Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect

Adrian Willaert and the
Theory of Interval Affect
The Musica nova Madrigals and the
Novel Theories of Zarlino and Vicentino
Timothy R. McKinney
Adrian Willaert and the
Theory of Interval Affect
To Cyndi
Adrian Willaert and the
Theory of Interval Affect
The Musica nova Madrigals and the
Novel Theories of Zarlino and Vicentino
Timothy R. McKinney
Baylor University, USA
© Timothy R. McKinney 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Timothy R. McKinney has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McKinney, Timothy R., 1956–
Adrian Willaert and the theory of interval affect : the Musica nova madrigals and the novel
theories of Zarlino and Vicentino.
1. Willaert, Adrian, 1490?–1562. Musica nova. 2. Madrigals, Italian – Italy – 16th century
– Analysis, appreciation.
I. Title
782.4’3’0945–dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKinney, Timothy R., 1956–
Adrian Willaert and the theory of interval affect : the Musica nova madrigals and the novel
theories of Zarlino and Vicentino / Timothy R. McKinney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6509-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Willaert, Adrian, 1490?–1562.
Musica nova. 2. Madrigals, Italian – Italy – 16th century – History and criticism. I. Title.
ML410.W71M35 2009
782.0092–dc22
2009011256
ISBN 9780754665090 (hbk)
ISBN 9780754696728 (ebk)
Bach musicological font developed by © Yo Tomita
XV
Contents
List of Tables List of Musical Examples Acknowledgements vii
ix
xv
1
Contexts 2
Definition, Evaluation, and Validation of the Theory of Interval Affect
41
3
Expressive Functions of Harmony in the Musica nova Madrigals
97
4
Willaert’s Other Madrigals and the Theory of Interval Affect
191
5
The Compositional Legacy of Willaert’s Theory of Interval Affect
225
Select Bibliography Index 1
295
311
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Tables
2.1a
2.1b
2.2
2.3
“Major” modes and harmonic quality in Musica nova madrigals “Minor” modes and harmonic quality in Musica nova madrigals Melodic interval affect as defined by Vicentino Affective associations for the imperfect consonances 3.1
Representative fifth successions from Musica nova madrigals 101
5.1
Sixteenth- and eighteenth-century classifications of interval affect
291
49
49
51
84
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Musical Examples
Adrian Willaert, Liete e pensose, mm. 1–5; Musica nova (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1559)
1.2 Baldassare Donato, Mentre quest’alme et honorate rive, mm. 12–16;
Il primo libro de’ madrigali a cinque, et a sei voci, con tre dialoghi
a sette di nuovo riveduti, & con somma diligentia corretti (Venice:
Plinio Pietrasanta, 1557; first edn 1553)
1.3 Guillaume Dufay, Ave Regina caelorum, mm. 77–96; Biblioteca
apostolica vaticana, San Pietro B80
1.4Orlande de Lassus, Psalmus Tertius Poenitentialis, verse 21, mm.
1–5; Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales, modis musicis redditi, atque
antehac nunquam in lucem aediti ... (Munich: Adam Berg, 1584)
1.5Hard and soft B
1.6 Willaert, Aspro core e selvaggio e cruda voglia, mm. 1–22; Musica
nova (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1559)
1.7 Willaert, Confitebor tibi Domine, mm. 134–40; Musica nova
(Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1559)
1.1
2.1
2.2
Zarlino’s exemplar of harsh harmony
Willaert, Lasso, ch’i ardo, mm. 117–21; Musica nova (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1559)
2.3Interval qualities above each pitch-class of the basic gamut
2.4 Major, minor, and dubious sonorities
2.5 6–5 or 5–6 motions
2.6 5–6 or 6–5 motions over adjacent positions of similar quality
2.7 Willaert, Aspro core e selvaggio e cruda voglia, mm. 1–22
2.8 Melodic lines from “harsh” and “sweet” sections of Aspro core
2.9 Willaert, Io amai sempre, mm. 17–32; Musica nova (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1559)
2.10 Shared voice-leading strands in opening of Aspro core
2.11 Analytical reductions of sections A and B in opening of Aspro core
2.12 Willaert, Aspro core, mm. 103–16
2.13 Willaert, Giunto m’ha Amor, mm. 51–9; Musica nova (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1559)
2.14 Willaert, Giunto m’ha Amor, mm. 90–98
2.15 Willaert, Giunto m’ha Amor, mm. 124–32
2.16 Willaert, O invidia, nemica di virtute, mm. 70–93; Musica nova
(Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1559)
14
16
18
21
23
26
39
45
46
60
61
62
62
64
67
69
70
71
74
77
79
80
81
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
2.17 Girolamo Parabosco, Aspro cor, mm. 1–17; Madrigali a cinque
voci di Girolamo Parabosco discipulo di M. Adriano novamente
da lui composti & posti in luce (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1546)
2.18 Giaches de Wert, Aspro cor, mm. 1–14; Il primo libro de madrigali
a cinque voci novamente posti in luce et da lui proprio corretti alla
stampa (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1558)
2.19 Cipriano de Rore, Sfrondate, o sacre dive, mm. 57–61; Di
Cipriano il secondo libro de madregali a cinque voci insieme
alcuni di M. Adriano et altri autori a misura comune novamente
posti in luce (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1544)
2.20 Jacques Arcadelt, Perchè non date voi, donna crudele, mm. 8–12;
Il primo libro di madrigali d’Archadelt a quatro con nuova gionta
impressi (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1541; first edn 1538)
2.21 Arcadelt, Benedett’i martiri, mm. 19–24; Il primo libro di
madrigali d’Archadelt a quatro con nuova gionta impressi (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1541; first edn 1538)
2.22Rore, Strane ruppi, mm. 1–7; Di Cipriano il primo libro de
madregali cromatici a cinque voci con una nova gionta del
medesmo autore novamente ristampato & da infiniti errori
emendato (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1544; first edn 1542)
2.23 Wert, Dura legge, mm. 1–10; Madrigali del fiore a cinque voci,
libro secondo … (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1561)
2.24 Analytical reductions for Examples 2.7, 2.22, and 2.23
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
4.1
4.2
Willaert, L’aura mia sacra; Musica nova (Venice: Antonio
Gardano, 1559)
Willaert, I vidi in terra angelici costumi; Musica nova (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1559)
Willaert, Mentre che’l cor; Musica nova (Venice: Antonio
Gardano, 1559)
Willaert, I piansi, hor canto; Musica nova (Venice: Antonio
Gardano, 1559)
Willaert, Cantai: hor piango; Musica nova (Venice: Antonio
Gardano, 1559)
Willaert, Madonna, il bel desire; Madrigali a quatro voci di
Adriano Willaert con alcune napolitane et la canzon de Ruzante
tutte racolte insieme ... (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1563)
Willaert, Qual dolcezza giamai, mm. 56–75; Di Verdelot le dotte et
eccellente compositioni de i madrigali a cinque voci, insieme con
altri madrigali di varii autori, novamente ristampati, & ricorretti
(Venice: Antonio Gardano, n.d.)
86
88
90
91
91
92
93
94
124
138
151
164
177
194
200
List of Musical Examples
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8
Willaert, Già mi godea felice, mm. 1–33; Madrigali a quatro voci
di Adriano Willaert con alcune napolitane et la canzon de ruzante
tutte racolte insieme ... (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1563)
Willaert, Rompi de l’empio cor, mm. 1–47; La piu divina, et piu
bella musica, che se udisse giamai delli presenti madrigali, a sei
voci composti per lo eccellentissimo Verdelot, et altri musici ...
(Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1541)
Willaert, Se la gratia divina, mm. 1–14; Di Cipriano Rore et di
altri eccellentissimi musici il terzo libro di madrigali a cinque
voce novamente da lui composti et non piu posti in luce (Venice:
Girolamo Scotto, 1548)
Willaert, Ne le amar’e fredd’onde, mm. 1–11; Di Cipriano Rore et
di altri eccellentissimi musici il terzo libro di madrigali a cinque
voce novamente da lui composti et non piu posti in luce (Venice:
Girolamo Scotto, 1548)
Willaert, Pianget’egri mortali, mm. 1–20; Musica spirituale libro
primo di canzon et madrigal a 5 (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1563)
Willaert, Pianget’egri mortali, mm. 48–72
5.1Nicola Vicentino, Capitolo de la passione di Christo, mm. 98–109;
Madrigali a cinque voci per theorica et pratica da lui composti al
nuovo modo dal celeberrimo suo maestro ritrovato. Libro primo
(Venice, 1546)
5.2 Vicentino, Alma gentil, mm. 35–42; Madrigali a cinque voci per
theorica et pratica da lui composti al nuovo modo dal celeberrimo
suo maestro ritrovato. Libro primo (Venice, 1546)
5.3Vicentino, Fin che m’amast’a mai arsi, mm. 16–42; Madrigali a
cinque voci per theorica et pratica da lui composti al nuovo modo
dal celeberrimo suo maestro ritrovato. Libro primo (Venice, 1546)
5.4 Vicentino, Capitolo de la passione di Christo, mm. 206–20
5.5 Vicentino, Fiamma gentil, mm. 77–93; Madrigali a cinque
voci per theorica et pratica da lui composti al nuovo modo dal
celeberrimo suo maestro ritrovato. Libro primo (Venice, 1546)
5.6 Vicentino, Occhi lucenti e belli, mm. 40–48; Madrigali a cinque
voci di l’arcimusico Don Nicola Vicentino pratico et theorico et
inventore delle nuove armonie (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1572)
5.7 Gioseffo Zarlino, Amor mentre dormia, mm. 46–71; I dolci et
harmoniosi concenti fatti da diversi eccellentissimi musici sopra
varii soggetti. A cinque voci. Libro primo (Venice: Girolamo
Scotto, 1562)
5.8 Zarlino, È questo’l legno, mm. 107–10; I dolci et harmoniosi
concenti fatti da diversi eccellentissimi musici sopra varii soggetti.
A cinque voci. Libro primo (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1562)
xi
203
207
212
215
218
221
228
230
232
236
238
243
246
251
xii
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
Zarlino, Lauro gentile, mm. 32–6; Di Cipriano Rore et di altri
eccellentissimi musici il terzo libro di madrigali a cinque voce
novamente da lui composti et non piu posti in luce (Venice:
Girolamo Scotto, 1548)
5.10 Zarlino, Spent’era già l’ardor, mm. 23–32; I dolci et harmoniosi
concenti fatti da diversi eccellentissimi musici sopra varii soggetti.
A cinque voci. Libro primo (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1562)
5.11 Zarlino, I vo piangendo, mm. 1–9; I dolci et harmoniosi concenti
fatti da diversi eccellentissimi musici sopra varii soggetti. A cinque
voci. Libro primo (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1562)
5.12 Zarlino, I vo piangendo, mm. 31–42
5.13 Zarlino, I vo piangendo, mm. 53–63
5.14 Rore, Quanto più m’avicino, mm. 108–12; Di Cipriano il primo
libro de madregali cromatici a cinque voci con una nuova gionta
del medesmo autore novamente ristampato & da infiniti errori
emendato (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1544; first edn 1542)
5.15 Rore, Quel sempre acerbo et honorato giorno, mm. 1–10; Di
Cipriano il primo libro de madregali cromatici a cinque voci con
una nuova gionta del medesmo autore novamente ristampato & da
infiniti errori emendato (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1544; first edn
1542)
5.16 Perissone Cambio, Gionto m’ha Amor, mm. 69–78; Il segondo
libro di madregali a cinque voci con tre dialoghi a otto voci &
uno a sette voci novamente da lui composti & dati in luce (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1550)
5.17 Parabosco, Solo e pensoso, mm. 1–20; Madrigali a cinque voci di
Girolamo Parabosco discipulo di M. Adriano novamente da lui
composti & posti in luce (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1546)
5.18 Parabosco, Solo e pensoso, mm. 91–8
5.19Francesco dalla Viola, Deh perche non credete, mm. 15–18;
Il primo libro de madrigali a quatro voci novamente con ogni
diligentia dal proprio autore corretto & dato in luce (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1550)
5.20Francesco dalla Viola, Poi che nostro servir, mm. 1–10; Il primo
libro de madrigali a quatro voci novamente con ogni diligentia dal
proprio autore corretto & dato in luce (Venice: Antonio Gardano,
1550)
5.21Francesco dalla Viola, Siepi ch’el bel giardin, mm. 15–19; Il primo
libro de madrigali a quatro voci novamente con ogni diligentia dal
proprio autore corretto & dato in luce (Venice: Antonio Gardano,
1550)
5.9
253
254
259
260
263
267
269
273
275
277
279
280
281
List of Musical Examples
5.22Donato, Qual sera mai si miserabil pianto, mm. 21–32; Il primo
libro de’ madrigali a cinque, et a sei voci, con tre dialoghi a sette
di nuovo riveduti, & con somma diligentia corretti (Venice: Plinio
Pietrasanta, 1557; first edn 1553)
5.23 Gioseffo Guami, Giunto m’ha Amor, mm. 90–101; Il primo libro
di madrigali a cinque voci novamente da lui composti (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1565)
5.24 Guami, Occhi fiamme d’amore, mm. 19–30; Il primo libro di
madrigali a cinque voci novamente da lui composti (Venice:
Antonio Gardano, 1565)
5.25Vincenzo Bellavere, Pria si vedrà nell’arenoso lido, mm. 11–16; Il
secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci novamente posti in luce
(Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1575)
xiii
283
286
288
289
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Acknowledgements
In the spring of 1985, while doing research for a graduate seminar at the University
of North Texas, I encountered what struck me as a curious assertion in Gioseffo
Zarlino’s famous statement in Book 4, Chapter 32 of Le istitutioni harmoniche
on how harmony may be accommodated to words: that the intervals of the major
and minor sixths bear opposing affective meanings. Being more familiar with
nineteenth-century repertoire than that of the sixteenth century, and being poised
on the verge of pursuing a dissertation on the songs of Hugo Wolf, I had no doubt
that major thirds could be “happy” and minor thirds could be “sad.” But I wondered
if the major and minor sixths really meant different things in the sixteenth century,
and, if so, how that might play out in compositional practice. These thoughts led
to a term paper for Benito Rivera, whose seminars on the history of theory and on
mode opened up new vistas for me and sparked my interest in Zarlino and Adrian
Willaert. Though I stuck to my plan to study Hugo Wolf and music of the nineteenth
century, the question prompted by Zarlino continued to occupy me over the years.
When I initially posed it while standing among the stacks in the library in Denton,
I had no idea of the ever-broadening scope of the journey it would spur, nor that
it would eventually lead to this book. I am grateful first and foremost to Benito
Rivera for starting me down this path and for providing assistance and guidance as
I have made my way along it. He has generously shared his wisdom and the fruits
of his research with me, and graciously gave of his time and expertise to read and
comment upon an earlier draft of this book.
Because most of my formal training focused upon another era, I am particularly
grateful to those specialists in the history of theory or early music who have
provided encouragement, direction, constructive criticism, or source materials for
my work in the Renaissance over the years: Bonnie J. Blackburn, Lester Brothers,
David E. Cohen, Jeffrey Dean, Ruth DeFord, Willem Elders, Michèle Fromson,
Christine Getz, James Haar, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Cristle Collins Judd,
Andrew Kirkman, William Mahrt, Stefano Mengozzi, Russell Murray, Jessie Ann
Owens, Graham Phipps, Keith Polk, Katherine Powers, Katelijne Schiltz, Anne
Smith, Grayson Wagstaff, and Rob C. Wegman. In addition to many of those just
named, I am grateful to others whose work has taught me much and rendered mine
far more feasible, particularly Howard Mayer Brown, Robert Durling, Martha
Feldman, Edward E. Lowinsky, Maria Rika Maniates, Clement Miller, Claude
Palisca, and Leeman Perkins. I also thank the anonymous reviewers engaged
by Ashgate for the excellent advice and critical commentary they provided for
this project. None of the folks mentioned above should bear any blame for my
remaining shortcomings.
xvi
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
I benefited much from the intellectual stimulation and collegiality provided
by the inaugural Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory in
2001, which focused upon the history of theory, and particularly Cristle Collins
Judd’s course on Zarlino and Sarah Fuller’s course on early modal theory. I thank
Wayne Alpern for founding and directing the institute, Joel Lester and Thomas
Christensen for co-chairing its faculty in 2001, those providing financial support,
and the Mannes College of Music for hosting the event.
Research for this book drew upon the resources of numerous libraries—far
too many to mention them all—but I wish to acknowledge the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek in Munich, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Accademia
Filarmonica in Verona, the University of California system, SUNY Binghamton,
the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of
Kentucky, and the University of Washington. My work was greatly facilitated by
the holdings, services, and staff of the Baylor University libraries; I appreciate the
support for my research given by Sha Towers, fine arts librarian, Kenneth Carriveau,
access services librarian, and Janet Jasek and her interlibrary loan team.
I am grateful as well to the Center for the History of Music Theory and
Literature at Indiana University (Thomas J. Mathiesen, director, Peter Slemon,
associate director) for providing the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum and saggi
musicali italiani (Andreas Giger, Louisiana State University, project director), and
to the University of Utrecht for sponsoring TMIWeb, the online version of the
Thesaurus musicarum italicarum (Frans Wiering, project director). The search
features of these online databases of historical Latin and Italian treatises on music
yield in seconds what might take months to track down manually. Also helpful
in tracking down the source of several madrigal texts was the online database
Antologie della Lirica Italiana – Raccolte a stampa (ALI RASTA) hosted by the
University of Pavia.
The musical examples in this study contain my own transcriptions from
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century print and manuscript sources, though I consulted
the modern editions listed in the Select Bibliography for second opinions on text
underlay and musica ficta. In some cases, a later edition than the first to appear
served as my source; the exact edition used for each transcription is given in the
List of Musical Examples. I present the examples in the original note values rather
than in reduction, so that they correspond to references to note values contained
in quotations from contemporaneous theoretical sources. Following standard
editorial procedure, an accidental placed before a notehead indicates that that sign
appeared in the source being transcribed, while all editorial accidentals appear
above the noteheads to which they apply; this distinction is especially significant
in the present study because of my focus on interval affect and potential symbolic
uses of accidental inflections. The question of text underlay, paramount to any
study hinging upon text-music relationships, seldom presented problems in most
of the current transcriptions because of the care exercised by Willaert and those
under his influence in this regard. I have generally preserved the original spelling
Acknowledgements
xvii
and punctuation of the poetic texts in the transcriptions, though I have used modern
spellings and the modern alphabet at times in the interest of clarity.
In preparing my own translations of madrigal texts given herein, I often
consulted those in Robert Durling’s Petrarch’s Lyric Poems or Martha Feldman’s
dissertation and her City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice. Mine are in no way
superior to theirs in a poetic sense; in fact, mine are far more stilted. I have sought
to place English equivalents as close as practical to their Italian counterparts and
to use cognates whenever possible, even if a more attractive or precise translation
were possible, in order to assist those relying on the translations to match concepts
expressed in the poetry with their corresponding musical setting. Once again I
must express my appreciation to Benito Rivera for his suggestions concerning
several of the translations.
Generous financial support for my project has been provided by Baylor
University in the form of summer research sabbaticals. I am grateful also to
graduate assistants Aaron VanValkenburg and Sharon McCarthy for help in
preparing the musical examples for Chapter 3 and for assistance with microfilm
and other library materials.
I have appreciated working with Ashgate Publishing on many levels, but
particularly in regard to their uncommon generosity concerning the number and
length of musical examples that could be included in this book. I especially thank
Heidi Bishop, Senior Commissioning Editor, for her support of my project, and
both her and Rosie Phillips for their editorial assistance in bringing it to fruition.
I thank my daughter, Erin Gonzales, for her willing and able proofreading of
the initial draft, and my son, Brian, for helping me keep things in perspective.
I thank them both for their understanding when work impinged upon our time
together through the years. To my parents, James Carroll and Elizabeth Richmond
McKinney, I owe a debt of gratitude for nurturing my love of music and encouraging
and supporting my studies. To them I also owe the fascination with word-music
relationships that has informed most of my scholarly efforts. Professors of music
themselves, they made such relationships come alive for me, he singing, she at the
piano. Finally, I thank my wife, Cynthia, for her unfailing belief in and support for
me and her assistance in innumerable ways with this project. It is to her I dedicate
this volume.
This page has been left blank intentionally
Chapter 1
Contexts
He who has no imagination for such things has no understanding of the meaning,
the purpose, and the very life of the madrigal.
Alfred Einstein
In the writings of Nicola Vicentino and Gioseffo Zarlino, two of the most
significant music theorists of the sixteenth century, we find for the first time
a systematic means of explaining music’s expressive power based upon the
melodic and harmonic intervals from which it is constructed. This “theory of
interval affect” originates not with these theorists, however, but with Venicebased Flemish composer Adrian Willaert, and receives its clearest expression in
the madrigals of his Musica nova, as I shall show in the current study. The title
of Willaert’s legendary collection of motets and madrigals refers not as much to
music that is new as to a new approach to composing music. Though completed
by the 1540s, it was kept from public view before its eventual publication in 1559
and was first known and understood only by its intended audience, the cognoscenti
of the Venetian intellectual circles in which it was performed and discussed. The
madrigals of the collection have become famous for their coupling of serious
poetry of high quality with a grave musical style—characterized by meticulous
text setting, dense polyphony, restrained melodic and rhythmic writing, and
unusually low voicing—and for the relatively sophisticated readings of the
poetic texts they embody, in comparison to the madrigal repertoire up until that
time. Significant in these readings were the musical analogues Willaert forged
for the frequent antitheses encountered in the sonnets by fourteenth-century poet
Francesco Petrarch, which provide all but one of the texts for the 25 Musica
nova madrigals. In crafting these analogues, he established two broad categories
of musical affect that segregated major and minor interval qualities. As has
often been suggested, Willaert’s affective categories may have been influenced
Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (3 vols, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1949; reprint 1971), vol. 1, p. 330.
On the dating and publication history of Musica nova, see, among others, Helga
Meier, “Zur Chronologie der Musica Nova Adriano Willaerts,” Analecta musicologica 12
(1973), pp. 71–96; and Jessie Ann Owens and Richard J. Agee, “La stampa della Musica nova
di Willaert,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 24/2 (1989), pp. 219–305; and Ignace Bossuyt,
“O socii durate: A Musical Correspondence from the Time of Philip II,” Early Music 26/3
(1998), pp. 436–7. On the cultural context of Musica nova, see principally Martha Feldman,
City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
by literary theorist Pietro Bembo’s similar categories of expressive quality in
poetry, called gravità and piacevolezza, which Bembo based upon his studies of
Petrarch’s vernacular works. Willaert’s compositional and pedagogical practice
in turn was influential on the sudden appearance of systematic theories of interval
affect in two of the most important treatises devoted to music theory in the
sixteenth century, Vicentino’s L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica of
1555 and Zarlino’s Le istitutioni harmoniche of 1558.
While much of this has been more or less assumed for some time now, several
questions remain unanswered: How highly developed was Willaert’s own theory
of interval affect? What was the precise nature of his influence upon Zarlino and
Vicentino in this regard? How does the theory of interval affect interact with
the pitch system and principles of counterpoint in use by mid-sixteenth-century
composers, and how deeply did Willaert ponder these matters? Through what
specific means did Willaert emphasize certain intervals, and how might these
means affect the flow and course of a composition? Did he apply the affective
use of intervals only to individual words or phrases on a local level, as commonly
thought, or might he wield it to project a broader-arching reading of a text in part
or in whole?
Because Willaert left no theoretical writings of his own as far as we know,
evidence pertinent to addressing these questions must be recovered from his
compositions. In this book I reconstruct from Willaert’s music traces of his
innovative theorizing concerning how extramusical ideas might be communicated,
and examine the influence of this theorizing on the way he wrote music and on
the work of subsequent theorists and composers in his circle of influence. Using
the Musica nova madrigals as my nexus and working outward from there, I shall
Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua (Venice, 1525). See Dean Mace, “Pietro
Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal,” Musical Quarterly 55 (1969),
pp. 65–86; Claude Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 355–68; Howard Mayer Brown,
“Words and Music: Willaert, the Chanson and the Madrigal about 1540” in Florence and
Venice: Comparisons and Relations: Acts of Two Conferences at Villa I Tatti in 1976–
1977, organized by Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai Rubinstein, and Craig Hugh Smyth, vol. 2,
Cinquecento (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1979–80), pp. 229–31; and Martha
Feldman, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice, pp. 123–55, 184–6, and passim. See
also nn. 75 and 81 later in this chapter. The potential connection between Bembo’s theory
of word-sound and Willaert’s theory of interval affect will be examined in Chapter 3, in
relation to Willaert’s setting of Mentre che’l cor.
Citations from L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica and Le istitutioni
harmoniche will be made by book, chapter, and page or folio followed by the page number
of the English translation in parentheses; e.g., Zarlino, 3.10, p. 156 (21). English translations
have been altered in some instances to maintain consistency of terminology in the present
study or to more closely reflect the original context. Vicentino’s treatise contains a book on
“music theory” followed by five books (numbered one through five) on “music practice.”
All references in the current study come from the practical books.
Contexts
demonstrate that Willaert’s new music articulated a new theory of musical affect
more complex and forward-looking than currently recognized. I shall uncover
specific details of compositional technique demonstrating that the madrigals of
Musica nova comprise a grand experiment in writing music that seeks both to
project the composer’s reading of a text and to move the listener’s affections by
utilizing inherent properties of musical sound as well as affective conventions. I
shall show that these madrigals represent a proving ground for testing theories
about music’s expressive effects, and that they do indeed instantiate a new way of
writing music in which harmony steps closer to the fore and influences melodic
and contrapuntal techniques to an unprecedented degree.
The Principal Players and a Venetian Backdrop
Adrian Willaert lived from around 1490 to 1562 and in many respects was the most
influential composer of the post-Josquin generation. Although northern-European
by birth, as with so many of his Franco-Flemish musical brethren, he spent most
of his professional life in Italy. Probably born in Bruges or Roulaers, both now in
modern-day Belgium, he first studied law in Paris before switching to music and
studying composition with Jean Mouton. He may have been in Rome by 1514 and,
beginning around 1515, served the influential d’Este family in various capacities in
Ferrara and Hungary. In 1527, Willaert obtained the office of maestro di cappella
at San Marco cathedral in Venice—at this time one of the more important musical
posts in Europe—and held it until his death in 1562.
Willaert was renowned as a composer and as a teacher both during his lifetime and
by subsequent generations. Though it is difficult to establish precise relationships
in many instances, in addition to Zarlino and Vicentino, his pupils are thought to
have included significant figures such as Cipriano de Rore, Girolamo Parabosco,
Perissone Cambio, Baldassare Donato, Costanzo Porta, and Francesco dalla Viola,
among many others. His extant works encompass most of the principal genres of
his day, including motets, masses, psalms, hymns, chansons, madrigals, lighter
Italian genres such as the canzona villanesca, and instrumental ricercars, and he
The biographical information on Willaert, Zarlino, and Vicentino given here is
intended only to place these men succinctly in historical context and comes for the most
part from standard sources; I do not claim to augment the known details of their lives.
For a current overview of Willaert’s life, see Lockwood, Lewis, Giulio Ongaro,
Michèle Fromson, and Jessie Ann Owens, s.v. “Willaert, Adrian,” Grove Music Online
<http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com>. Other important biographical details may be found in
Ignace Bossuyt, Adriaan Willaert (ca. 1490–1562): Leven en werk: Stijl en genres (Leuven:
Universitaire Pers Leuven, 1985); Giulio Ongaro, “The Chapel of St. Mark’s at the Time of
Adrian Willaert (1527–1562)” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1986); and
further sources listed in the biographical section of David Kidger, Adrian Willaert: A Guide to
Research (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 381–5.
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
was responsible for significant stylistic advances in many of these. In the proem of
Le istitutioni harmoniche of 1558, arguably the most significant treatise devoted to
music theory in the sixteenth century, Zarlino styles Willaert as a new Pythagoras
who corrected many errors in the art of music. Zarlino’s homage in such an
influential theoretical work helped to extend Willaert’s reputation well beyond his
lifetime and well after performance of his works largely had ceased, and cemented
his historical position as a leading figure of the sixteenth century. Writing in
defense of his famous brother Claudio in the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy some
45 years after Willaert’s death, Giulio Cesare Monteverdi credited Willaert with
having perfected the compositional style (and Zarlino the theoretical rules) of the
prima prattica, the older “first practice” gradually supplanted by the more modern
“second practice” stemming from Rore and mastered by Claudio Monteverdi.
In her City Culture and the Madrigal in Venice, Martha Feldman has traced
the weave of the rich tapestry of vigorous humanistic discussions taking place in
Venetian academies and the influence of trends in literary theory upon Willaert’s
music. We know of his interest in more arcane music theoretical matters from
two primary sources: (1) his enigmatic setting of Quid non ebrietas (probably
written by 1519 and thus predating his time in Venice), which ends on a notated
seventh that actually sounds as an octave due to successive hexachordal mutations
that eventually lead to enharmonicism;10 and (2) his apparent participation in a
Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice: Francesco Franceschi Senese,
1558; facs. edn New York: Broude Brothers, 1965), pp. 1–2. (Nondimeno l’ ottimo Iddio, a
cui è grato, che la sua infinita potenza, sapienza, & bontà sia magnificata & manifestata da
gli huomini con hinni accompagnati da gratiosi & dolci accenti, non li parendo di comportar
più, che sia tenuta a vile quell’ arte, che serve al culto suo; & che qua giù ne fa cenno di quanta
soavità possano essere i canti de gli Angioli, i quali nel cielo stanno a lodare la sua maestà;
ne hà conceduto gratia di far nascere a nostri tempi Adriano Willaert, veramente uno de più
rari intelletti, che habbia la Musica prattica giamai essercitato: il quale a guisa di nuovo
Pithagora essaminando minutamente quello, che in essa puote occorrere, & ritrovandovi
infiniti errori, ha cominciato a levargli, & a ridurla verso quell’ honore & dignità, che già
ella era, & che ragionevolmente doveria essere; & hà mostrato un’ ordine ragionevole di
componere con elegante maniera ogni musical cantilena, & nelle sue compositioni egli ne
hà dato chiarissimo essempio.)
Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, “Dichiaratione della lettera stampata nel quinto libro de’
suoi madregali,” in Giulio Cesare Monteverdi (ed.), Scherzi musicali a tre voci di Claudio
Monteverde [sic] (Venice, 1607); trans. in Oliver Strunk (ed.), Source Readings in Music
History; rev. edn Leo Treitler (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1998), pp. 536–44.
See also the extensive reviews of Feldman’s City Culture by James Haar, Early
Music History 16 (1997), pp. 318–28; Brian Mann, Journal of the Royal Musical Association
122/1 (1997), pp. 109–19; and Laura Buch, Journal of the American Musicological Society
52/1 (1999), pp. 183–93.
10
See Dorothy Keyser, “The Character of Exploration: Adrian Willaert’s ‘Quid non
ebrietas’,” in Carol E. Robertson (ed.), Musical Repercussions of 1492 (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 185–207; further bibliography there. The piece
Contexts
discussion of the genera of ancient Greek music theory, along with music theorists
Giovanni del Lago and Giovanni Spataro, at the house of the Venetian ambassador
of English king Henry VIII, Giambattista Casali, in 1532.11 His humanistic
pondering of the more esoteric theoretical aspects of his craft, which would have
included the legendary ability of ancient music to move the human soul, coupled
with his immersion in a Venetian culture fascinated with questions of style and
decorum, gave birth to the Musica nova madrigals and the theory of interval affect
they embody.
Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–90) was a native of Chioggia, located on a island
in the Venetian Lagoon less than 20 miles south of the city proper. Other than
what has been gleaned from surviving archival documents and the occasional
autobiographical comment in his writings, most of the sketchy details we know
of his life come from a biography written by mathematician Bernandino Baldi,
who claimed the facts therein were told to him by the theorist himself.12 Zarlino
remained in Chioggia until 1541, receiving his early training from Franciscans
there and earning a series of promotions in his studies toward the priesthood. He
is known to have been a singer at the cathedral in 1536 and its organist from
1539 until 1540. In 1541 he moved to Venice and sometime thereafter began
study with Willaert, though we do not know precisely when or for how long. He
eventually succeeded Willaert and Cipriano de Rore as maestro di cappella at
San Marco in 1565, and remained in that post until his death in 1590.13 Although
caused quite a stir in theoretical circles from at least 1524, as documented in correspondence
between theorists Giovanni Spataro and Pietro Aaron and others (see A Correspondence of
Renaissance Musicians in the following note, letters 12–14 and passim), and continues to
generate theoretical discussion in the twenty-first century; see Roger Wibberly, “Quid non
ebrietas dissignat? Willaert’s Didactic Demonstration of Syntonic Tuning,” Music Theory
Online 10/1 (2004), <http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.04.10.1>. In his paper
“Adrian Willaert’s Revenge: A Further Reexamination of His Celebrated Duo,” presented
for the 2009 meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Richard Wexler argued that
the duo was intended to confound the papal singers of the Sistine Chapel in retaliation for a
perceived slight described by Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche 4.36, p. 346 (107).
11
See letters 46 and 98 in Bonnie J. Blackburn, Edward E. Lowinsky, and Clement
A. Miller (eds), A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991); see also the commentary by Lowinsky on pp. 554 and 927–8.
12
The biographical sketch given here depends largely on Claude V. Palisca, s.v.
“Zarlino, Gioseffo,” in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds), New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, second edn (London: Macmillan, 2001). The biography of Zarlino
by Bernardino Baldi was included in the latter’s Le Vite de’ Matematici. In unpublished
materials generously shared with me, Benito Rivera has been able to confirm many details
of Baldi’s account, yet notes that the whole should be approached with caution.
13
See Rebecca Edwards, “Setting the Tone at San Marco: Gioseffo Zarlino Amidst
Doge, Procuratori and Cappella Personnel,” in La Cappella musicale di San Marco nell’eta
moderna: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia, Palazzo Giustiniani Lolin, 5–7
settembre 1994 (Venice: Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, 1998), pp. 389–400.
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
Zarlino composed both sacred and secular music, continually served the church,
and pursued scholarly interests in other disciplines, by far his most significant
accomplishments were as a music theorist. When one surveys the history of the
field, Zarlino stands out as a giant who produced a corpus of theoretical works
of immense value; few theorists before or since approach his influence on the
subsequent flow of theoretical discourse.
Active on the Venetian intellectual scene like his mentor, Zarlino sought to
position himself as Willaert’s successor and thus as the leading musical authority
in the city, a quest in which he ultimately succeeded; between the two of them,
Willaert and Zarlino held the principal musical post in Venice for sixty years.
Zarlino’s monumental Le istitutioni harmoniche of 1558 may have played a
pivotal role in his ascension. Cristle Collins Judd suggests several career-related
reasons why the treatise emerged when it did and was then reissued in 1561 and
1562: (1) Willaert took a leave of absence at San Marco in 1556 in order to return
to Flanders and was known to be in poor health, raising the possibility that he
would not return and a successor might be needed (exacerbated by the fact that
he overstayed his leave), (2) Zarlino needed to respond more generally to the
threats posed by fellow Willaert disciples Rore and Vicentino, the former for his
success as a composer and the latter for the appearance of his L’antica musica
in 1555, and (3) Zarlino’s affiliation with the Accademia Veneziana della Fama,
in which he had assumed a leadership role by 1560.14 In the treatise he sought to
display his erudition and to unite speculative and practical theory in one volume
on an unprecedented scale, with its first two parts being devoted to mathematical,
philosophical, and historical considerations, and the third and fourth parts to the
practical concerns of counterpoint and mode.15 He continued to pursue theoretical
matters throughout his lifetime, and, though later editions of Le istitutioni
harmoniche were produced with some revision in 1573 and 1588–89, refinements
to his ideas and responses to his critics appear principally in two further treatises,
14
Cristle Collins Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 196–8; further bibliography there.
See also Iain Fenlon, “Gioseffo Zarlino and Venetian Humanism,” introductory essay to
Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1561; facs. edn Bologna: Arnoldo
Forni, 1999), pp. 7–12; and Feldman, City Culture, pp. 171–6. The short-lived tenure of
the Accademia is described in Paul Rose, “The Accademia Venetiana: Science and Culture
in Renaissance Venice,” Studi veneziani 11 (1969), pp. 191–242. For more on Willaert’s
illness and the effects of his absence on San Marco, see Ongaro, “The Chapel of St. Mark’s,”
pp. 143–4 and passim; and Edwards, “Setting the Tone at San Marco,” pp. 391–2.
15
Palisca’s Humanism, pp. 244–50, his New Grove article on Zarlino, and his
introduction to the translation of Book 3 (The Art of Counterpoint) provide a readily
accessible overview of the intellectual context of the Istitutioni. See also Cristle Collins
Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory, pp. 188–92; and Jairo Moreno, Musical
Representations, Subjects, and Objects: The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino,
Descartes, Rameau, and Weber (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
2004), pp. 25–43.
Contexts
Dimostrationi harmoniche of 1571 and Sopplimenti musicali of 1588.16 Because it
remained Zarlino’s principal statement on compositional practice in general, and
on the theory of interval affect in particular, and because of its closer temporal
proximity to his studies with Willaert, the 1558 edition of the Istitutioni will be the
principal source for Zarlino’s ideas used in the current study.17
Though Zarlino makes reference to a number of classical authorities as
well as composers and theorists of his own and preceding generations in the
Istitutioni, it is clear that Willaert’s teaching and compositional practice form the
principal foundations upon which his theory rests, as he explicitly states in the
later Sopplimenti musicali.18 Martha Feldman suggests that his focus on Willaert
may have been influenced by Bembo’s single-model theory of imitation; in his
own work, Bembo chose Petrarch as his principal model for Tuscan poetry, and
Boccaccio for prose.19 In a similar vein, Zarlino frequently cites Willaert’s works
in his discussions of counterpoint and mode in Le istitutioni harmoniche, and it has
been suggested that, through these citations and the overt homage paid to Willaert,
he hoped not only to establish authority for his theory, but also to suggest Willaert’s
approval of it.20 The citations include many Musica nova works and demonstrate
16
Gioseffo Zarlino, Dimostrationi harmoniche (Venice: Francesco Franceschi Senese,
1571; facs. edn New York: Broude Brothers, 1965); Gioseffo Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali
(Venice: Francesco Franceschi Senese, 1588; facs. edn New York: Broude Brothers, 1979).
All references to Zarlino’s writings in the current study are to Le istitutioni harmoniche
unless otherwise specified.
17
The differences between the 1558 edition and later editions of Le istitutioni
harmoniche will be taken into account here as they are relevant to the topic at hand. For a
comparison of the 1558 edition with the final edition produced during Zarlino’s lifetime in
1588–89, see Paolo Da Col, “Tradizione e scienza: Le Istitutioni harmoniche di Gioseffo
Zarlino,” introductory study to Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1561;
facs. edn Bologna: Arnoldo Forni, 1999), pp. 54–95; also appears in English translation by
Hugh Ward-Perkins as “The Tradition and Science: The Istitutioni harmoniche of Gioseffo
Zarlino,” pp. 35–55.
18
Gioseffo Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, p. 9. (Ne fu mai ne anco è mia intentione
di scriuer l’uso della Prattica secondo ’l modo de gli Antichi, ò Greci, ò Latini, se bene alle
fiate la vò adombrando; ma solamente il modo di quelli, c’hanno ritrovato questa nostra
maniera, nel far cantar insieme molte parti, con diverse Modulationi, & diverse Aria, &
specialmente secondo la via & il modo tenuto d’Adriano Vuillaert, prattico eccellentissimo,
di giudicio grande, di felicissima & fecondissima memoria, & di grande, isperientia nella
Musica, & nelle cose della Prattica mio Precettore.)
19
Feldman, City Culture, pp. 129 and 172–4.
20
See Cristle Collins Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory, pp. 179–261 for a
penetrating examination of the factors influencing Zarlino’s choice and use of citations
of musical works in Le istitutioni harmoniche, and of the origins, theoretical and cultural
contexts, and publication history of the treatise. See also Paolo Da Col, “Tradizione e
scienza;” and Katelijne Schiltz, “Self-Citation and Self-Promotion: Zarlino and the Miserere
Tradition,” in Mark Delaere and Pieter Bergé (eds), “Recevez ce mien petit labeur:” Studies
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
that he was thoroughly familiar with this collection prior to its publication (which
occurred after that of his treatise).
While Zarlino largely was a codifier and defender of tradition, balance, and
order, Nicola Vicentino (1511–76) styled himself, and is known today, primarily as
an innovator who based his experiments in chromatic and enharmonic theory and
composition on his supposed reconstruction of the music of the ancient Greeks,
as he makes clear in the title of his treatise L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna
prattica of 1555, translated by Maria Rika Maniates as Ancient Music Adapted to
Modern Practice.21 He spent his early years in his birthplace of Vicenza, less than
40 miles west of Venice, and thus in fairly close proximity to Willaert.22 Though it
is generally assumed that he studied with Willaert in Venice in the 1530s, the extent
and nature of those studies have not been established, nor do we currently have
solid evidence establishing a relationship between the two, other than Vicentino’s
claim to be Willaert’s disciple (discussed below) and his obvious familiarity with
Willaert’s methods. We know little about his formal training except for the fact
that he had been ordained to the priesthood, and we know virtually nothing of his
life before he emerged as a singer in the employment of the powerful d’Este family
in Ferrara, principally for Cardinal Ippolito II. It has not been established when
this service began or ended, but it could have begun several years before he is
known to have been in Rome in the company of the cardinal in 1549, and perhaps
ended by 1561 when Vicentino announced his availability for a new position in
a published broadside describing an instrument of his design.23 By 1563 he had
returned to Vicenza and assumed the post of maestro di cappella at the cathedral,
yet he resigned from this post in January of 1565. In a letter dating from 1570,
he refers to himself as the rector of the church of Saint Thomas in Milan,24 and
documentary evidence examined by Davide Daolmi suggests that he was granted
this post during 1565, the year of his departure from Vicenza.25 Vicentino was
in Renaissance Music in Honour of Ignace Bossuyt (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2008), pp. 211–25.
21
Nicola Vicentino, L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Rome, 1555; facs.
edn, Kassel, Basel, London, and New York: Bärenreiter, 1959); trans. Maria Rika Maniates
as Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1996).
22
The principal biographical study of Vicentino remains Henry Kaufmann’s The
Life and Works of Nicola Vicentino (American Institute of Musicology, 1966). See also
Maniates’s introduction to her translation of his treatise. Documents relating to Vicentino
and his time in Milan have been gathered and studied extensively in Davide Daolmi, Don
Nicola Vicentino: Arcimusico in Milano (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1999). The
biographical sketch presented here is drawn primarily from these sources.
23
See Henry W. Kaufmann, “Vicentino’s Arciorgano: An Annotated Translation,”
Journal of Music Theory 5 (1961), pp. 38–41.
24
Facsimile and translation in Kaufmann, Life and Works, pp. 40–41.
25
Daolmi, Don Nicola Vicentino, pp. 63–70 and 159–61.
Contexts
long thought to have died in Milan during an outbreak of the plague in 1576, yet
Daolmi revises the date of his death precisely to April 11, 1577.26
Vicentino never secured a major post such as that held by Willaert and Zarlino
at San Marco, and of necessity was a vigorous self-promoter of his speculative
theories and experimental music. He designed microtonal instruments to play in
the chromatic and enharmonic genera and to teach and accompany the specially
trained singers with whom he traveled about Italy in order to perform his music.27
He did achieve a fair degree of fame for his experiments, though even his own
musicians had difficulty performing his music on occasion and little of it has
survived, both facts suggesting that it would not have been in widespread use.
Yet Vicentino’s innovations and instruments were influential on other progressive
composers active in Ferrara at the time such as Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Carlo
Gesualdo.
Documentary evidence indicates that by 1549 Vicentino was teaching his ideas
about the chromatic and enharmonic genera and that a treatise on the subject was
in the works or at least planned.28 Maniates asserts that the treatise was originally
intended to establish Vicentino’s authority and prepare the way for publication
of his compositions in these genera.29 Vicentino’s plans and the treatise itself
were affected greatly by his 1551 debate with Vicente Lusitano over whether the
music of their time was written in the diatonic genus of ancient Greek theory, or a
mixture of the diatonic with the chromatic and enharmonic genera, with Lusitano
arguing the former position, and Vicentino the latter.30 The judges of the debate
26
Ibid., pp. 101–4. Daolmi also questions whether Vicentino died of the plague or
from another cause.
27
Vicentino’s chromatic and enharmonic music has been studied extensively; see
primarily Kaufmann, Life and Works; Karol Berger, Theories of Chromatic and Enharmonic
Music in Late 16th Century Italy (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980); Maniates,
introduction to Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice; and especially Manfred Cordes,
Nicola Vicentinos Enharmonik Musik mit 31 Tönen (Graz: Akademische Druck- und
Verlagsanstalt, 2007), which contains audio recordings of the genera and musical examples
from Vicentino’s treatise.
28
See Kaufmann, Life and Works, pp. 21–2; Maniates, Ancient Music Adapted to
Modern Practice, pp. xv–xvii and 445–6; and Richard J. Agee, “The Privilege and Venetian
Music Printing in the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1982),
pp. 8–14 and 101–2.
29
Ibid., p. xvii.
30
On the debate and its aftermath, see Kaufmann, Life and Works; Maria Augusta
Alves Barbosa, Vincentius Lusitanus: Ein Portugiesischer Komponist und Musiktheoretiker
des 16. Jahrhunderts (Lisbon: Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, 1977); Berger, Theories of
Chromatic and Enharmonic Music; Ann E. Moyer, Musica Scientia: Musical Scholarship
in the Italian Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell, 1992); Maria Rika Maniates,
introduction to Nicola Vicentino, Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice; Giuliana
Gialdroni, introduction to Vincenzo Lusitano, Introduttione facilissima et novissima di
canto fermo, figurato, contraponto semplice et in concerto (Venice, 1553; facs. edn Lucca:
10
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
ruled in Lusitano’s favor, much to Vicentino’s chagrin. In his treatise, Vicentino
summarizes the circumstances and arguments of the debate, and it often pulses
with his resentment over the outcome and functions as an apology for his position.
It is interesting that the debate centered on the same topic discussed by Willaert,
Spataro, and del Lago in Venice some 19 years before. According to Spataro’s
account of that discussion, the conclusion they reached would support the position
Vicentino later argued: that modern music represented a mixture of the genera.31
Vicentino’s treatise has traditionally been regarded as a manifesto for his
experimental compositional practice, and certainly it fulfills this purpose. Many
aspects of the treatise are firmly grounded in the common compositional practice
of his day, however, as it was also his purpose to explicate how modern music
related to ancient music. Though Vicentino mentions no composers by name in his
treatise, in his first book of five-voice madrigals, published in 1546, he declares
himself a disciple of Willaert, and claims to have written the madrigals therein
according to the theory and practice of his master.32
While both Vicentino and Zarlino declare allegiance to Willaert, and while
both discuss interval affect in a manner largely consonant with his practice (with
the exceptions noted below), they could not agree upon which intervals should
be used in composition. Vicentino the progressive embraced microtonal intervals
Libreria Musicale Italiana Editrice, 1989); and Timothy R. McKinney, “Point/Counterpoint:
Vicentino’s Musical Rebuttal to Lusitano,” Early Music 33/3 (2005), pp. 393–411; further
bibliography in these sources.
31
See A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians, letter 46, pp. 548–53, and
particularly Lowinsky’s commentary on p. 554, which notes the similarity between the
wording of Spataro’s letter and Vicentino’s statement of his position. See also Lowinsky’s
“Adrian Willaert’s Chromatic ‘Duo’ Re-Examined,” pp. 12–13; reprinted in Music and the
Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays, vol. 2, pp. 685–6. Vicentino presented the
view that the presence of the major third indicated the enharmonic genus and the minor
third the chromatic genus, arguing that these intervals did not occur between adjacent tones
in the diatonic genus. Zarlino criticized Vicentino, though not by name, on this very point,
among others, in Chapters 72–80 of the third part of Le istitutioni harmoniche, published
three years after Vicentino’s treatise. Zarlino’s position, like that of Lusitano and Ghiselin
Danckerts before him, was that, while intervals such as the major third and minor third may
be components of the enharmonic and chromatic genera, respectively, their presence alone
does not mean that one is writing in those genera, as these intervals occur as well between
non-adjacent tones in the diatonic genus; he argued that one must see the chromatic semitone
(such as C–C) to have the chromatic genus, and a quartertone to have the enharmonic.
For more on the tacit relationship between Zarlino’s and Vicentino’s treatises, see Michael
Fend, Theorie des Tonsystems: Das erste und zweite Buch der Istitutioni harmoniche (1573),
Europäische Hochschulschriften 36/43 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 397–9
and 423–33.
32
Del unico Adrian Willaerth Discipulo / Don Nicola Vicentino / Madrigali a cinque
voci per theorica / et pratica da lui composti al nuovo modo / dal celeberrimo suo maestro
/ ritrovata. Libro primo (Venice, 1546).
Contexts
11
that Zarlino the conservative clearly rejects in the final chapter of the counterpoint
portion of his treatise, entitled “A rebuttal to the opinions of the chromaticists”
(Opinioni delli Chromatisti ributtate) and tacitly directed at Vicentino. Though
their general philosophical stances and their views of what music should be like
are often widely divergent, the notion of interval affect nonetheless proves to be
a common thread linking their theories and compositional practices with those
of Willaert. As we shall see in the following chapters, in Willaert’s expressive
shadings of harmony we often find embodied the core tenet upon which Vicentino’s
and Zarlino’s theories of interval affect agree: that the major and minor imperfect
consonances are suitable for the expression of antithetical affects.
The Novelty of the Theory of Interval Affect
The notion that music can convey thoughts and stir emotions is perhaps as old
as music itself. From ancient Greece onward learned authorities have asserted
that the expressive character of music yoked to words should be appropriate to
the meaning and mood of these words, and that mode and rhythm were principal
means by which this could be accomplished.33 The Greek concept of ethos was
transmitted by Boethius to the Middle Ages,34 where writers filtered it through
the musical repertoire they knew and adopted it for their own purposes, though
they were unknowingly grappling with a different modal system. Sometimes their
discussions provide vague clues about practical aspects of mode or melody that
might contribute to music’s expressive power, such as range or characteristic
melodic figures;35 in particular, plagal modes tended to be viewed as more
See, for example, Plato’s famous call for harmonia (which means more than
merely scale type) and rhythm to follow the words and his coupling of certain harmoniai
to sorrowful, convivial, or warlike subjects in his Republic (excerpt translated in Oliver
Strunk, Source Readings in Music History, pp. 10–11). See also Thomas J. Mathiesen,
“Greek Music Theory,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory; Thomas J.
Mathiesen, Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(Lincoln, Nebraska: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999); and Warren Anderson and Thomas
J. Mathiesen, s.v. “Ethos” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second ed.
(London: Macmillan, 2001).
34
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, De institutione musica (c. 505); modern edition
by Gottfried Friedlein (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1966); trans. Calvin Bower as Fundamentals of
Music (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989).
35
For example, Johannes Affligemensis refers to “the well-bred high spirits and the
sudden fall to the final” of the fifth mode and “the hoarse profundity” of the second in his
De musica (c. 1100), Chapter 16, in Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum,
edited by Martin Gerbert (3 vols, St. Blaise: Typis San-Blasianis, 1784; reprint edition,
Hildesheim: Olms, 1963), vol. 3, p. 253; translation from Warren Babb in Hucbald, Guido,
and John on Music: Three Medieval Treatises (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press,
1978), p. 133. He also advises composers to compose chant “so aptly that it seems to
33
12
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
somber than their authentic counterparts. Driven by theoretical tradition and
a renewed interest in recapturing the legendary expressive power of ancient
music, discussions of modal ethos continued in the sixteenth century, yet nothing
resembling a universally consistent theory developed, and modern attempts to
establish connections between the prevailing affect of a text and a composer’s
choice of mode have met with mixed results at best.36 I am not aware of any
evidence suggesting that music theorists discussing polyphonic music prior to
the 1550s were concerned with the affective quality of intervals in a systematic
way, whether in the abstract or in relation to an interval’s position within a mode.
Previous theorists attended to intervals primarily for their propaedeutical value
as fundamental building blocks of musical structure, necessary for constructing
theoretical pitch systems such as tetrachords, hexachords, modes, and so forth, or
for addressing melodic, harmonic, or contrapuntal concepts. Although the terms
“major” and “minor,” or their equivalents, were applied to certain intervals,37 these
terms were understood more quantitatively than qualitatively, as typified in this
express what the words say” (uti ita proprie cantum proponat, ut quod verba sonant, cantus
exprimere videatur) in Chapter 18; Hucbald, Guido, and John on Music, p. 137.
36
An extensive historical survey of comments on modal ethos occurs in Steven Charles
Krantz, “Rhetorical and Structural Functions of Mode in Selected Motets of Josquin des
Prez,” (2 vols, Ph.D. dissertation: University of Minnesota, 1989). Other representative
samples from a large body of literature that touches upon this topic include Claude V.
Palisca, “Mode Ethos in the Renaissance,” in Essays in Musicology: A Tribute to Alvin
Johnson (Philadelphia: American Musicological Society, 1990), pp. 126–39; Bernhard
Meier, The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony Described According to the Sources, trans.
Ellen Beebe (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988; original German edition 1974), pp. 385–
405 and passim; Bernhard Meier, “Rhetorical Aspects of the Renaissance Modes,” Journal
of the Royal Music Association 115/2 (1990), pp. 182–90; Manfred Cordes, “Tonart und
Affekt in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch alte Musik 2 (1993), pp. 9–25; Angela
Jane Lloyd, “Modal Representation in the Early Madrigals of Cipriano de Rore” (Ph.D.
dissertation, Royal Holloway College, University of London, 1996), pp. 281–92; Harold S.
Powers and Frans Wiering, s.v. “Mode” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
second ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001); Wiering, The Language of the Modes: Studies in
the History of Polyphonic Music (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 13–15,
160, and passim; and Hartmut Krones, “Secundus tonus est gravis et flebilis—Tertius tonus
severus est: Zur Semantik der Modi in Trauermotetten der Zeit um 1500,” in Stefan Gasch
and Birgit Lodes (eds), Tod in Musik und Kultur: Zum 500. Todestag Philipps des Schönen,
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2007), pp. 157–88.
37
Carl Dahlhaus has examined the numerous ways the terms “durum” and “molle”
have been applied to music over the centuries in his “Die Termini Dur und Moll,” Archiv
für Musikwissenschaft 12 (1955), pp. 280–96. See also David E. Cohen, “Notes, scales, and
modes in the earlier Middle Ages,” in Thomas Christensen (ed.), The Cambridge History of
Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 307–63. Bernhard
Meier notes that, although not yet widespread in written sources, the Latin terms “tertia
dura” and “tertia mollis” for the major and minor third, respectively, begin to appear in
theoretical treatises written in Germany in the early 16th century; The Modes, p. 406.
Contexts
13
definition drawn from the influential Contrapunctus (1412) of Prosdocimo de
Beldomandi: “An interval is said to be major because it is extended over a greater
distance, minor because it is extended over a lesser.”38 As for employing these
intervals in polyphonic composition, the choice of major or minor is made upon
the basis of contrapuntal progression: “for you should always choose that form,
whether major or minor, that is less distant from that location which you intend
immediately to reach.”39 Traditionally, no particular expressive function was
assigned to the imperfect consonances beyond their tendency to seek perfection by
moving to perfect consonances,40 and no general distinction between the emotive
properties of major and minor was made.41
In their published theories of interval affect stemming from Willaert’s
compositional and pedagogical practices, on the other hand, Vicentino and Zarlino
ascribe specific expressive characteristics to certain intervals, ascriptions which
in their simplest and most familiar guise survive until the present day: major
intervals are suitable for happy affections, and minor intervals for sad ones.
Perhaps the most clear-cut example of the compositional conflation of the happy/
sad and major/minor dichotomies in Willaert’s Musica nova occurs in the oft-cited
opening of the seven-voice dialogue Liete e pensose (Example 1.1).42 Here the
38
Prosdocimo de Beldomandi, Contrapunctus (1412), ed. and trans. Jan Herlinger;
Greek and Latin Music Theory 1 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,
1984), 3.7, pp. 54–5. (et dicitur maior combinatio quia per maiorem distantiam dilatatur,
minor vero quia per minorem.)
39
Prosdocimo, 5.6, pp. 82–3. (quoniam illam semper sumere debes que minus distat
a loco ad quem immediate accedere intendis … )
40
On the history of this notion, see David E. Cohen, “‘The Imperfect Seeks Its
Perfection’: Harmonic Progression, Directed Motion, and Aristotelian Physics,” Music
Theory Spectrum 23/2 (Fall, 2001), pp. 139–69.
41
Though one interval may be described as more or less harsh or sweet than another,
as in Stephanus Vanneus’s description of the effect of ending on a minor third as being less
sweet (suavis) than ending on a major third; Recanetum de musica aurea (Rome 1533; facs.
edn Kassel, Basel, Paris, and London: Bärenreiter, 1969), 3.37, fol. 91r.
42
See, for representative samples, the discussion of Liete e pensose in Erich
Hertzmann, Adrian Willaert in der weltlichen Vokalmusik seiner Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur
Entwicklungsgeschichte der niederländisch-französischen und italienischen Liedformen in
der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1931), p. 53; Armen
Carapetyan, “The Musica Nova of Adriano Willaert: With a Reference to the Humanistic
Society of 16th Century Venice” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1945), pp. 185–6;
Mace, “Pietro Bembo,” pp. 80–83; Bernhard Meier, The Modes, p. 415; David Alan Nutter,
“The Italian Polyphonic Dialogue of the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Nottingham, 1978), p. 55; Maria Anne Archetto, “Francesco Portinaro and the Academies
of the Veneto in the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1991),
pp. 184–90; Martha Feldman, City Culture, pp. 253–4; and Paul Christopher Schick,
“Concordia Discourse: Polyphony and Dialogue in Willaert, Wert, and Monteverdi (Ph.D.
dissertation, Yale University, 1997), pp. 66–85.
14
Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect
word “liete” (happy) is set with two sustained major sonorities, and the following
“e pensose” (and pensive) with three minor ones.43 Though the affective contrast
in this example might be viewed by some as naïve or shallow, we shall see in the
course of this study that, in Willaert’s expert hands, the dichotomy between major
and minor intervals provides the basis for far more subtle and profound expressive
interpretations of texts.
Example 1.1 Adrian Willaert, Liete e pensose, mm. 1–5
Text-Music Relations in General
It will be helpful to distinguish between different ways in which music and text
may interact, and in doing so I shall draw upon the useful categories of text-music
relations suggested not long ago by Leeman Perkins.44 In addition to declamatory,
43
Similar contrasts occur at “Ov’è la vita” (where is [my] life) and “ove la morte
mia,” (where [is] my death) in mm. 14–25 and “Liete siam” (we are happy) and “Dogliose”
([we are] sad) in mm. 37–44. Willaert uses several expressive devices other than harmonic
sonority in these passages, such as the bright F and predominantly ascending motion at
“vita” and a darker B and descending motion with “morte,” and the vigorous octave leap at
“vita” in the settima parte in m. 21 versus the much more somber minor sixth leap into B
at “morte” in m. 23. See also the discussion of the former passage in James Anderson Winn,
Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of the Relations between Poetry and Music (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 146–8.
44
Leeman Perkins, “Towards a Theory of Text-Music Relations in the Music of the
Renaissance,” in Andrew Kirkman and Dennis Slavin (eds), Binchois Studies (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 313–29. See also the lists of sixteenth-century expressive
devices in Bernhard Meier, The Modes, pp. 237–47; and James Haar, Essays on Italian
Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 1350–1600 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1986), pp. 134–5; the extensive catalogue of associative devices in Irving
Contexts
15
formal, and syntactical levels of text-music relations, he defines three expressive
levels: rhetorical, mimetic, and affective. In a broader sense, of course, each of
Perkins’s categories intersects with some aspect of rhetorical theory, yet the category
he calls “rhetorical expression” describes “an emphasis on significant words of
the text by the manner of their presentation, which can be considered separately
from either their intrinsic meaning alone or their possible affective resonances.”45
The mimetic level encompasses the concept of word-painting and consists of two
principal types: (1) sonorous mimesis seeks to imitate an actual sound, such as
birdsong or a trumpet call, that is specifically mentioned or referenced indirectly in
the text; and (2) cognitive mimesis establishes a conceptual link between a textual
element and a musical element or elements, such as the use of quick note values
with a word such as “flee,” or a rising line with “and ascended into heaven.”46 The
affective level comprises the representation and communication in music of the
emotional content of the text.
Perkins notes that the affective level is by far the most problematic category
in which to pin down compositional intent because contemporary treatises do not
explain how to manipulate musical affect, at least prior to the writings of Vicentino
and Zarlino, and because there seemed to be no “coherent doctrine or theory
concerning affective response” during the Renaissance.47 It is only beginning
with the Willaert school that the presence of an intentional affective level in textmusic relations can be established beyond a reasonable doubt because there we
have not only the evidence provided by Willaert’s music, but also the testimony
of the treatises of Vicentino and Zarlino that explicitly encourage the affective
deployment of specific musical devices in the precise manner found in Willaert’s
madrigals.48
Another potential problem is the ease with which rhetorical emphasis of words
or phrases may be mistaken for affective expression, particularly by observers from
another era. The methods of rhetorical emphasis Perkins lists include “an abrupt
interruption of the rhythmic pace, a shift in the mensuration, a change in voicing or
Godt, “A Systematic Classification for Madrigalism,” Ars lyrica 7 (1993), pp. 78–81; and the
list of affective devices for weeping in Ute Ringhandt, Sunt lacrimae rerum: Untersuchungen
zur Darstellung des Weinens in der Musik, (Sinzig: Studio, 2001), pp. 46–7.
45
Perkins, “Towards a Theory,” p. 323.
46
Ibid., pp. 324–7.
47
Perkins, “Towards a Theory,” p. 327.
48
After citing Zarlino’s famous comments in Book 4, Chapter 32 of Le istitutioni
harmoniche (quoted in Chapter 2 below), Perkins suggests that the practice they describe
represents an extension of cognitive mimesis; that is, musical devices are applied to
individual happy or sad words or phrases with descriptive intent rather than a truly affective
one; they imitate the emotion mentioned in the text rather than convey it, at least in the
sense meant by Vincenzo Galilei in reference to setting the overall affection of the text
rather than painting its details only; pp. 328–9. Perkins nonetheless considers the practice
Zarlino describes as affective, though as a sublevel of the mimetic.