this 16th-century tradition,
but also for the early 17th century, such an approach need not imply
the key system of Corelli or Rameau:

"The same applies to 17th-century music:
triadic progressions do not necessarily
behave according to the tenets of
functional harmony." (Ibid., 471 n. 22)

Interestingly, the point in time where there is general consensus that
key functions _do_ apply, for example Corelli (c. 1680), is also the
point at which meantone is challenged by the well-temperaments of
Werckmeister and his followers.

From an intonational point of view, we might have two obvious
"markers": the rise of meantone as an alternative to Pythagorean
tunings around 1450, and the rise of the unequal well-temperaments
around 1680 -- or a bit before, if we consider the French "ordinary
temperaments" which evolved from meantone.

One Netherlands tuning theorist and organist, Peter van Marissing, has
suggested that meantone may encourage may encourage the development of
vertical relations based on thirds, while well-temperaments may fit
with a key system more consistently based on progressions by fifths
and fourths. Vertical progressions with bass motion by a third,
ranging from the unassumingly diatonic to the chromatic and even (for
example in Vicentino) the enharmonic, are a common theme of
16th-century and early 17th-century pieces writing during the meantone
era, a characteristic feature of tertian modality contrasting with
conventional 18th-century key harmony.

Having considered some of the issues regarding modality or tonality in
the early 17th century, I might add that one scholar has proposed a
category of "monality" (_mo_dality + to_nal_ity) to describe the style
of this period, a clever linguistic compromise.

You raise some other very important issues, but suspecting that this
"brief" response may already be long enough, I shall set them aside
for another post.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net