CHAPTER THREE

TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE

RENAISSANCE:
HISTORICAL-ANALYTICAL INQUIRY INTO
HARMONICALLY-ORIENTED GENRES OF
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SECULAR POLYPHONY

LUCA BRUNO

Harmony in sixteenth-century music is a complex issue that has fas-

cinated both musicians and scholars since the Renaissance. Although
harmonia was a word of common use in several Italian music treatises
dating from the end of the fifteenth century, the term assumed several
shades of meaning according to different treatises concerned with prob-
lems of composition. In the theoretical writings of Bartolomé Ramos
de Pareja (ca. 1440–after 1490), Franchino Gaffurio (1451–1522), Gio-
vanni Spataro (1458–1541), and Pietro Aaron (ca. 1480–after 1545),
harmonia shares different connotations, often used in the same treatise
to define the same concept.
The first is harmony as a representation of sonic events that happen
at the same time, implying a vertical perspective. The second is harmony
conceived as a theory of connecting successive vertical events, for ex-
ample, at structural points like cadences. Even if the terms “chord” or
“chord progression” do not appear to be used at that time, the preceding
definition implies a goal-oriented perspective, at least in the overall the-
ory of the treatment of dissonance, which is forced to resolve on a con-
sonance according to the rules of strict counterpoint. The third meaning
of the term is synonymous with composition itself. The word “harmony”
is therefore related to and juxtaposed with the word “music.” According
2 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

to some early Renaissance theorists, they are synonyms, to be used inter-

changeably. In Ramos de Pareja’s writings and also in the writings of his
most brilliant pupil, Spataro, harmonia is the process of mixing voices
that resound in consonance at the same time. Musica is instead a ratio-
nal contemplation of how these consonances work together. Therefore,
harmony would have covered the meaning of what we nowadays would
address as the practical part of music, the composer’s work, while music
referred to what we now consider music theory.
Since Antiquity, a distinction has existed in the traditions of Western
theory between music and harmony. Plato and Boethius are two names
(important as milestones) who maintain such a distinction. What ap-
pears to be really new at the beginning of the sixteenth-century theory is
the interrelation of harmony and counterpoint. With definitions that will
practically remain the same until the present time, harmonia is, even
for the sixteenth-century theorist, the study of the vertical, concomitant
dimension of music, while contraponto is the study of its horizontal,
melodically-oriented dimension. However, we should be aware that
these concepts are not separate and that they work together in the six-
teenth century and in later music. The link between the two procedures
in composition, quite obviously, is what we now call “voice-leading.”
In order to clarify these points, we can examine an excerpt drawn
from the writings of Giovanni Spataro, in which we read this sarcastic
comment: “without studying the rules of counterpoint, everyone is mas-
ter of composing harmony.”1 Therefore, harmony and counterpoint ap-
pear to be related features of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century
music. Although the term harmonia as synonymous with composition
is a long-standing concept in music theory and criticism, the juxtaposi-
tion of harmony and counterpoint is more revealing of some inner fea-
tures of polyphony in the Renaissance. If Spataro used both terms in the
field of composition, it means that they were perceived by composers as
distinct and complementary.
It is also worth considering other meanings of the term harmonia.
It often appeared in treatises, such as Zarlino’s in the middle of the
sixteenth century or Ercole Bottrigari’s towards its end, as the Italian
transliteration of the Greek harmonía, a scalar construct addressing the
organization of pitches within a tonal space in ancient Greek music, a
shade of meaning that recurs in Renaissance music theory as well.2 From
Aaron’s writings until at least the Artusi versus Bottrigari-Monteverdi
controversy, problems of tonal orientation and modal categorization rep-
resented an inner stream connecting several sources of music theory.3
 CHAPTER THREE 3

The perspectives adopted during an inquiry into Renaissance har-

mony and, consequently, the analytical methods used to detect the har-
monic procedures, represent the more problematic aspects of research
that aims at understanding how harmony works in Renaissance music.
The starting point in defining to what extent harmony acted as a real
dimension of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century polyphonic repertories
is, although in a simplistic way, to find out if the phenomenon really
existed, or if it is a distorted perspective, a blurred lens, assumed by the
modern researcher. Is the perception of harmony in Renaissance music
a twenty first-century misconception, originated by observers (musi-
cologists, performers, audiences) who have listening habits conditioned
by many centuries of “vertical,” “harmonic” music? Is harmony in the
Renaissance simply anachronistic?
Fears of anachronism are among the main concerns of relatively
recent generations of musicologists. As Bonnie J. Blackburn states,
musicologists who have tried to face this topic in recent decades have
worked in a suspicious environment.4 This suspicious environment was
probably the result of years of close examination and deep discussions
regarding the criteria of historiography begun in the United States, Can-
ada, and Europe (especially Germany) in the 1970s. The fundamen-
tal studies on sixteenth-century modality by Carl Dahlhaus, Bernhard
Meier, and Harold S. Powers—all supporters of a polyphonic modal-
ity, to be analyzed and understood following implicit and explicit rules
belonging to contemporaneous theoretical descriptions—have raised
other researchers’ “line of attention.”5
Particular attention since then has been given to terminology and
analytical symbols, often considered anachronistic if strictly related to
the functional harmony of “major-minor tonality.” Although necessary,
these precautions and their related fears were not so heavily featured
in the works of some earlier musicologists who dealt with Renais-
sance music soon after World War II. Such great scholars as Edward E.
Lowinsky, Alfred Einstein, Howard Mayer Brown, and Nino Pirrotta
had no fear of systematically dealing with the great polyphonic reper-
tory.6 Their analytical strategies were especially based upon fifteenth-
and sixteenth-century compositional processes in order to understand to
what extent the tradition of unwritten music participated in some sim-
pler vocal polyphonic genres, apparently founded on practical harmon-
ic procedures instead of being strictly guided by rules of counterpoint.
Although not always conducted with “historically correct” analytical
tools, at least this inquiry was not nihilistically regarded as an impossi-
4 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

ble challenge. Instead, they worked as if exploring a new land, to better

understand one of the most important periods of music—the Renais-
sance, crossroads of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Era.
Lowinsky, Brown, and Pirrotta often indicated the frottola, Parisian
chanson, villanesca alla napolitana and other polyphonic genres—
the villotta padana, villancico, villanella, canzonetta, madrigale ar-
ioso, even the early madrigal (in particular Verdelot’s works written
to be sung during the intermedii between the acts of Machiavelli’s
comedies)—as “harmonic” genres, with a quite clear tonal orientation.
However, until the turn of the twenty-first century, there have not been
many studies dealing with the real substance of their “harmonic” qual-
ity. Bonnie Blackburn is one of the first scholars to uncover the har-
monic nature of a particular genre: the motetto missale, performed in
Milan and Northern Italy during the second half of the fifteenth century
in the context of the Elevation of the Host.7 The structural foundation
of this genre consists in a homophonic declamation of the liturgical text
with fermatas notated on each voice.
Although declamation with fermatas had been a common device in
polyphony since the fourteenth century, especially in the presence of
particularly meaningful words of the liturgy, the missale motet appears
as the genre in which, more than in others, the clarity of text intona-
tion becomes the main guiding principle in polyphonic composition,
destroying the structural predominance of counterpoint per bicinia, i.e.
by structural duets. In the missale motet, there is no point in continuing
to regard the Tenor-Superius framework as structurally significant and
supposedly sustained by a consonant Bassus and filled-in by the Altus.
To do so would be to discount several voice-leading mistakes appearing
between the former two voices.
For Blackburn, to distinguish between polyphonic music featuring
either contrapuntal or harmonic predominance involves first of all ana-
lyzing it to see if it had been conceived starting from a Tenor (either
a cantus prius factus or appositely composed for the occasion) or if it
instead is the product of a well-planned chordal progression driven by
the Bassus voice. Even if we do not have a precise term to indicate a
chord (in the modern sense of a triad, that is, the fundamental form of a
class of simultaneities, which includes its inversions as well), we can-
not deny the existence of a harmonic conception in Renaissance music:
theorists such as Spataro, Aaron, Gaffurio, and Zarlino do not use the
term “chord,” but they still refer to vertical events of more than two
pitches as “consonantie mediate.”8 Blackburn expands upon her earlier
 CHAPTER THREE 5

ideas that late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century harmony is func-

tional in a different way to “common-practice” tonal harmony. Its func-
tions need to be studied on their own terms, and a starting point could
be represented by considering the fact that in Renaissance music verti-
cal events were composed and listened to in regard to their degree of
consonance and dissonance. A dissonance or an imperfect consonance
that is forced to resolve to a perfect consonance implies a functional
process, a strictly directed harmonic progression.
The increasing structural importance of the bass voice, particularly
in its relation to the treble, represents the inner stream of theoretical
thought in modern scholarship, in following which we can pass from
genres of early Renaissance polyphony (motetti missales, chansons,
frottolas, and the improvvisatori’s standard formulas to declaim literary
texts) to the examination of other genres belonging to the second half
of the sixteenth century, where we can study the same phenomena in
a wider context. Contributions by Benito V. Rivera, James Haar, and
Howard Mayer Brown have focused on the substance of harmonic plan-
ning and development, detectable through the analysis of bass-voice
formulas, from the early madrigal of the 1520s to its developments as
“madrigale arioso” during the 1550s.9
I will instead focus on the genre of the canzone villanesca alla na-
politana, since I believe that it is possible to better observe harmony, in
modern terms, as a structural foundation of its musical discourse.The
research presented in this paper focuses on Adrian Willaert’s Canzone
villanesche alla napolitana a 4 (Venice, 1542–1545).
This corpus has been chosen for its homogeneity of form, harmony,
and texture and even more for its high artistic value, being composed in
the early 1540s by a northern composer deeply connected to the Italian
environment, and whose artistic merits were generally recognized in-
ternationally in his time and beyond.10 Willaert was also recognized as
a great teacher of theory and composition by his pupils Zarlino, Nicola
Vicentino, Perissone Cambio, Antonio Barges, Baldassarre Donato and
by many other composers and theorists connected to the San Marco Re-
public. Willaert’s use of chordal procedures in a polyphonic genre such
as the villanesca alla napolitana can thus be regarded as one of the first
great manifestations of harmony in the modern sense in Western music.
It can also be seen as a model for further comparison with earlier and
especially with later pieces.11
Let us clarify these preliminary hypotheses. In my opinion, the the-
oretical principle of composing out the tonal space of a piece, obviously
6 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

derived from the Schenkerian theory of tonal music, can also be fruit-
fully applied to the specific repertory selected for this paper. Aspects of
vertical as well as linear elaboration of a scalar system clearly appear in
polyphonic music well before the eighteenth century. In sixteenth-cen-
tury repertories, what differ most from “common-practice” tonal music
are the elaborative procedures and the syntactical functions that create
their actual “tonal” space.12 This consists of an organized set of pitch
relations, in which it is possible to find points of gravity, goal-directed
movement, and moments of entropy, after which the apparent disorder
is then reduced to order within the system.
From my early attempts at devising an analytical methodology, and
following in Blackburn’s footsteps, I have integrated the already men-
tioned analytical study by Rivera on Jacques Arcadelt’s First Book of
Madrigals with Howard Wilde’s extremely pertinent doctoral disserta-
tion on approaching voice-leading structures in music from Josquin to
Gesualdo.13 Not only does Wilde critically examine several analytical
tools and correlated theories of structure by other musicologists, but
he also provides a new theoretical construct, the importance of which
may ultimately be as far-reaching as Schenker’s own theory of a voice-
leading background (Ursatz) in tonal music.14
In a fashion indeed different from tonal music but still satisfying
and refined, Wilde’s theory of cadential patterns subjected to diminu-
tion leads to further considerations on the role of chords and/or har-
monic regions in composing out the tonal space in Renaissance music.
In order to discover and compare harmonic functions, I have adopted
Wilde’s proposal of voice-leading backgrounds that underlie virtually
every polyphonic work from Josquin to Gesualdo as one of my analyti-
cal tools. The analysis therefore is not just confined to single chords
or local harmonic events but can have a broader perspective, address-
ing larger spans of music as well. Furthermore, Wilde’s large-scale ap-
proach perfectly suits the comparison of genres and styles, providing a
common background against which the stylistic peculiarities of indi-
vidual genres or composers can be understood through the comparison
of middleground structures.
Tempering and better focusing their analytical methodologies on my
repertory, I have welcomed Rivera’s attempt to highlight the structural
importance of the Superius and Bassus duo, together with Wilde’s own
view of the structural importance of the Tenor, or better still, in Bernhard
Meier’s words (derived form Renaissance theorist Gallus Dressler), of
the vox tenorizans.15 My analysis has thus far produced results in detect-
 CHAPTER THREE 7

ing the harmonic functions of single chords in Willaert’s villanescas.

These functions have two connected roles: to generate goal-oriented
motion toward structural cadences and to mark points of significance
toward the overall appreciation of the formal design of a piece.
For reasons of space, I draw my observations only through an analy-
sis of O dolce vita mia, the second villanesca in the 1545-collection.16
The metrical structure, translation of the text, and a schematic formal
analysis are detailed as follows.17
O dolce vita mia che t’haggio fatto A
Che mi minacci ogn’hor con tue parolle [sic] B (assonanza)
Et io mi struggo come nev’al sole. B
Se sai ca per tuo amor son quasi morto A (consonanza)
C’a te del arder mio niente ti dole. B
Et io mi struggo come nev’al sole. B
Mo son perduto e tengomi disfatto A
Che m’hai mandato a coglier le viole. B
Et io mi struggo come nev’al sole. B
Sweet life of mine, what have I done
That makes you constantly threaten me!
Like snow in the sun I am consumed.
You must know that I’m almost dead for love of you,
Since my burning desire causes you no pain.
Like snow in the sun I am consumed.
Now I’m lost and I know I’m undone
Because you’ve sent me out to pick posies.
Like snow in the sun I am consumed.

Table 3-1 features three columns in which the three main sections
of the piece are detailed, each one setting a single line of the lyrics.
As Cardamone (1978) states, ternary form is the standard in villanesca
repertory from 1537 to 1570. In the analysis of this genre, I think it is
worth considering any formal deviation from this norm. In the Poetic
Material section of the table, I detail the lyrics as used by the composer
in the actual setting of the fundamental melodic line, in this case the
Tenor, which features a pre-existing soprano melody on the same text
by the young Neapolitan composer Giovan Domenico del Giovane da
Nola (Venice: Scotto, 1541).
8 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

Table 3-1. Analysis of O dolce vita mia by Adrian Willaert, 1545

Poetic O dolce; o dolce vita Che mi minacci Et io mi

Material mia; o dolce; ogn’hor; ogn’hor struggo come
o dolce vita mia, che con tue parolle; nev’al sole; Et
t’haggio fatto con tue parolle io mi struggo
come nev’al
sole

Poetic ¼A+½A+¼A+A ½B+½B+¼B B+B

Analysis

Musical A: B; C:
Form B’

Measure 1–10 (rep. 11–20) 20–27; 34–41

Numbers 28–33 (rep. 42–49)

Phrase [a(3 tt.)+b(2 tt.)+c(1 t.) f (5 tt.) + g (2 tt.); [h (3 tt.) + i

Structure +d (2 tt.)+e (2 tt.)] : f’ (4 tt.) + g (2 tt.) (5 tt.)] :

Key D-per- or D-per-!

Tonal G-per-!→ A-per-→ (G-per-→) D-per- →

Events D-per- C-per-– D-per-!
A-per- –C-per-

The following sections detail the metrical structure of the poem,

immediately compared, in the adjacent lines of the table, to the analy-
sis of the musical form and the corresponding measure numbers of the
score. All poetic lines are 11-syllable lines, the standard type for Ital-
ian versification. Italics are used to point out the poetic content of the
refrain. The macro-formal units, labeled with capital letters, are then
segmented in smaller phrases, labeled with lower-case letters, to detail
repetition, variation or contrast at the micro-formal level. Simultaneous
melodic progressions at cadence points in the single voices (their atti
delle cadentie), even in presence of evaded cadence, rests or textual
repetition are the main segmenting criteria. A letter followed by the
colon symbol (“:”) points at a precise repeat of the formal segment in-
dicated. In the phrase-structure analysis, I also specify the tactus quan-
 CHAPTER THREE 9

tity of each segment (through the abbreviation “tt.”), in order to high-

light the importance of isochronal beats in the perception of very active
music, from the rhythmic point of view. I believe this may help us to
analytically perceive the balance and rhythmic flexibility of the single
voices, stressing different accent patterns in the lyrics while singing. In
my opinion, this flexibility in the performance of polyphonic music can
only be achieved taking into account a large regular beat, such as the
one provided by the tactus.
The last two lines in the table specify the main key of the piece,
and the main tonal events occurring at the analytical levels detailed
above. Tonal, and also harmonic labeling, follow historically-based
designations, particularly Orazio Vecchi’s way to refer either to a sca-
lar, a chordal or a tonal construct. D-per-natural (or D-per-bequadro,
in which I use the word “be-quadro” in its literal sense of B-natural)
implies a D-scale with no accidentals in the key signature. At the same
time, a G-per-bequadro chord refers to a G chord with a major third
(and a perfect fifth). I prefer to denote the chord in this way, instead of
labeling it as a major chord, not only to distinguish sixteenth-century
theory from common-practice harmony, but also to directly address the
intervallic content of the chord itself.18
I believe that important relationships between harmonic orientation,
formal functions, and text setting can already be informally inferred
from the simultaneous comparison of the different sections in Table 1
with the score featured in the Appendix. To further extend the analysis,
I advise the reader to compare the poetic material of the first stanza,
as used by Willaert in the score provided, with the complete text and
translation by the anonymous villanesca poet.
The predominance of “G per bequadro” chords in the middle sec-
tion (measures 21–27 and slightly modified repeat at 27–33), compared
to the outer sections in which the G chords feature “bemolli,” seems to
have a large-scale role in guiding the aural perception of tonal relation-
ships throughout the form of the piece.19 The rhetorical significance
of such a use of harmony within the compositional process is almost
always explicable in terms of text setting, especially in masterworks
such as Willaert’s villanescas, in which multiple dimensions of music
(harmonic movement, polyphonic texture, text setting itself) are always
shaped with a precise communicative intent, and collaborate toward a
common expressive goal.
The first section presents D as a tonal center, and it sets to music
the first line of each strophically repeated stanza. The “G-per-bemolle”
10 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

chord has the function of confirming the opening tonal setting. Howev-
er, in the musical setting of line two, Willaert needs a “G-per-bequadro”
chord to move to an A tonal center. Here the G chord acts as a 7-chord,
intended as the five-three chord built upon the scale degree a whole-
step below the tonal center. Immediately following, the G chord is used
in a more local connection for the quite ambiguous “tonicization” of C
(scale-degree 7 of the original tonal center, D). However, in line three,
the refrain line, the G chord appears in both forms, first with bequadro
to work as a local 5-chord to the tonal center C from measures 33 to 36
(and repeat at measures 41–44), then with bemolle, to drive the struc-
ture toward the proper final goal, the D chord in bar 41 (and also to the
last cadence, in bar 49).
If we just look at the cadences, we can see that the piece is in the
Dorian mode, since the tenor presents the characteristic ambitus and
finalis of the mode, while the cadential goals fulfill the typical expecta-
tions of D, A (scale degree 5) and C (scale degree 7). Even if we can
easily find a way to look at those cadences in modal terms, we would
lose a comprehensive explication of the ambiguity in the text setting of
line 2. Is A or C the tonal center in those sections?
I think both play an important role. A takes the tonal path away from
D, playing on the ambiguity of bemolle and bequadro in the G chord.
The brief region oriented around the C chord at measures 31–32 has
the function of leading us back to the original tonal center of D, again
through a 7-chord area. This happens involving a smooth chord pro-
gression, which is again based on the ambiguity (or better, the double
function) of the G chord. The music of line two is the structural link
within the overall form, since for each strophe it must bring the listener
back to the refrain (line three). Always identical in text and music, line
three is the place where the tonal tensions are resolved. It is the harmon-
ic function of the G chord that fulfills the formal (in this case even the
modal) expectations of the listener, guiding the structure through the
tonal path. It is through harmony that Willaert composes out the tonal
space of this piece, and gives a precise foundation to the aural percep-
tion of the piece’s musical form; still, the Dorian mode is an abstract
representation of its tonal relationships.20
A few questions on Willaert’s use of harmony soon arise. Why does
Willaert change the chord structures in parallel passages? Why does
he alternate major and minor thirds in the same chordal framework?
Why must those modifications be seen as modal inflections, changing
the horizontal dimension of the single voices sounding together rather
 CHAPTER THREE 11

than as local harmonic events that have a broader consequence? Why

should Renaissance tonality be deprived of a larger, legitimately har-
monic, view and harmony just reduced to local voice-leading events?
Why should mode and not harmony take credit for the explanation of
how the tonal space is composed out in a piece?
In my opinion, what has often been viewed as a mutation of mode
in the single voices of the polyphonic fabric should now be oriented,
through harmonic analysis, to a whole-piece perspective that does not
only take cadential organization into consideration. If we only look at
the cadences of a piece, we then must agree with the view that sees in
the mode the theoretical background that eventually guides the musical
structure toward its ultimate goal, the final chord. I think this is a back-
ward perspective. Instead, initial observations of how small phrases reach
their cadential goal immediately suggest that something more than just
modality is used by Willaert in shaping the musical form of the piece.
No doubt such a great composer as Willaert was able to write a clear
modal structure, if this was his rhetorical purpose. I am not saying that
looking at the mode is something that cannot be useful in categorizing
a piece. I do think that the composer had in mind how to set a poem
from the beginning of his compositional process, and that he might have
proceeded to the attribution of cadence points according to the syntacti-
cal and metrical structure of his lyrics. However, I do think that what
is really important in the analysis of Renaissance music, especially of
the first half of the sixteenth century, is to see not that those cadences
belong to a modal category, but that they are linked in their tonal unfold-
ing: in essence, to see what is beneath the surface of the chordal motion
from the beginning of each phrase to the cadence, and how the regions
delimited by the cadences relate to each other. This is what must be un-
derstood in order to grasp how the composer shaped the form of a piece.
I do not think that the theorist should necessarily determine the com-
poser’s starting point, whether a modal formula used as a background or
the distribution of cadences in relation to the poetical structure. But we
can be sure that Willaert’s intent was to create something coherent and
understandable, a well-structured piece based on his aural expectations
and his ideas of the aural expectations of his audience.
I believe that it is through harmonic development that Willaert or-
ganizes the large-scale structure of his villanescas. In my opinion, what
must be thoroughly examined is the function of individual chords and
their influence in both a local and a broader context. What is usually at-
tributed to the dominant or the subdominant (or pre-dominant) in tonal
12 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

harmony could instead be attributed to other constructs that possess

“dominant” or “sub/pre-dominant flavor.”
In the pieces under consideration here, at first glance, the five-three
chord built upon scale degree 7 seems to take upon itself either a local
or a broader subdominant role, while the chord built upon a fifth above
(or a fourth below) a cadence point still maintains its local function of
cadential drive toward the immediate goal. The “auxiliary key area” of
scale degree 5, instead, is normally featured in the large-scale design as
a divider of the musical structure, and of the form of a piece as well.
However, the attraction toward the tonal center is manifested in a looser
way than in harmonic tonality. The opposition of harmonic scale degree
1 and harmonic scale degree 5 is not as drastic as it is between I and V
in common-practice harmony.21
In his studies of the classical and romantic styles, Charles Rosen has
clearly pointed out the dramatic role of a modulation toward the domi-
nant as a typical feature (actually a forma mentis) of classical compos-
ers such as Mozart and Haydn. However, even in some of Beethoven’s
and Schubert’s piano sonatas the “quest” for secondary key areas oth-
er than the dominant occupies the transition to the second theme and
the second theme itself, while the dominant chord (or dominant pedal
point, but not necessarily a dominant key area) retains its local function
of bringing the tonal path back to the tonic in the recapitulation.22
Therefore, sharing Rosen’s metaphor between classical style and
drama, the “dramatic” function of interposing some other key area be-
tween the first statement of the tonal center and the successive compos-
ing out of the tonal space in a piece of music, normally coming back
to the tonic toward the end of the piece, is fulfilled by key areas in
harmonic relations with the tonal center other than the fifth. The aug-
mented fourth (Liszt, Stravinsky), the mediant (in the major mode, such
as in Beethoven or Schubert), or the leading tone (Donizetti, Ravel)
act as factors within a broader elaboration of the tonal space. What is
different from the “true” dominant relationship is that these other key
areas have a looser attraction toward the tonic, a looser cadential drive.
This is why some of these composers, more or less consciously, chose
to use various means of organizing the musical structure in addition to
harmonic construction, often addressing issues of temporal symmetry
and proportion connected to key relationships or using numerical rela-
tionships between sections, but still keeping the dominant as a means
for more local connections to the tonic.23 This can also be said of the
Renaissance 7-chord, for example, in the music of Guillaume Dufay,
 CHAPTER THREE 13

Josquin, Willaert, and Orlando di Lasso, just to quote few important

composers.
As we have seen in the brief glimpse into Willaert’s O dolce vita
mia, the chord built upon a bass note a whole-step below the tonal cen-
ter, Arabic numeral 7, seems to retain the “subdominant” role in its
broader significance: the role of composing out the tonal space driv-
ing the tonal path away from the “tonic,” but also foreshadowing the
return to a tonal center in concomitance with a modulation. In contrast,
the chord built upon a bass note a fifth above (or a fourth below) the
tonal center seems to perform what we nowadays typically call the local
“dominant” function, which drives the tonal path away from and back
to the tonic in a narrower span of music. However, it is worth notic-
ing again that, especially in eighteenth-century tonal harmony, what I
called the “subdominant role” is in most of the cases performed by the
dominant too. This harmonic event often acts both as the main auxiliary
key and the connecting, local factor through which the tonic comes
back, for example in the recapitulation of the sonata-form.
Looking at all these different periods of music history, one might
easily conclude that, after all, common-practice tonality may not neces-
sarily represent the canon in harmonic form generation and understand-
ing. Harmonic constructs other than the standard “tonic,” “dominant”
and “subdominant” chords and key areas can guide the perception of
the tonal space unfolding itself in time throughout an entire piece of
music. Other forces and other syntactical constructs seem to play a role
in the establishment of the gravity toward a tonal center that has been
such an inherent feature of Western music since the Middle Ages.
14 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

Appendix
CHAPTER THREE 15
16 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE
 CHAPTER THREE 17

Notes
1
“Senza studiare li precepti de contrapuncto, ciascuno è maestro de componere
la harmonia. ”Letter to Giovanni del Lago (4 January 1529), collected in the
codex Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 538, fol. 143r-146v, published in
A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn, Edward
E. Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 335-44,
letter 17.
2
Gioseffo Zarlino’s treatises are the summa of Greek influences on modern
concepts of music theory and composition; in particular see Le Istitutioni har-
moniche (Venezia: Con Privilegio dell’Illustriss.[ima] Signoria di Venetia, per
anni X, 1558); facsimile ed. of the 1561 reprint, with an introduction by Paolo
Da Col and a foreword by Iain Fenlon (Bologna: Forni, Bibliotheca Musica
Bononiensis II, 39, 1999). For a useful translation into English of the sections
related to modality, see On the Modes: Part Four of “Le istitutioni harmon-
iche,” 1558, transl. Vered Cohen, edited with an Introduction by Claude V.
Palisca (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). On the Artusi-Bottrigari
controversy, see Karol Berger, Theories of Chromatic and Enharmonic Music
in Late 16th Century Italy (Ann Arbor (Mich.): UMI Research Press, 1980),
and Luca Bruno, “Ercole Bottrigari Chromatista teorico e pratico,” thesis (Uni-
versity of Calabria, Italy, 1999-2000), 24-47; ideas from the thesis have been
elaborated in Bruno, “Ancient Theories of Chromaticism Reduced to Modern
Practice in Ercole Bottrigari’s Il Melone (Ferrara, 1602)”, in Parallèles, quer-
elles, comparaisons. Écrire sur la musique au XVIIe siècle, ed. Theodora Psy-
choyou (Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga, Etudes du Centre de musique baroque de
Versailles), forthcoming 2013.
3
Pietro Aaron’s Trattato di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato (1525) appears to
be the first music treatise completely devoted to modality in polyphony, ana-
lyzing several compositions belonging to the so-called international genres of
masses, chansons, and motets. For the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy, and the
occurrence of the term “harmonia” as the audible, sonorous part of a vocal
composition in the writings of Claudio Monteverdi’s brother Giulio Cesare,
see Claude V. Palisca, “The Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy,” in The New Mon-
teverdi Companion, ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (London: Faber &
Faber, 1985), 127-158.
4
“To my mind, fear of anachronism had needlessly inhibited us from studying
harmony in fifteenth-century terms, without any predisposition to see the mu-
sic in terms of functional harmony.” Blackburn, “The Dispute about Harmony
c. 1500 and the Creation of a New Style,” in Théorie et analyse musicales,
1450-1650, Actes du colloque international, Louvain-la-Neuve, 23-25 septem-
bre 1999, edited by Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans and Bonnie J. Blackburn
(Louvain-la-Neuve: Départment d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie, Collège
Érasme, 2001), 1-37, at 3.
18 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

5
Fundamental works on modality, analyzed following what we know about
sixteenth-century rules and habits of listening to and thinking about music, are
Carl Dahlhaus, Untersuchungenüber die Entstehung der harmonischer Tonal-
ität (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1968), English trans. by Robert O. Gjerdingen, Studies
in the Origins of Harmonic Tonality (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990); Bernhard Meier, Die Tonarte der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie (Utrecht:
Oosthoek, Scheltema&Holkema, 1974), English trans., with some corrections
by the author, by Ellen S. Beebe, The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony
(New York: Broude Brothers, 1988); Harold Powers, “Tonal Types and Modal
Categories in Renaissance Polyphony,” Journal of the American Musicologi-
cal Society 34, no. 3 (1981): 428-70. In this article Powers adopted a double
perspective: an emic one, analyzing modality according to sixteenth-century
descriptions (Protus, Deuterus, Tritus, Tetrardus); and an etic one, creating a
new analytical representation of modality (the tonal type), more precise and
detached, describing matters of fact directly experienced in the music, such as
key signature, organization of clefs, and the finalis of the piece.
6
Edward E. Lowinsky, “On the Use of Score by Sixteenth-Century Musicians,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 1, no. 1 (1948): 17-23, reprint
in Lowinsky, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance, and Other Essays, edited
by Bonnie J. Blackburn (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
1989, II, 797-802); Lowinsky, Tonality and Atonality in Sixteenth-Century
Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), fac-
simile edn. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), Italian trans. in Lowinsky, Mu-
sica del Rinascimento. Tre saggi, edited by Massimo Privitera (Lucca: LIM,
1997), 3-115; Lowinsky, “Canon Technique and Simultaneous Conception in
Fifteenth-Century Music: A Comparison of North and South,” in Essays on the
Music of J. S. Bach and Other Diverse Subjects: A Tribute to Gerhard Herz,
edited by R. L. Weaver (Louisville: University of Louisville, 1981), reprinted
in Music in the Culture of the Renaissance, 884-910. Alfred Einstein, The Ital-
ian Madrigal, trans. by Alexander H. Krappe, Roger H. Sessions, and Oliver
Strunk, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949, 19712). Howard
Mayer Brown, Instrumental Music Printed Before 1600. A Bibliography (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Brown, Embellishing Sixteenth-
Century Music (London: Oxford University Press, Early Music Series 1, 1976).
Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Li due Orfei. Da Poliziano a Monteverdi
(Torino: Einaudi, 1969, 19752); see also Pirrotta’s essays focusing on fifteenth-
and sixteenth-century music, in Musica fra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Torino:
Einaudi, 1984), Scelte poetiche di musicisti (Venezia: Marsilio, 1987), and Po-
esia e musica e altri saggi (Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1994). A valuable original
synthesis, especially derived from the immense amount of research by Lowin-
sky, is certainly Blackburn, “On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Cen-
tury,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 40, no.2 (1987): 210-84.
7
Blackburn, “The Dispute about Harmony,” 13-37.
 CHAPTER THREE 19

8
The main reference point for an inquiry into the harmonic terminology of
the Renaissance is Benito V. Rivera’s musicological output on the topic: “The
‘Isagoge’ (1581) by Johannes Avianius: An Early Formulation of Triadic The-
ory,” Journal of Music Theory 22, no. 1 (1978): 43-64; “Harmonic Theory in
Musical Treatises of the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” Music
Theory Spectrum 1, no. 1 (1979): 80-95; German Music Theory in the Early
17th Century. The Treatises of Johannes Lippius (Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1980); “The Seventeenth-Century Theory of Triadic Generation and
Invertibility and Its Application in Contemporaneous Rules of Composition,”
Music Theory Spectrum 5, no. 1 (1984): 63-78. For a consideration of these
studies compared to contributions to the topic of Renaissance harmony by Carl
Dahlhaus, Bonnie Blackburn, and Miguel Roig-Francolí, see my Theory and
Analysis of Harmony in Adrian Willaert’s Canzone villanesche alla napolitana
(1542-1545) (Arcavacata di Rende: Centro Editoriale e Librario dell’Università
della Calabria, 2008), pp. xv-xxii, 3-124. On Renaissance chordal theory, par-
ticularly with regard to instrumental music belonging to the Spanish environ-
ment and its connection to Italy, see my “Improvisational Practice and Harmon-
ic Composition in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Italy and Spain,” forthcoming in the
Proceedings of the International Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference,
held in Barcelona, Spain, July 5-8, 2011.
9
Benito V. Rivera, “The Two-Voice Framework and its Harmonization in Ar-
cadelt’s First Book of Madrigals,” Music Analysis 6, no. 1 (1987): 59-88. James
Haar, “The ‘Madrigale Arioso:’ A Mid-Century Development in the Cinque-
cento Madrigal”, Studi Musicali 12 (1983), pp. 203-219; reprint in Haar, The
Science and Art of Renaisance Music, edited by Paul E. Corneilson (Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1998), 222-39; “Improvvisatori and Their Relation-
ship to Sixteenth-Century Music,” in Haar, Essays on Italian Poetry and Mu-
sic in the Renaissance, 1350-1600 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1986), 76-99. Howard Mayer Brown, “Verso una definizione
dell’armonia nel sedicesimo secolo: sui ‘Madrigali ariosi’ di Antonio Barré,”
Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 24 (1990): 18-60.
10
I give primary attention to modern editions of the repertory; nevertheless, I
have attempted to collect some of the primary sources related to Willaert’s can-
zone villanesche, such as original prints of works by other composers of villan-
esche and villotte (Barges, Donato, Filippo Azzaiolo, Orlando di Lasso), which
could constitute a corpus for comparison and future research. The following
are the editions of the Willaert corpus used for the present research: Adrian
Willaert and His Circle, Canzone Villanesche alla Napolitana and Villotte, ed-
ited by Donna G. Cardamone (Madison, WI.: A-R Editions, 1978); Madrigali e
Canzoni Villanesche, edited by Helga Meier, in Adriani Willaerti Opera Omnia,
ed. H. Zenck, W. Gerstenberg, B. and H. Meier ([n.p.:] American Institute of
Musicology, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicæ 3, 1977), XIV, 148-201.
11
In my Theory and Analysis of Harmony, I have dealt with the recognition of
a harmonic perspective in the theoretical works and music of the Renaissance,
20 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

particularly in the Venetian circle of Adrian Willaert (1490-1562), founding my

theoretical enterprise on a vast background of musicological studies that con-
nected, without fears of anachronism, a harmonic view with considerations of
counterpoint in sixteenth-century polyphony. In 2009, during my presentation
at the Music Theory and Analysis Conference held then in Belgrade, I exempli-
fied my analytical methodology through the close examination of Madonn’io
non lo so, the third villanesca in Willaert’s 1545-collection; see “Harmony and
Text Setting in Adrian Willaert’s Canzone villanesche alla napolitana (1542-
1545),” in Music Theory and Analysis 2010. Refereed Proceedings of the Sev-
enth International Conference on Music Theory and Analysis, ed. Milos Zatkalik
(Belgrade: Faculty of Music of the University of Arts, 2010), 144-159. Founded
upon these premises, this paper aims to collect more general and in some ways
less formalized observations about harmony in sixteenth-century polyphony.
12
It should be clear by now that my main concern is theoretical and not analyti-
cal: a scalar system can be regarded as the theoretical construct that theorists
can extrapolate from the music of a chosen repertory; in this case, it is a theo-
retical category derived from the analysis of a certain amount of music. This is
precisely the case in the present study. Nevertheless, theory does not necessar-
ily follow analysis, or the compositional process. Many Western composers, at
least since the fifteenth century, may have relied on a given theoretical construct
representing a specific tonal organization, for example a scalar system, from
which they consequently synthesized their own musical structures.
13
Howard L. Wilde, “Towards a New Theory of Voice-Leading Structure in
Sixteenth-Century Polyphony” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, Royal Hol-
loway, 1995).
14
Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz): Volume III of New
Musical Theories and Fantasies, trans. and edited by Ernst Oster (New York:
Longman, 1979).
15
Gallus Dressler, Praecepta musicae poeticae, Manuscript. (Magdeburg, Lan-
deshauptarchiv, 1563), ed. B. Engelke, Geschichtsblätter für Stadtund Land
Magdeburg 49-50 (1914-15): 213-50.
16
My edition of the score, based upon the collection labeled RISM 154520 and pub-
lished in Venice by Girolamo Scotto, is provided in the Appendix to this paper.
17
I have adapted the English translation from “Adrian Willaert and His Circle,
Canzone Villanesche alla Napolitana and Villotte,” p. xxx.
18
For a thorough description of this way of labeling tonal structures, see Rossa-
na Dalmonte and Massimo Privitera, Gitene, canzonette. Studio e trascrizione
delle “Canzonette a sei voci d’Horatio Vecchi” (1587) (Florence: Olschki,
1996), 39-47. The designation of, for example, F-per-bemolle is addressed by
the composer and theorist Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605) with the Italian term
“tuono,” which is possible to translate into English as “key.” The term is widely
employed by Vecchi in his treatise, unpublished in his own time and surviving
only in an apocryphal copy of 1630; see Mostra delli tuoni della musica. Trat-
 CHAPTER THREE 21

tato inedito di Orazio Vecchi, introduction and transcription by Mariarosa Pol-

lastri, Foreword by Paolo Marenzi (Modena: Aedes muratoriana, 1987).
19
“Be-molle” literally means B-flat.
20
At least in this case modal and harmonic strategies (and voice-leading proce-
dures as well) work together; this does not always happen in sixteenth-century
polyphony: see the discussion by Wilde on the open-ended structures and the
ambiguity of modal attribution, especially in pieces composed on cantus prius
facti, examined in Bruno, Theory and Analysis of Harmony, 63-80.
21
A better understanding of these results can be achieved by reading the analy-
ses of three other villanescas by Willaert: Madonn’io non lo so, Vecchie letrose,
and O bene mio, contained in Bruno, Theory and Analysis of Harmony, 187-
249. It is worth noticing that, during the harmonic analysis, the use of Arabic
numerals instead of Roman numerals for chord labeling has been borrowed
from Brown, “Verso una definizione dell’armonia nel sedicesimo secolo.” This
way of labeling chords aims to erase any inference of stability or instability
correlated to tonal harmony of later centuries. In my analysis, Roman numerals
could be reintroduced just at the background level (after Wilde), but they are
not featured at the other structural levels, since determining the relative stabil-
ity or instability of harmonic structures and functions is the main goal of the
research itself. The use of Roman numerals at the background level, neverthe-
less, aims to point out that harmonic functionality is a real feature implied by
the bass line, at least in Willaert’s villanescas. As it can be easily inferred, the
terms “background level” and “structural levels” (and then implicitly “middle-
ground” and “foreground”) have the same meaning as in Schenker’s theory of
musical structure.
22
Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, expanded
edn. (New York: Norton, 1997); Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). The premises contained in Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata Op. 53 “Waldstein,” for example, or Schubert’s piano sonatas
are confirmed in the Romantic music of Liszt, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schu-
mann and Grieg; in Italian operas such as those by Rossini, Donizetti’s (Lucia
di Lammermoor, Part II, Act One), Bellini, Verdi, and through the twentieth
century, for example, in sonata forms of Scriabin, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Ravel
and Bartók. All these composers share a common technique: they still employ
the chord built upon scale degree 5, but they often use it locally, as a cadential
pre-goal before the “tonic” chord. The actual elaboration of the tonal space is
achieved through other harmonic progressions, in which the tritone appears to
be as structural and far-reaching as the fifth-progression.
23
For a starting point on the immense amount of scholarship dealing with math-
ematical proportions in musical structures, see Jonathan D. Kramer, The Time
of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies (New
York: Schirmer, 1988).
22 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

References
Aaron, Pietro. 1998. Trattato della natura et delle cognitioni di tutti gli tuoni
di canto figurato, non da altrui più scritti. Venice: Vitali, 1525. Facsimile
edition by Willem Elders. Utrecht: Musica Revindicata, 1966; chaps. 1-7
translated into English in Oliver Strunk. Source Readings in Music History,
5 vols. Ed. Leo Treitler. New York: Norton, 415-28.
Baroni, Mario, Rossana Dalmonte, and Carlo Jacoboni. 1999. Le regole della
musica. Indagine sui meccanismi della comunicazione. Torino: EDT.
Bausi, Francesco and Mario Martelli. 1993. La metrica italiana: teoria e storia.
Florence: Le Lettere.
Berger, Karol. 1980. Theories of Chromatic and Enharmonic Music in Late 16th
Century Italy. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
Blackburn, Bonnie J. 1987. “On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Cen-
tury.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 40, no. 2, 210-84.
Blackburn, Bonnie J. 2001. “The Dispute about Harmony c. 1500 and the Crea-
tion of a New Style.” In Théorie et analyse musicales, 1450-1650, Actes du
colloque international, Louvain-la-Neuve, 23-25 septembre 1999, edited by
Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans and Bonnie J. Blackburn, 1-37. Louvain-la-
Neuve, Département d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie: Collège Érasme.
Blackburn, Bonnie J., Edward E. Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller, eds. 1991.
A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brown, Howard Mayer. 1965. Instrumental Music Printed Before 1600. A Bib-
liography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, Howard Mayer. 1976. Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music. London:
Oxford University Press (Early Music Series 1).
Brown, Howard Mayer. 1990. “Verso una definizione dell’armonia nel sedi-
cesimo secolo: sui ‘Madrigali ariosi’ di Antonio Barrè.” Rivista Italiana di
musicologia 24, no. 1, 18-60.
Bruno, Luca. “Ercole Bottrigari ‘Chromatista’ teorico e pratico.” 1999-2000.
Thesis, University of Calabria, Italy.
Bruno, Luca. 2008. Theory and Analysis of Harmony in Adrian Willaert’s Can-
zone villanesche alla napolitana (1542-1545). Rende: Centro Editoriale e
Librario dell’UNICAL.
Bruno, Luca. 2010. “Harmony and Text Setting in Adrian Willaert’s Canzone
villanesche alla napoletana (1542-1545).” In Music Theory and Analysis:
Refereed Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Music
Theory and Analysis, edited by Miloš Zatkalik. Belgrade: University of
Arts, 144-59.
 CHAPTER THREE 23

Bruno, Luca. “Ancient Theories of Chromaticism Reduced to Modern Practice

in Ercole Bottrigari’s Il Melone (Ferrara, 1602).” In Parallèles, querelles,
comparaisons. Écrire sur la musique au XVIIe siècle, edited by Theodora
Psychoyou. Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga, Etudes du Centre de musique ba-
roque de Versailles. Forthcoming 2013.
Bruno, Luca. “Improvisational Practice and Harmonic Composition in Mid-
Sixteenth-Century Italy and Spain.” Proceedings from the Medieval and
Renaissance International Music Conference, Barcelona, Spain, July 5-8,
2011, edited by Tess Knighton and Emilio Ros-Fàbregas. Kassel: Reichen-
berger. Forthcoming 2013.
Cardamone, Donna Gina. Preface to Adrian Willaert and His Circle: Canzone
Villanesche alla Napolitana and Villotte, vii-xxiv.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1990. Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der harmonischen
Tonalität. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1968. English trans. by Robert O. Gjerdin-
gen as Studies on the Origin of Harmonic Tonality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Dalmonte, Rossana and Massimo Privitera. 1996. Gitene, canzonette. Studio e
trascrizione delle “Canzonette a sei voci d’Horatio Vecchi” (1587). Flor-
ence: Olschki.
Dressler, Gallus. 2001. Praecepta musica poëtica, MS. Magdeburg: Landes-
hauptarchiv, 1563. Ed. B. Engelke. Geschichtsblätter für Stadt und Land
Magdeburg 49-50 (1914-15): 213-50. Eds. Olivier Trachier and Simonne
Chevalier. Paris: Minerve.
Einstein, Alfred. 1949, 1971.2 The Italian Madrigal. Trans. by Alexander H.
Krappe, Roger H. Sessions and Oliver Strunk. 3 vols. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Haar, James. 1998. “The ‘Madrigale Arioso:’ A Mid-Century Development in
the Cinquecento Madrigal.” Studi musicali 12, no. 1 (1983): 203-19. Re-
print in James Haar. The Science and Art of Renaissance Music. Ed. Paul E.
Corneilson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 222-39.
Haar, James. 1986. Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance,
1350-1600. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Kramer, Jonathan D. 1988. The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporali-
ties, New Listening Strategies. New York: Schirmer.
Lowinsky, Edward E. 1989. “On the Use of Scores by Sixteenth-Century Musi-
cians.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 1, no. 1 (1948): 17-23.
Reprint in Music in the Culture of the Renaissance, and Other Essays, edited
by Bonnie J. Blackburn, II, 797-802. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Lowinsky, Edward E. 1997. Tonality and Atonality in Sixteenth-Century Mu-
sic. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962. Italian
trans. by Massimo Privitera in Musica del Rinascimento. Tre saggi. Lucca:
LIM, 3-115.
24 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

Lowinsky, Edward E. 1981. “Canon Technique and Simultaneous Conception

in Fifteenth-Century Music: A Comparison of North and South.” In Es-
says on the Music of J. S. Bach and Other Diverse Subjects: A Tribute to
Gerhard Herz, edited by Robert L. Weaver, Louisville, KY and New York:
Pendragon, 181-222.
Mangani, Marco. 2001. “Proposta d’un metodo di segmentazione per l’analisi
delle forme vocali minori tra Cinque e Seicento.” In Quaderni di Analitica
2/1, edited by Egidio Pozzi. Supplement of Bollettino di analisi e teoria
musicale 7, no. 2, 99-135.
McKinney, Timothy R. 2001. “Rhetorical Functions of Harmony and Counter-
point in the Theory and Practice of Nicola Vicentino.” In Théorie et analyse
musicales, 1450-1650, Actes du colloque international, Louvain-la-Neuve,
23-25 septembre 1999, edited by Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans and Bon-
nie J. Blackburn, Louvain-la-Neuve, Département d’histoire de l’art et
d’archéologie: Collège Érasme, 293-322.
Meier, Bernhard. Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie. Utrecht: Oos-
toeck Scheltema & Holkema, 1974. English trans. with revision by the Au-
thor edited by Ellen S. Beebe. New York: Broude Brothers, 1988.
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. 1987. Armonia. In Il discorso musicale, edited by Ros-
sana Dalmonte. Turin: Einaudi.
Palisca, Claude V. 1968. “The Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy,” in The Monte-
verdi Companion, edited by Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune, 133-66. New
York: Norton.
Pirrotta, Nino. 1980. “Willaert e la canzone villanesca.” Studi musicali 9, no.
2: 191-217. Reprint in Nino Pirrotta. Scelte poetiche di musicisti, pp. 13-
42. English trans. in Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to
the Baroque: A Collection of Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
(Studies in the History of Music, 1), 1984, 175-97.
Pirrotta, Nino. 1984. Musica fra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Torino: Einaudi.
Pirrotta, Nino. 1987. Scelte poetiche di musicisti. Venezia: Marsilio.
Pirrotta, Nino. 1994. Poesia e musica e altri saggi. Firenze: Discanto.
Pirrotta, Nino and Elena Povoledo. 1969, 1975.2 Li due Orfei. Da Poliziano a
Monteverdi. Torino: Einaudi.
Powers, Harold S. 1981. “Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance
Polyphony.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 34, no. 3 (Au-
tumn 1981): 428-70.
Rivera, Benito V. 1978. “The “Isagoge” (1581) by Johannes Avianius: An Early
Formulation of Triadic Theory.” Journal of Music Theory 22, no. 1, 43-64.
Rivera, Benito V. 1979. “Harmonic Theory in Musical Treatises of the Late
Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” Music Theory Spectrum 1, no.
1, 80-95.
 CHAPTER THREE 25

Rivera, Benito V. 1980. German Music Theory in the Early 17th Century: The
Treatises of Johannes Lippius. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
Rivera, Benito V. 1984. “The Seventeenth-Century Theory of Triadic Genera-
tion and Invertibility and Its Application in Contemporaneous Rules of
Composition.” Music Theory Spectrum 5, no. 1, 63-78.
Rivera, Benito V. 1987. “The Two-Voice Framework and Its Harmonization in
Arcadelt’s First Book of Madrigals.” Music Analysis 6, no. 1, 59-88.
Roig-Francolí, Miguel Angel. 1995. “Playing in Consonances. A Spanish Renais-
sance Technique of Chordal Improvisation.”Early Music 23, no. 3, 461-471.
Rosen, Charles. 1997. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New
York: Norton.
Rosen, Charles. 1995. The Romantic Generation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Schenker, Heinrich. 2001. Der freie Satz. Vienna: Universal, 1935. 2nd edn. edi-
ted by Oswald Jonas. Vienna: Universal, 1956. Trans. Ernst Oster. New
York: Longman, 1979. Reprint Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon.
Vecchi, Orazio. 1987. Mostra delli tuoni della musica. Trattato inedito di Ora-
zio Vecchi. [Modena:] 1630. Introduction and transcription by Mariarosa
Pollastri. Foreword by Paolo Marenzi. Modena: Aedes muratoriana.
Wilde, Howard L. 1995. “Toward a New Theory of Voice-Leading Structure in
Sixteenth-Century Polyphony.” Ph.D. diss., University of London, Royal
Holloway and Bedford New College.
Willaert, Adrian. Canzone Villanesche alla Napolitana di M. Adriano Wigliaret
a quatro voci… Primo libro. Venezia: Antonio Gardane, 1545.
Willaert, Adrian. Madrigali e Canzoni Villanesche. Ed. Helga Meier in Adriani
Willaerti Opera Omnia. Ed. Hermann Zenck, Walter Gerstenberg, Bern-
hard and Helga Meier. 14 vols. [n.p.:] American Institute of Musicology
(Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 3), 1977, XIV, 148-201.
Willaert, Adrian. Le villanesche. Collegio vocale e strumentale Euterpe; Anto-
nio Eros Negri, conductor. Milan: Stradivarius (The Complete Works, vol.
1), compact disc STR 33311, 1993.
Willaert, Adrian and His Circle. 1978. Canzone Villanesche alla Napolitana
and Villotte, edited by Donna G. Cardamone. Madison, WI.: A-R Editions.
Zarlino, Gioseffo. 1999. Le Istitutioni harmoniche. Venezia: Con Privilegio
dell’Illustriss.[ima] Signoria di Venetia, per anni X, 1558. Facsimile ed. of
the 1561 reprint, with an introduction by Paolo Da Col and a foreword by
Iain Fenlon. Bologna: Forni (Bibliotheca Musica Bononiensis II, 39).
Zarlino, Gioseffo. De tutte l’opere del R. M. Gioseffo Zarlino da Chioggia mae-
stro di cappella della serenissima signoria di Venetia... già separatamente
poste in luce; hora di nuouo corrette, accresciute, et migliorate, insieme ri-
stampate, il primo volume contenente l’Istitutioni harmoniche... Il secondo
26 TOWARD A THEORY OF HARMONY IN THE RENAISSANCE

volume contenente le Dimostrationi harmoniche... Il terzo i Sopplimenti

musicali… Il quarto e ultimo volume contenente il Trattato della patientia.
Venezia: Francesco de’ Franceschi Senese, 1589.
Zarlino, Gioseffo. 1983. On the Modes: Part Four of “Le istitutioni harmo-
niche,” 1558. Translated by Vered Cohen. Edited with an Introduction by
Claude V. Palisca. New Haven: Yale University Press.