Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: Keyboards, polyphony, and intonation (850-1640)

Hello, everyone, and I'd like to comment on the role of fixed-pitched
instruments such as keyboards and lutes in medieval and Renaissance
music. The issue whether and when these instruments may have been used
in the performance of vocal music remains an often controversial one,
although it is an easier matter to note, for example, the diverse
repertory of keyboard, lute, and instrumental ensemble music in the
16th century.

While some of what follows is general background, I have included some
material on intonational issues which I hope may prove of special
interest here. For example, Mark Lindley's suggestion that the
modified Pythagorean keyboard tunings in vogue during the early 15th
century may have influenced the vocal music of the young Dufay and his
peers is certainly an engaging one.

In considering the possible role of keyboard instruments in medieval
and Renaissance music it is easy to rebut obvious misunderstandings,
and much harder to assess actual practice. Thus it is now well
understood that when the composer Leonin, who flourished around the
third quarter of the 12th century, is referred to as _organista
optima_, this means "the best composer of organum" rather than "the
best organist." Whether Notre Dame used an organ for its liturgical
music before the first recorded evidence of this practice in the
earlier 14th century, and if so how, remains a moot question.

I have divided the following discussion into three parts. The first
part deals with medieval polyphony to 1300, where the presence of
organs is documented but their use in polyphonic music uncertain, apart
from a late 13th-century poem informing us that the portative organ
can be used to play a melodic line in a motet.

The second part considers the late Gothic era of 1300-1450. During the
first portion of this era, idiomatic keyboard music emerges and the
12-note ("7+5") keyboard becomes standard, with the organ and the
"chekker" (likely a clavichord) the probable instruments for this
music. During the latter portion, the harpischord also becomes part of
the scene, and modified Pythagorean tunings interact with stylistic
trends in vocal as well as instrumental music leading to meantone
temperament and the ideal of 5-limit just intonation (JI) for voices.

The third part addresses the Renaissance and Manneristic Eras of
roughly 1450-1640, a period when meantone is the general tuning of
choice for keyboards, and when the advent and growth of the music
printing business lends a technological impetus to the popularization
of instrumental as well as vocal music. Here it may be significant
that Pietro Aaron's _Toscanello in Musica_ (1523), written as an
introduction to music and its composition in the vernacular, includes
a chapter for beginners on how to tune a keyboard, known as the
earliest description of 1/4-comma meantone with a pure major third
divided into four equally narrowed fifths. Both keyboards and lute
have rich and diverse repertories in the 16th century, and the
practiced of accompanied solo singing (especially to the lute or
allied instruments) in this era may place the continuo and related
developments of around 1600 in perspective.

-----------------------------
1. Medieval polyphony to 1300
-----------------------------

The recorded practice of polyphony in Western Europe goes back to the
epoch of around 850-900, the usual dating proposed from the _Musica
enchiriadis_ and companion treatises. Such treatises present two
methods of improvised polyphony, including some examples with exact
pitch notation. The first technique of _organum_, maybe best
translated as "organized music," involves two, three, or four voices
singing in consistent parallels using the _symphoniae_ or concords:
the fifth (3:2) and fourth (4:3), which might have their voices
doubled at the octave. The second technique, shown for two voices, has
these voices typically beginning on a unison, expanding to a fourth,
moving mostly in a series of parallel fourths, and then converging
again on a unison. While the first technique can be heard as a
magnificent vertical amplification of a basic melody, the second
technique invites independent development of the added voice.

Both techniques have analogues in various musical traditions where
fifths and fourths are especially favored as concords. By the
millennium of 1000, it would seem that this interest in improvised
polyphony had led to a practice of composition, as reflected by the
polyphonic repertories of Winchester and the earliest pieces of
Chartres. Around 1030, Guido d'Arezzo in his _Micrologus_ describes
his own favored technique of organum for two voices, in which he
regularly accepts and recognizes not only the stable unison and
fourth, but unstable major seconds and major and minor thirds, and
describes some of his favorite techniques for the _occursus_ ("coming
together") or cadencing of the voices at the unison.

What role, if any, the early organ may have played in these
developments is an open question. For an adventurous discussion of
these issues, see Peter F. Williams, _The Organ in Western Culture,
750-1250_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

During the later 11th and early 12th centuries, styles developed in
which _all_ the vertical intervals from unison to octave and sometimes
beyond were used, with a general preference for contrary motion,
although parallel fifths or fourths remained common as a textural
resource. By the middle of the century, two distinct styles may be
seen in such repertories as St. Martial or Limoges in France and
Santiago de Compostella in Spain (the latter repertory now viewed as
likely having been composed in northern France). In what might be
called _sustained note_ or _organum_ style, the original chant melody
is stretched out into prolonged notes, above which (mostly, since the
voices sometimes cross) the added voice sings elaborate melismas. In
_discant_ style, the two voices move in more or less note-againt-note
rhythm.

The sustained notes in the tenor part of this music -- the part which
"holds" the Gregorian chant melody on which the new voice is composed
-- have often been described as "pedal points" or "organ points" by
modern writers, and the use of an organ to play these notes is common
in modern performances. Whether and how often the organ might have
been used in the 12th century remains a question open to much guessing
and inference.

The same statement might apply to the Notre Dame School with its famed
composers Leonin (fl. c. 1150-1175?) and Perotin (fl. c. 1180-1205?).
While Leonin's music uses the traditional two-voice texture, Perotin
also composes for three and four voices. His music and that of his
colleagues establishes the complete trine (e.g. D3-A3-D4, outer
octave, lower fifth, upper fourth) as the unit of full sonority,
marking the advent of the trinic era (c. 1200-1450). Perotin's
grand style might also be said to mark the advent of _combinative_
harmony in which elementary intervals are combined into a variety of
multi-voice sonorities (stable and unstable) and cadences.

A bit more than 30 years ago, a university music professor I met
declared, "We know that Perotin used an organ." However, more recent
researches have shown no mention in Notre Dame's performance rubrics
of an organ until around 1330. Williams, in his book on the organ,
concludes that the use of this instrument in the time of Leonin or
Perotin appears plausible, but not proven.

While some modern performances use an organ for the sustained notes in
the tenors of Perotin's organa for three and four voices -- which can
last for 30 or more measures of a piece in modern transcription --
other groups have used singers alone with staggered breathing among
those singing the tenor. In the _clausula_ portions of these organa,
where the lower voice moves in a regular rhythm, the organ could have
given the tenor or "foundation" part a distinct timbre -- as would
also be true in polyphonic _conducti_ for two, three, or four voices,
where the tenor is usually newly composed as well as the upper lines,
and all voices tend to move more or less note-against-note.

Interestingly, the era around 1200 is often taken to be the time when
the flexible modern keyboard with its agile fingering was introduced
for the organ, replacing much slower slider mechanisms and the like.
Also, the portative organ provided a versatile, mostly melodic
instrument -- the player working the keyboard with one hand and the
bellows with the other.

By around the late 13th century, in the _Roman de la Rose_, we find a
mention of the portative organ as an instrument used in polyphonic
music: it could be used to play either the tenor or the _treble_ of a
motet, then the favorite form of part music.

Around this same time, we find in sources such as the Montpellier and
Bamberg manuscripts certain "untexted motets," as they might best be
called, pieces where the absence of words in all parts suggests,
although it does not require, instrumental ensemble performances. The
title of one of these pieces, _In seculum viellatoris_ or "The _In
seculum_ of the vielle (fiddle) player," might be taken as one of the
earliest references to a specific instrument for polyphonic music.

How important might the organ have been in all of these developments?
While Williams argues that this keyboard instrument may have played a
significant role in shaping Western European tastes, for example
encouraging an emphasis on "standardized" diatonic intonation rather
than microtonal flourishes of the voice, others might argue that the
evolution of polyphony follows its own musical logic and stylistic
taste with or without the presence of keyboard or other instruments.

------------------------------
2. The late Gothic (1300-1450)
------------------------------

The epoch of around 1325-1335 may herald two landmarks in the
development of the organ: the first known collection of idiomatic
keyboard music, the Robertsbridge Codex, and the advent of the "7+5"
keyboard, all 12 notes of this keyboard being called for by the music
of this collection. As Mark Lindley suggests, a 12-note Pythagorean
tuning of Eb-G# would nicely fit this music. In any case, writing
around 1325, Jacobus of Liege tells us that keyboards now have the
whole-tones "almost everywhere" divided into semitones.

The Robertsbridge Codex, with proposed dates ranging from 1325 to
1365, includes both dance music and ornamented versions of vocal
motets; both types of compositions will remain common in later
keyboard sources.

One of the greatest composers of the century, Francesco Landini
(1325-1397), was famed also as a player of the portative organ, and it
was said that his music attracted the birds by its beauty. It is easy
to imagine such an instrument enriching the texture of various kinds
of polyphonic music.

In addition to the various forms of organ, 14th-century sources
mention a stringed keyboard referred to as the _chekker_, likely a
kind of clavichord which would be used as a less expensive substitute
for the organ. It appears that the plucked harpischord may have
appeared on the scene shortly before 1400, with the first detailed
descriptions dating around 1440.

The era around 1380-1450 may have a special significance from the
viewpoint of intonation, as Mark Lindley has suggested. This era
offers various keyboard repertories including the Faenza Codex and the
earlier compositions in the Buxheimer Organ Book, as well as some
other German tablatures. In the earlier part of this era, pieces
included ornamented versions of songs by Guillaume de Machaut
(c. 1300-1377) and Landini, for example, as well as liturgical
settings. The latter part of the era (c. 1420-1450) coincides with the
epoch of the young Dufay, often viewed as marking the transition from
Gothic to Renaissance.

Lindley proposes that the keyboard practice of tuning sharps as
Pythagorean flats (G# as Ab; C# as Db; F# as Gb) -- starting maybe
around 1370 or 1380 in Florence, and common by the first decades of
the 15th century -- may have had an influence not only on keyboard
music, but on the vocal music of composers such as Ciconia and the
young Dufay. In this tuning, thirds involving written sharps would be
realized as Pythagorean diminished fourths, known by modern theorists
as "schisma thirds" only a schisma (32805:32768) or ~1.95 cents from
pure 5-based ratios.

Lindley shows how, in collections such as the Buxheimer Organ Book,
prolonged noncadential sonorities with these almost-pure thirds, are
used as a "stock-in-trade." He suggests that the music of composers
such as the early Dufay would also fit a kind of vocal intonation
influenced by this kind of keyboard tuning.

I find Lindley's hypothesis appealing and beguiling. In a 12-note
keyboard tuning (Gb-B) of the kind described by various 15th-century
theorists as well as Lindley, thirds and sixths involving sharps will
be virtually pure schisma intervals, with other thirds and sixths
having their usual active Pythagorean portions. One variation for
keyboards with more than 12 notes per octave, or for freely tuned
voices, would be to use the near-pure schisma thirds for prolonged
noncadential sonorities, and wide Pythagorean major thirds and sixths
in cadential progressions to fifths and octaves (M3-5, M6-8).

Around 1450, Mark Lindley infers a shift to meantone temperament in
part from the style of compositions by Conrad von Paumann with
successions of tertian sonorities which Lindley concludes are meant to
be "firmer" than they would in a Pythagorean tuning. Around this same
time, the vocal music of the later Dufay and Ockeghem similarly
features such textures, suggesting a trend toward a 5-limit ideal.
Here it might be best to say that the worlds of vocal and keyboard
music -- and their intonational ideals -- are not unrelated, and may
interact in various ways.

-----------------------------------------------
3. Renaissance and Manneristic Eras (1450-1640)
-----------------------------------------------

The famous treatise on practical music by Bartoleme Ramos (1482)
includes both the first known division of the monochord in 5-limit JI
(with 5:4 and 6:5 thirds, etc.), and a discussion of keyboard tunings
in which Ramos recommends what Mark Lindley persuasively interprets as
a meantone tuning of Ab-C#. In 1496, around the time that composers
such as Josquin and Isaac are introducing the practice of sometimes
concluding pieces with sonorities including a third, Gaffurius tells
us that organs are tuned with the fifths narrowed by a "small and
hidden" quantity. In theory as well as practice, tertian verticality
has clearly arrived.

Aaron's _Toscanello_ of 1523, as a conclusion to its introduction in
the vernacular for the budding composer, offers a beginner's guide to
tuning a keyboard instrument in meantone -- inviting us to guess that
members of Aaron's popular audience might have had access to such
instruments. The published collections of music for the keyboard by
printers such as Marcantonio of Bologna in this same year, and
Attaingnant (e.g. 1530), might suggest a similar conclusion.

In the _Courtier_ of Castiglione, published in 1528 but likely written
by 1516, one speaker in the dialogue on music expresses a preference
for the art of singing to the _viola_ -- that is, the plucked _viola a
mano_, an instrument akin to the Spanish vihuela or the lute. Such an
instrument in this epoch may have been tempered in some form of
meantone, although by around 1545, a 12-note octave with equal
semitones (12-tone equal temperament or 12-tet) seems to have become
standard.

It would be beyond the scope of this article to survey the richness of
16th-century lute and keyboard repertories, but the musical wealth of
these repertories and their offering both of derivative works from
vocal models and of distinctive instrumental forms is well worth
noting.

While the abundance in the 16th century both of vocal music (still the
especially valued norm) and of instrumental music is clear, the
meeting ground between voices and instruments is only partially
suggested, for example, by documented instrumentation practices for
the Medici _intermedii_ or musical presentations on festive or
ceremonial occasions. We know that madrigals and similar forms of
vocal music could be performed with various combinations of voices and
instruments, as well as with voices alone.

In his dialogue of 1581 on ancient and modern music, Vincenzo Galilei
proposes that voices tend to follow the intonation of either the lute
(12-tet) or of keyboards (meantone, ideally for Galilei 2/7-comma)
when they sing with these instruments. Unaccompanied voices, in his
view, lean toward a tuning somewhere between lutes and keyboards on
what we might call the meantone continuum, but closer to keyboards.
The more orthodox view of Zarlino, for example, holds that voices tend
to JI, although a system of "adaptive JI" after Vicentino and Erlich
might partially reconcile these models.

In countries such as Italy and Spain, the lute song represents a genre
for solo voice with an accompanying instrument. It has been suggested
that some women composers in Italy during this era may have begun
their initiation in counterpoint through their skills as accomplished
lutenists and singers. The madrigals of Maddalena Casulana (c. 1540-?)
indeed show a feeling for note-against-note declamatory textures as
well as a mastery of more complex polyphony, and a lute song from a
manuscript of Isabelle de' Medici nicely illustrates this kind of
declamatory style.

More generally, such note-against-note styles can be found in the
Italian frottola and Spanish villancico of around 1500, and play an
important role along with more elaborate contrapuntal techniques in
forms such as the 16th-century madrigal. In the realm of specifically
instrumental music, also, an author such Tomas de Santa Maria (1565)
describes how to compose or improvise four-voice textures in mostly
note-against-note motion where the intervals between the outer voices
are primary, the inner voices serving to "fill in the space" and add
accompanying consonances.

Thus while the advent of continuo and the new solo song around 1600,
together with the opera and oratorio, is indeed an important landmark,
it draws on various 16th-century techniques and performance
practices.[1]

Interestingly, Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and his brother Giulio
Cesare Monteverdi themselves view the newer style or _Seconda
Prattica_ ("Second Practice") as including many composers of the
middle and late 16th century beginning with Cipriano de Rore; among
its exemplars they list madrigalists such as Giaches de Wert as well
as exponents of the new solo song such as Caccini. Here we might also
include Vicentino, who in his treatise of 1555 not only champions the
chromatic and enharmonic genera but urges that any dissonance or
unusual melodic leap may be justified if it aptly expresses the words.

Vicentino's aesthetic ideal of expressive text setting, and practices
such as the striking melodic leaps in Wert's madrigals or the bold
dissonances of Monteverdi and Gesualdo, may be seen as aspects of a
"Manneristic Era" in music of the kind proposed by scholars such as
Maria Rika Maniates. This era, running roughly from Rore to
Monteverdi, say 1540-1640, includes developments of the middle and
late 16th century as well as the early 17th century.

In a forum devoted to alternative tunings, it might be well to quote
the words of Nicola Vicentino in a kind of advertisement for his
_arciorgano_ dated 1561[1]:

"Furthermore, among the other modes of composing and
of playing, there is one of composing [a type] of
music that involves recitation by a solo singer with
the instrument, and it will be such music that in it
one will hear recited every sort of word or rather
lofty speech, accompanied by harmony."

Various kinds of 16th-century music, including the lute song as well
as the improvised singing of sonnets and the like to a simple
accompaniment, might have inspired Vicentino's statement; his words,
suggesting also the desire of composers around 1600 "to speak in
harmony," offer a connection with the declamatory art of Monteverdi,
or of Giulio or Francesca Caccini.

-----
Notes
-----

1. On the connection between 16th-century keyboard techniques such as
those of Tomas de Santa Maria and 17th-century continuo, see Miguel
A. Roig-Francoli, "Playing in Consonances: A Spanish Renaissance
technique of chordal improvisation," _Early Music_ (August 1995),
pp. 461-471.

2. Henry W. Kaufmann, "Vicentino's Arciorgano: an Annotated
Translation," _Journal of Music Theory_ 5 (1961), 32-53 at 39, and
Kaufmann's comment on this passage, ibid. at 49.

Re: Keyboards, polyphony, and intonation (850-1640)

🔗M. Schulter <MSCHULTER@VALUE.NET>

🔗Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>