NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600

NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600
Author(s): Anthony Newcomb

Source: Il Saggiatore musicale, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2015), pp. 5-31
Published by: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki s.r.l.
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Anthony Newcomb
Berkeley
NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600
The broad area covered by my tide concerns the changes occurring

around 1600 brought about in the notation of music by novel formats and
techniques, which in turn affected the function and authority of the notat
ed text. I shall approach this broad area from two directions: first, from the
evolving instrumental ricercar, and, later, from the Roman school of secular
vocal music of the last quarter of the 16th century. In many instances these
two areas overlap, especially in Rome.
The broad area has been the subject of recent conferences or publica
tions: first, by the conference at Bologna mentioned below; second, by a re
cent re-examination of the Roman musical world around 1600 in The Cam
bridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music; third, by a yet more recent
study of this same Roman musical world by Andrew Dell'Antonio; and lasdy
by Claudio Annibaldi and others in a recent volume about Marenzio.1 All of
these studies focus on various aspects of the performance-oriented character
istics of this Roman culture in the decades around 1600.1 want to focus in
stead on some particular notated musical objects in this culture, and on their
function and their authority as text. My focus is on music as read and appre
ciated on the page - not principally as sounding artifact but rather as visual
textual representation of contrapuntal artifice and skill.
The present essay is a revised version of a paper given at a conference sponsored by the Di
partimento delle Arti, Università di Bologna, and «Il Saggiatore musicale» in May 2013: Il com
positore come autore e la musica tra testo e performance nell'Europa della prima età moderna. At
various stages, the essay has benefitted from the advice of Tim Carter, Alexander Silbiger, and
Jane Bernstein.
1 See The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music, ed. by T. Carter and J. Butt, Cam
bridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005 (esp. chap. 2, 3, and 7); A. Dell'Antonio, Listening as
Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2011; Perspectives
on Luca Marenzio's Secular and Devotional Music, ed. by M. Calcagno, Turnhout, Brepols, 2014
(esp. the section entitled "Music and patronage: a debate", pp. 205-261).
6 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
Many of the novel formats and techniques around 1600 are in fact ai
ed at describing, helping to produce, or supporting a performance.2
none have the prescriptive authority and completeness that I propose fo
examples I adduce below. Some are manifestly incomplete, as for exa
the various forms of early basso continuo notation. Some are descri
examples intended to capture and represent, albeit imperfectly or i
pletely, individual styles of performances, whether of singing or playin
Others are designed to produce - and in some rare cases to record
posterity - individual one-time musical events. In all these cases the
as notated on the page may be subjected to several kinds of supplem
tion and variation in the production of a performance. I propose that th
amples on which I focus below are not exclusively or even primarily aim
and to be appreciated in performance, and that the notation on the page
complete and prescriptive, representing the essence of the piece, a conc
about which more below.
I thus challenge the widely held view in contemporary musicology th
musical notation around 1600 was largely a loose set of suggestions for a
riety of possible performances - that music at the time was mostly act
little text, and that notation was just a suggestion, perhaps even an aide
moire, toward the realization of an event, a performance. To quote one
sion of this view: «A musical work does not have to be read in order to
it has to be "published"», by which the author here means brought befo
public, performed.3 The contrast here is with literature, and the eviden
the fact of the publication of music in the partbook format, where an o
all polyphonic complex can be read from the separate parts only with d
culty, if at all.
The particular focus of the present study depends on the increasing
of notation in open score as a way of presenting polyphony. And it prop
es a kind of silent reading for some kinds of music. Such silent reading
not strictly equivalent to what scholars call silent reading with respe
verbal texts.4 The application of the various versions of this concept to
sical texts is summarized by Cristle Collins Judd.5 One version that she
poses is possession of the skills necessary to imagine internally the s
as they would occur in real time. I doubt that the public in the high soc
2 See J. Butt, Playing with History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 105-11
3 S. Lorenzetti, Luca Marenzio and the "Paradoxical Act" of Dedicating a Printed Music B
in Perspectives on Luca Marenzio''s Secular Music cit. (here in fn. 1), pp. 235-241: 236.
4 See R. Chartier, The Order of Books (1992), Stanford, Stanford University Press,
p. 17 and the sources referred to therein.
5 See C. C. Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes, Cambridge
bridge University Press, 2000, pp. 3-10.
NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600 7
strata to which I will appeal below had these skills with respect to music. I
doubt even that most professional musicians did this with music. Judd con
trasts this version with «the very different visual and atemporal possibili
ties offered by notational representations in which [readers] could "see"
relationships that they often were not capable of perceiving aurally».6 It is
this latter activity that I am proposing: the ability to recognize and appre
ciate unusual examples of musical artifice in the notation on the page. Tim
Carter proposes a similar kind of thing for a much simpler sort of music:
«The score format of most [early seventeenth-century] monody prints did
indeed permit the leisurely contemplation or study of a composer's works
in ways not possible with partbooks - these songs need not be realized in
or through performance, or scored up or intabulated, to get the measure of
their achievement».7
On the way to considering the function and effect of open score, one
must go through a series of preliminary steps, which I will only mention here.
Most of them have been worked through extensively elsewhere,8 and I shall
not rehearse the reasoning behind these steps here.
As a first step, I accept as fact that there was in the Cinquecento the con
cept of a musical work - an entity in some sense stable and repeatable inde
pendently of the composer and of a particular performance culture and of
a single instance of sounding presentation. But that does not mean that the
notation of all works, and not even all canonic masterworks, had the kind of
fixity and prescriptive authority that I propose for the particular works dis
cussed below.9
As a second step, I will assert that there was, within the various gener
ic subcultures of a musical culture at a given place and time, a balance be
tween what Michael Talbot has called «composer-centredness» on the one
hand, and «performer-centredness» on the other, and that this varies accord
6 Ibid., p. 4.
7 T. Carter, Printing the "New Music", in Music and the Cultures of Print, ed. by K. van Or
den, New York, Garland, 2000, pp. 3-37: 18.
8 For a summary, see J. Butt, The Seventeenth-Century Musical "Work", in The Cambridge His
tory of Seventeenth-Century Music cit. (here in fn. 1), pp. 27-54.
9 The various manipulations to which pieces from Arcadelt's First Book for four voices were
subjected would be a case in point. I am reminded of the moment in the prima parte of Doni's Dia
logo della musica when Grullone comments on a piece that takes the Canto of Arcadelt's «II bianco
e dolce cigno» and puts under it three new voices and three new texts, incidentally removing the
most characteristic detail of this piece, for modern minds at least, the E-flat on piangendo. (Doni's
operation foreshadows Lodovico Balbi's Musicale esercitio of nearly fifty years later.) I quote Doni's
Grullone: «Vedete che si può fare della musica quel che l'uom vuole: e vi farò vedere che, tolto via
il volere far bene, una cosa si può rimestare per tutto» (A. F. Doni, Dialogo della musica, Venice,
Scotto, 1544, fo. 1 Ir, quoted from the modem edition: Id., Lopera musicale, ed. by A. M. Monte
rosso Vacchelli, Cremona, Athenaeum Cremonense, 1969, p. 110).
8 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
ing to genre within the same time and place.10 His examples are draw
the early 19th century, another instance, like that around 1600, of t
section of performance culture and a burgeoning print culture. Close
century, I think of Martha Feldmans essay Authors and Anonym
mans is a study of the fading of anonymity and the rise of attribut
textual authority in the madrigal print culture as one moves from t
and 1540s into the second half of the century. As the century progres
madrigal - and not only the madrigal - became increasingly a compos
tered culture, clearly under the pressure of print. But neither comp
teredness nor even the concept of the 'great composer', the indiv
nius, in themselves necessarily entail the prescriptive authority of no
the sense that I will assert it.
As a third step, I adduce an important component of this concept
prescriptive authority of notation - namely the matter of musical esot
the difficulty of access, of the artificioso in certain genres of music. T
no means new to the late 16th century, of course.12 However, the in
presence and prestige of the artificioso in late 16th-century culture
thing that critics in the various arts have long recognized and somet
which I return below. The authority of notation at this time is conn
the artificioso, the highly worked, the esoteric. And the artificioso
nected to the written, as distinguished from the improvised.13
10 M. Talbot, The Work-Concept and Composer-Centredness, in The Musical Work:

Invention?, ed. by M. Talbot, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2000, pp. 168-186.
11 See M. Feldman, Authors and Anonyms: Recovering the Anonymous Subject in Ci
Vernacular Objects, in Music and the Cultures of Print cit. (here in fn. 7), pp. 163-199.
12 C. Dahlhaus, Musik als Text, in Dichtung und Musik, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 197
28, and W. Seidel, Werk und Werkbegriff, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellsc
pp. 96-98, both point out the long tradition of the prestige and authority of notation of v
terial in the Middle Ages, which was located in religion and Scripture, and the concom
there of the mysterious, access to which was reserved for the few. Music was chronolo
hind in this, they posit, but the tendency in late medieval music toward the notational
the esoteric, and the not-directly-perceptible is evidence, they assert, of the emergence at
of the idea of some music primarily as notated text, and of the power and authority of n
lying in the mystery of the complex notation, which must be interpreted by the musical
to speak, the highly skilled professional.
13 For this distinction and this connection, see especially G. Gerbino, Canoni ed enigm
Torre d'Orfeo, 1995 (esp. chap. 3, pp. 33-43); and M. Prtvitera, Introduction to A
Madrigali, mottetti e ricercari (1603), ed. by M. Privitera, Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 20
che rinascimentali siciliane», 21), pp. DC-xxxvni: ix-xx. Falcone distinguishes between «
all'improviso e senza cartella» and things composed «in un secondo momento» and «
tempo e studio ... a bell'agio» (p. xvi). See also L. Zacconi, Prattica di musica, Venice
1622, p. 163: «Io ho avuto sol mira (come si vede) di far un buon contrappuntista alla m
la cui professione poi ne nasce un buon compositore», quoted in Gerbino, Canoni ed en
p. 38. On the cartella (erasable tablets) and their use in composition, see J. A. Owens,
at Work, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, chap. 5, pp. 74-107.
Linked up with these issues of genre, or even subgenre, and esoterica is

the fundamental question of the degree to which the identity or value of the
piece is located in those elements of music - in this instance, primarily pre
cise relative pitch and rhythmic relations - that are specified in the notation.
Dahlhaus remarked that the decision as to whether or in what degree the no
tated part of a piece of music is the essential part belongs to the most diffi
cult decisions with which a historian can be confronted.14
With these three ideas - the work concept, an increasingly composer
centered sub-culture, the contemporary prestige of the artificioso and esoter
ic - as premise, I shall return to the matter of one particular example of the
unusual or non-traditional functions that musical notation was called upon
to perform around the turn of the Seicento: the increasingly frequent presen
tation of complex polyphony as a visually readable object on the page using
the format of open score.15
This was not the only function of the various kinds of score notation
at the time. Various designs were attempted across the end of the 16th cen
tury to provide some sort of summary of the individual parts of especially
many-voiced polyphony to aid the keyboard player in accompanying perfor
mances, or sometimes in replacing parts for which no musicians were avail
able. This accompanimental function is one to which several versions of score
notation were adapted at the time.16
It is another, different function of score notation that interests me here,
one which is exemplified by one of the earliest instances of the presenta
tion of polyphony in printed open score: Gardano's publication in 1577 of
Tutti i madrigali di Cipriano di Rore a quattro voci spartiti et accomodati per
sonar d'ogni sorte d'instrumento perfetto, e per qualunque studioso di con
14 «So gehört demgegenüber die Entscheidung, ob oder in welchem Grade der notierte Teil
eines Stücks Musik der wesentliche ist, zu den schwierigsten, mit denen ein Historiker konfron
tiert werden kann»: C. Dahlhaus, Was heißt Improvisation, in Improvisation und neue Musik,
Mainz, Schott, 1979, pp. 9-23: 12. W. Wiora, Das musikalische Kunstwerk, Tutzing, Schneider,
1983, p. 137, distinguishes between «the Gehalt (essence, substance) of the musical work and its
Daseinsform (form or mode of existence, for example in society)», cit. in R. Strohm, Looking Back
at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical Work-Concept, in The Musical Work cit. (here in fn.
10), pp. 128-152: 137. B. Bujic, Notation and Realization: Musical Performance in Historical Per
spective, in The Interpretation of Music, ed. by M. Krausz, Oxford, Clarendon, 1993, pp. 129-140:
137, distinguishes between what he calls the "pragmatic" and the "ontological" dimensions of a
composition. Neither is explicit about how one goes about separating the two. For a rare exam
ple of a contemporary document seeming to mention the concept of the essence of a piece and
the possibility of violating it, see also the quote from Tiburzio Massaino's organ part of 1607 quot
ed in fn. 26 below.
15 See R Judd, The Use of Rotational Formats at the Keyboard, Ph.D. diss., Oxford, Christ
Church College, 1988, pp. 88-93, where Table 3.3 ("The format of Italian keyboard prints, 1511
1701") makes this especially clear.
16 See ibid., pp. 129-133.
10 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
trapunti}1 Here one function of the notation in open score - an e

and complicated format for the printer - is to offer the reader obje
fied models of refined contrapuntal art without text to be studie
preciated on the page.18
Relevant as part of this function is the issue of some genres of m
passing from "practice" to "object".19 An important example is that
notated liturgical organ music (for example, Girolamo Cavazzoni vers
hymns of 1543) objectifying (post facto) an improvisational practice, an
post-1540 Venetian ricercar as originating in organists' practice of imp
counterpoint on sacred or liturgical cantus firmi (for example, Anni
dovano's ricercar VII of 1556 on «Salve Regina»).20 As practice became
in notation and print, the degree of complexity and artifice of these
and ricercars increased, and they became divorced from the original s
more object than practice. I believe this is the case with many of the
cercars on which I will focus below. Many, eventually most of these ri
or fantasie from the decades around 1600 are presented - or at least pr
- in open score (see fn. 15 above). During this period, format and fun
teracted and stimulated each other to produce a new and distinctive k
piece, whose essential elements are presented in the notation on the p
are on the margin of what can be communicated or perceived in perfo
The earliest examples of this kind of piece appear in the 1560s and
with the works of the Ferrarese court organists Jacques Brumel and
sco Luzzaschi, the latter of whom published at least three books of r
only one of which survives in a manuscript open score dated 1578.21
pieces began systematically to display the techniques of thematic ma
tion that we now associate with the academic manifestations of the s
17 This and the companion volume of French chansons - which did not have the designa
qualunque studioso di contrapunti» - were two of the only three publications to issue from
presses that year, as opposed to a more normal count of twenty to thirty per year. Had the
ravaged Venice in the previous months decimated Gardano's work force, leaving him with
to work out for himself the highly specialized task of the alignment of the four parts in op
18 On the challenges for the printer of open score format, see item D. 10 in the Appen
in p. 30) to the present article.
19 Butt, Playing with History cit. (here in fn. 2), p. 116 and fn. 56, citing R. C. Wegm
Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 1450-1
nal of the JAMS», XL, 1987, pp. 409-479. See also J. Samson, The Musical Work and N
Century History, in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, Cambridge,
University Press, 2002, pp. 3-28.
20 See G. Cavazzoni, Intabolatura d'organo, cioè recercari, canzoni, himni, magnifica
B. V. [Bernardino Vitali?], 1543; A. Padovano, Il primo libro de' ricercati a quattro voci
Gardano, 1556.
21 On Brumel, see The Ricercars of the Bourdeney Codex, ed. by A. Newcomb, Mad
1991 («Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance», 89). Trabaci in his Second Bo
cate of 1615 refers explicidy to Luzzaschi's Third Book of ricercars, now lost. Cf. Fig. 3, her
tico over a century later - rhythmic augmentation and diminution, inversion,

inganno, stretto, motivic variation - manipulations applied to an increasing
ly limited number of imitative fragments, often all presented at the outset of
the piece. The style and its challenges were then enthusiastically picked up
by Giovanni de Macque, organist and composer in the Ferrarese-connected
circle in Rome in the later 1570s and early 1580s, by the Gesualdo circle in
Naples from the later 1580s onward, and by Ascanio Mayone and Giovan
ni Trabaci, Neapolitan followers of Luzzaschi and Macque, and Girolamo
Frescobaldi, a pupil of Luzzaschi, in the early 1600s.22
Much of the pitch content of the individual voices of these Ferrare
se-Roman-Neapolitan ricercars is highly determined by a rigorous if im
plicit set of verbally definable rules governing the variations to which a lim
ited set of melodic materials could be subjected. Yet, because of voice cros
sings and overlappings, the melodic design of the individual voices of these
pieces, in inversions, inganni, rhythmic augmentations, and so on, are often
not presentable or perceptible to a listener in performance on the keyboard,
for which they were purportedly written. (See especially the end of item
A.4 and item A.5 in the Appendix to this essay) All of these composers were
organists by profession - Luzzaschi presented himself as such even on the
title pages of his madrigal books. It is significant that many of these pieces
come down to us, whether printed or in manuscript, in open score, where
their contrapuntal artifice can be studied and appreciated, as opposed to
in Italian keyboard tablature, where the individual voices are distributed
across two staves per system, as they would be played by the two hands - an
easier and more convenient form for the keyboard player and one that used
considerably less paper.
I have proposed that the increasing use of open score for this kind of
pieces stimulated the increasing complexity of contrapuntal artifice that can
be read from the page in open score. This complexity in turn affects the pre
scriptive authority of the musical elements presented in readable form by the
notation on each page. To modify or add to or subtract from the notated el
22 Frescobaldi, a native of Ferrara who proudly proclaimed himself a pupil of Luzzaschi, is an

example of a composer of pieces presenting two of the novel functions proposed above (performer
ly style and composerly artificio). See also J. Ladewig, Luzzaschi As Frescobaldi's Teacher: A Little
Known "ricercare", «Studi musicali», X, 1981, pp. 241-264. Gesualdo also belongs to this school.
His admiration for Luzzaschi is well documented: see, for example, A. Newcomb, Gesualdo's Luz
zaschi - «D'ogni altro si burla», in La musica del Principe, ed. by L. Curinga, Lucca, LIM, 2008, pp.
219-229. Three lengthy ricercare by the twenty-year-old Gesualdo were published in a 1586 book
of ricercare dedicated to Gesualdo by his teacher Macque, the Tenor partbook of which has recent
ly returned to public accessibility in the collection of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.
Although the ricercare by Gesualdo can scarcely be reconstructed from the single Tenor partbook,
the recovered partbook tells us that the ricercare by Macque in manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazio
nale, Magi. XIX, 106bis, date from 1586 or before.
12 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
ements on the page would threaten to destroy the identity and value of
piece - see the passages quoted in the Appendix, items A.3-5.
The examples of works from the late 16th century that I include in thi
egory are to be found in a particular subgenre of ricercar and madrigal
ing from centers with highly developed, exclusive, and self-consciously es
ic musical culture. My primary instances are from the court of Ferrara in
later 16th century, from some Roman circles in the late 16th and early
century, and from the Gesualdo circle in or near Naples in those same yea
With this background, my argument is as follows:
(2) A certain genre of piece in the decades around 1600 was used for a
perhaps designed primarily for study and appreciation of its musical-tec
cal artifice as embodied in the elements notated on the page. It could be
was used as the basis for study on the page and for intellectual, academi
cussion - an activity similar to what we would call analysis.23 Realization
performance may not even have been a primary consideration for some
amples. See items A.l-6; B.l, 3-4; C.5 in the Appendix.
(2) Notation in open score format was a frequent sign of such a piece
was the preferred way of presenting this genre of piece.24 This is in sp
the fact that it was both difficult for the printer to set up and wasteful
per, the most expensive single part of a print at this time, because of the
ing rates of motion in the various voices. Note particularly the stress on
ing, on approaching the music through the eyes in items A.2-3, 6 and 8,
D.5-7 of the Appendix. The presentation in open score lays the contr
tal artifice before the eyes of all those who can understand the rudimen
musical notation. See Appendix, A.l-5; B.l, 3-4; C.5. See Fig. 1-3 from
baci's Secondo libro de ricercate of 1615 (here on pp. 14-16), where exam
of such artifice are listed separately in an initial Tavola (Fig. 1) and poin
out in addition on the page of the score (Fig. 2 and 3).
(3) Knowledge about and recognition and appreciation of mus
technical novelty and artifice as notated on the page was a marker of so
and intellectual prestige for the cultural and social elite of the late 16th
25 See T. Carter, Artusi, Monteverdi, and the Poetics of Modern Music, in Musical Hum
and Its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca, ed. by N. K. Baker and B. R. Hanning,
sant, Pendragon, 1992, pp. 171-194:191f. Carter writes of the broadening of the musical marke
the «reification of the musical work» through print as producing «the need for a critical v
lary through which to explain and evaluate the compositional process. Musical discussion w
be led out of the shadows of arcane mathematics ana technical note-crunching into a world
professionals and amateurs could partake of critical discourse on musical composition and
mance». J. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe,
ton, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 6, makes a similar point about art patronage in th
culture: «Once painting had acquired intellectual trappings, it could be talked about in an i
gent way. Indeed, the ability to do so was taken as a mark of a person's quality».
24 See the items A.4 and D. 1-8 in the Appendix.
early 17th centuries. See Appendix, items A.3-4, 6-7; B.l-4; and D.2.25 The
increasing use of open score notation on the one hand and the increasing
prestige in certain circles of a highly complex and artificioso musical style
on the other reinforced each other to produce some extraordinary musical
documents in the decades on both sides of 1600.
(4) This genre of piece - catering to the cultural elite of the time and
its taste for the new, the difficult, the esoteric - tends to be contrapuntally
and/or harmonically complex, unconventional, and highly worked. As a final
step, I propose as a corollary of this complexity that the pitches and rhythms
of the individual voices specified in the notation of such pieces were for the
time unusually fixed and prescriptive. One could not and did not vary these
elements in performance by such procedures as conflation or subtractions
of voices, extraction of individual voices and/or revision of the contrapun
tal complex without destroying the structure, the very identity of the piece.26
One would not do this to this kind of piece, any more than one would fiddle
with the mechanism of a complicated time-piece in a sophisticated patron's
Kunstkammer ? On the other hand, the looser and less artificioso the coun
terpoint, and the more flexible the attitude toward the inner parts, the more
amenable other sorts of pieces would be to various performing versions.28
25 In the section on patronage in Perspectives on Luca Marenzio's Secular Music cit. (here in
fn. 1), the historian of science M. Bagioli, Between Sign and Symbol: Annibaldi, Marenzio, and the
Patronage of Music, pp. 221-225: 224, citing Annibaldi, notes that «the music produced in the con
text of humanistic patronage marked the social distinction of the patrons by "similarity", that is, by
displaying compositional qualities that paralleled the sophisticated taste of that individual patron».
26 We know very little about how musical notation was actually used in performance. One rare
item of evidence, admittedly of a different kind of piece, that may suggest the idea of preserving or de
stroying the identity of a piece is from an apparently lost Organ-bass part to Tiburzio Massaino's Mu
sica per cantare con l'organo, Venice, Raveri, 1607, quoted in Judd, Use of Rotational Formats cit., II, p.
92f., from O. Rkkeldey, Orgel und Klavier in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts: ein Beitrag zur Geschich
te der Instrumentalmusik, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1910, pp. 223 and 205 fn. 1: «Se ben talvolta
ho udito alcun suonatore che abbia suonato a proposito con questi bassi continuati, ne ho però udito
infiniti che con il loro suonare pieno di mende affatto levano alle composizioni l'aria e l'essere che
gli ha dato il proprio padre» («Even if on occasion I have heard some players who have played prop
erly these bassi continuati, I have nonetheless heard an infinite number who, with their playing hill of
defects, indeed strip away from the compositions the air [i.e., aria] and the essence that their proper
father has given them»; emphasis mine).
27 The notion of the authority and prescriptive nature of the musical elements notated on the
page is closely related to the issue of the concept of the musical work, much discussed and debated
since the appearance of L. Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Phi
losophy of Music, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. The two are, however, quite separable.
Although I believe that the work concept in its strong form - a stable, repeatable entity that circu
lated as such, independent of the composer, of an individual performer, and of a single instance of
sounding presentation - was operative in at least some genres in the 16th century, this point is not
identical to the point I want to make concerning the prescriptive nature of the elements notated on
the page. Once again, I would posit that Rore's «Ancor che col partire» or Arcadelt's «Ancidetemi
pur» existed as works, although their elements as notated in the usual partbook format could be
and were often submitted to various forms of variations and recomposition.
28 In the Bologna conference cited at the beginning of this essay, Etienne Darbellay gave an ex
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bered page [v]: Tavola dei passi e delle cose più notabile [m'c!] (Table of the passages and items
most worthy of notice), giving page and bar numbers in the print.
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Fig. 2 - Giovanni Maria Trabaci, Secondo libro de ricercate (Naples, Carlino, 1615), p. 6,
pointing out the inversions of the first, second and third subjects as they occur on the page.
Pursuant to the third point above, it may be part of the appeal of these
intricate ricercars for the intensely cultivated members in the academies of
the cultural centers from which they came that this was a music that could
be discussed verbally, as an intellectual object. It could be the object of anal
ysis, in the modern sense. See A.7 and all of section B in the Appendix. The
cultural prestige of the genre of the artificioso ricercar is indicated by the fact
that it always is the opening genre in publications with mixed genres, such as
Trabaci's and Mayone's publications of the early 1600s.29
tensive study of the manuscript, sometimes autograph, versions of passages that appear also in Fresco
baldi's printed works. Many of the passages of, for example, dance pieces appear in distinctly differ
ent versions. But the passages in strict counterpoint, he observed, are always identical in every detail.
29 See C. Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, 2 vols., Florence, Leo
S. Olschki, 1952-68, 1603*, 1603c, 1609/, 1615c.
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pointing out the generic ancestry of his ricercars by noting the bo
Luzzaschi's now lost Third Book of ricercars.
One should note also that the less contrapuntally rigorous and artifi
ciosi ricercars of the Venetian school - those of Claudio Merulo, Andrea Ga
brieli, Sperindio Bertoldo - come down to us in Italian keyboard tablature,
often with substantial written-out diminution, especially at cadences. As Alexan
der Silbiger has said, Italian keyboard tablature is a format in which «no at
tempt was made to clarify the voice leading; the player is merely instructed
when to press the keys».30 On the other hand, the Ferrarese Luzzaschi student
Frescobaldi, from his Fantasie of 1608 through to the Capricci of 1624, the
Canzoni of 1628, and the Fiori musicali of 1635, insisted on the publication
of his contrapuntal pieces in open score.31 See A.2 and D.7 in the Appendix.
The Neapolitans Mayone and Trabaci published their ricercars in open
score (1603-15). All of these are without even cadential diminution. Diruta's
ricercars from the second book of the second part of II tran silvano (1609-10)
are printed in open score as well, and without any ornamentation, unlike the
less contrapuntally elaborate canzoni in the first book, printed in keyboard
tablature with diminutions.
A particularly closely studied example of the contrapuntally complex
and artifice-laden kind of piece that concerns me is the book of Fantasie
published and printed in open score by the young Frescobaldi in 1608. Clau
dio Annibaldi in a pair of articles has examined closely their place in Fresco
baldi's biography and in the world of elite cultural patronage of music in
Rome around 1600.32 1 take his study to demonstrate virtually all of the four
points in my argument given above. In the first article he talks, on the one
hand, of the musical accademie hosted by Francesco Borghese, the broth
er of Pope Paul V (elected in May 1605) and the dedicatee of Frescobaldi's
Fantasie, and, on the other, of the characteristic search for «il nuovo, il disu
sato, l'inaspettato, l'ammirabile» in the elite culture of the time.33 Annibal
30 A. Silbiger, Is the Italian Keyboard "intavolatura" a Tablature?, «Recercare», III, 1991, pp.
81-101: 83. He later remarks that «tablature addresses the fingers of the players rather than their
musical understanding» (p. 93). Examples of ricercare printed in keyboard tablature are: Sarto
ri, Bibliografia cit., Merulo 1567, 1605h\ Gabrieli 1595&, 1596c, 1605/; Padovano 1604c; Sperin
dio 1591c.
31 The use of open score for keyboard pieces at the time is surveyed in J. Ladewig, The Use
of Open Score As a Solo Keyboard Notation in Italy, in A Compendium of American Musicology, ed.
by E. A. Arias, S. M. Filler, W. V. Porter and J. Wasson, Evanston, Northwestern University Press,
2001, pp. 75-91. Ladewig may miss some interesting examples of early printed open scores by con
fining himself to prints for solo keyboard alone.
32 See C. Annibaldi, Frescobaldi's Early Stay in Rome (1601-1607), «Recercare», XIII, 2001,
pp. 97-124, and Frescobaldi's "Primo libro delle fantasie a quattro" (1608): A Case Study on the In
terplay between Commission, Production and Reception in Early Modern Music, ibid., XIV, 2002,
pp. 31-63.
33 Annibaldi, Frescobaldi's Early Stay cit., p. 118 and fn. 46; Annibaldi is quoting from an ora
tion in praise of Torquato Tasso from the late 1590s.
18 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
di points out the «new, unusual, unexpected and admirable» in the ou

arrangement of the fantasie-, four groups of three fantasie respectiv
on one, two, three and four subjects, thus with an underlying idea o
al saturation of the texture by increasing the number of obbligato par
the second article, Annibaldi gives significant evidence of the impor
musical technical sophistication as a social marker and an element
tige for the highest ranks of Italian society at the time. He sees thre
ular features of the Fantasie - the score format, the contrapuntal co
ity, and the overall shape of the publication referred to above - as ev
that «the first listeners of the Fantasie a quattro could infer their con
to Francesco Borghese's rank simply from their ability [that of the lis
to display a technical sophistication matching the fastidious tastes th
regarded as a privilege of the upper classes».35 In his detailed analyse
contrapuntal artifice of the fantasie, Annibaldi must rely on the pre
ments of the notation on the page: «By analyzing the score of Fresco
Fantasie a quattro looking for the traces left there by their compositi
demanding audience of musicians and connoisseurs, we have treat
piece of documentary evidence in its own right».36 Although he stre
assertion by Frescobaldi in his dedication of the Fantasie to Franc
ghese that the composer had «caused him [Borghese] to hear them as
on the keyboard» («nel suono de' tasti le feci udire»), Annibaldi als
that «no-one approaching the Fantasie "nel suono de' tasti" (as F
Borghese and his guests did around 1607) could be attracted by t
ties recognizable only with the score in hand» (Appendix A.4).37
34 See ibid. The idea of 'thematic density' or 'saturation' was not in itself novel in
genre of ricercare. The ricercare of both Mayone and Trabaci published in 1603 feature
and four subjects, all presented at or near the opening of each piece. If my speculative a
the Regensburg manuscript ricercare to Macque is correct, Macque may well have been
of this kind of piece. See A. Newcomb, When the "stile antico" Was Young, in Atti de
gresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia, ed. by A. Pompilio, D. Restani, L. Bian
Gallo, Turin, EDT, 1990, III, pp. 175-181. (We now know that the manuscript ricerc
ence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magi. XIX, 106bis are identical with those by Ma
ed in Rome in 1586, since the Tenor partbook of the 1586 print has shown up at the B
zionale in Florence.) Two manuscript ricercare for three and four subjects, whose orig
ing claims that they are from an undated Macque Libro 2J", are printed in modern edition
Macque, Opere per tastiera, II, ed. by A. Carideo, Colledara, Andromeda, 2002. The p
Luzzaschi's Second Book of ricercare, probably dating from 1578, use multiple subjects,
subjects are usually presented in successive sections. We do not know what the pieces f
schi's Third Book of ricercare, to which reference is made by Trabaci (see Fig. 3 above)
35 Annibaldi, Frescobaldi's "Primo libro delle fantasie a quattro" cit., p. 35.
36 Ibid., p. 50. By this I take Annibaldi to mean that the musical notation has the ki
cision and fixity of notation of a historical verbal document.
37 Annibaldi stresses the fact that Frescobaldi in his dedication represents Borghese
heard the Fantasie «nel suono de' tasti», that is, as performed music. I would add only t
baldi also stresses they were played for Borghese by him, the author («quell'onore che
The final step in my argument will be to include the avantgarde madri

gals coming from these same cultural centers among the pieces whose nota
tion was complete, fixed, and prescriptive, and whose complex and detailed
contrapuntal structures were the object of study and admiration on the page
in open score. Clearly I will not go so far as to maintain, as I have for some
of the previous ricercars and fantasie, that many of the essential elements of
these pieces were not perceived or could not be perceived in performance.
The individuation of the singers' voices, as opposed to presentation by a key
board instrument, would help to prevent this. But I will want to maintain
that their complex and unconventional pitch structures entail a high degree
of prescriptive fixity and authority for the notation. It is significant that one
of the first printed scores we have from this era is the print of 1577 of the
four-voice madrigals of Cipriano de Rore (for Monteverdi the parent of the
seconda pratica), scored and accommodated, the tide page announces, not
only for the convenience of keyboard players, but also for «qualunque stu
dioso di contrapunti». The pieces, deprived of their verbal text, were pre
sented for the benefit of every student of counterpoint as exercises in pure
ly musical design, a design made visible and accessible to the reader on each
page of this publication.
Thanks to the survival of letters by the Ferrarese musician and courtier
Alfonso Fontaneiii who was sent in 1594 to meet Gesualdo and accompany
him on the later stages of his journey from Naples to Ferrara to marry one of
the Este princesses, we know that Gesualdo carried with him his latest mad
rigals in open score, in order to make evident to his viewers the contrapun
tal artifices therein and to cause them to marvel at them. See item A.6 in the
Appendix. To quote Fontaneiii, «espone le cose sue partite a tutti per indurli
a meraviglia dell'arte sua».38 It is certainly no coincidence that another of the
chi si son degnati di far più volte alla mia mano»). The important fact here is not so much that they
were played as that they were played by Frescobaldi, the author. Frescobaldi stresses this in the
dedication because of the additional prestige that came from the fact that the author had thus pre
sented the pieces to Borghese in person. Thus the insistence on the «suono de' tasti» and «la mia
mano» in the dedication. Brian Richardson, talking of contemporary literature, points out that to
receive what he calls «author publication» was particularly prestigious, because «in the publication
conventions of the time, access to "new" material was particularly highly valued, because it meant
that its recipient had been chosen by the author as a privileged first reader [and hearer] and diffus
er»: Br. Richardson, "Recitato e cantato": The Oral Diffusion of Lyric Poetry in Sixteenth-Century
Italy, in Theatre, Opera, and Performance in Italy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present, ed. by
Br. Richardson, S. Gilson and C. Keen, Egham, Society for Italian Studies, 2004, pp. 67-82: 74. The
category of "author publication" comes from H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century
England, Oxford, Clarendon, 1993, pp. 46-54. As for Francesco's role as diffuser, he is the diffuser
both by (presumably) offering the Fantasie from Frescobaldi's fingers to the privileged guests at his
musical accademie and by accepting the dedication to him by Frescobaldi of the print.
58 The complete italian text of the letters is in N. Pirrotta, Gesualdo, Ferrara e Venezia, in Stu
di sul teatro veneto fra Rinascimento ed età barocca, ed. by M. T. Muraro, Florence, Leo S. Olschki,
1971, pp. 305-319.
20 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
rare prints of madrigals in open score is that put together in 1613 by t

noese Simone Molinaro of Gesualdo's six books of five-voice madrigals (t
time complete with their poetic texts). See item D.5 in the Appendi
also item C.6 in the Appendix, a contemporary score of Marenzio's c
puntally audacious Ninth Book of 1599, with the harmonic and contr
tal anomalies marked with asterisks.
Although we have very little direct evidence as to how performers u
notated sources at this time, I propose that this very artifice and comple
and the evidence of its appreciation as such, suggests for the notation of
kind of piece coming from these cultural and musical environments an
usual degree of prescriptive authority. The essence of these pieces w
bodied in the precise rhythmic interaction and voice-leading of the indi
al parts. To vary or manipulate this notated detail would invalidate the na
and purpose of the music.
What I have called this subgenre of the musical madrigal was a vir
ly consistent compositorial choice for Gesualdo. It was not so for those w
wrote only occasionally in this style, for example, for the Romans Mare
or Giovanni Maria Nanino. That the particular cultural destination, or lo
of patronage for which one was writing was an important factor here i
dicated by the case of Marenzio, in the later 1590s especially. When writ
in Book Eight of 1598 dedicated to Ferrante Gonzaga, whose theatri
oriented cultural tastes have been outlined in studies by Marco Bizzarini
Marenzio wrote either a kind of proto-theatrical, chordal cantar reci
(using texts from pastoral dialogs or plays) or a kind of texturally simp
mophonic song, both of which kinds of pieces could be performed for f
individual singers, for a mixture of singers and instrumentalists with m
than one to a part, or for solo voice with melodic or chordal instrument
instruments summarizing the inner parts. Especially the simple homoph
songs would seem to cry out for improvised melodic and even rhythmic
namentation and variation. Indeed a version of two of the song-like m
gals from Book Eight appears the next year slightly rewritten as an "aria
four voices in Canzonette, arie e madrigali a 3 et a 4 voci of 1599 by Ott
Bargnani (Venice, Amadino), where each is called Aria a 4 del Marenzio.40
But when Marenzio turns in the Ninth Book of 1599 to write for an
center of the cultivation of the avantgarde, expressive madrigal such as
tua in the 1590s (the Ninth Book is dedicated to Margherita Gonzaga
39 See M. Bizzamni, Luca Marenzio: The Career of a Musician between the Renaissance an
Counter-Reformation (1998), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, and Id., I!ultimo Marenzio: tipologie
mittenza e di ricezione, in Studi marenziani, ed. by I. Fenlon and F. Piperno, Venice, Fond
Ugo e Olga Levi, 2003, pp. 67-87.
40 See Bizzarini, Luca Marenzio cit., p. 70 fn. 24.
widowed Duchess of Ferrara and the sister of Duke Vincenzo of Mantua),

many of the madrigals use an entirely different, harmonically, rhythmically,
and contrapuntally highly complex style whose pitch and rhythmic relations
cannot be altered without destroying the intricate design of the piece. And he
explicitly emulates and carries to further elaboration one of the greatest early
products of this school of esoteric, texturally complex art-work: Rore's setting
from his second four-voice book (1557) of Petrarch's sestina stanza «Crudele,
acerba, inexorabil morte», a piece from the earliest stages of a cultural-musi
cal tradition that I propose relied to an exceptional degree - for the time - on
fixity in notation (and one that was included in the open score print of 1577
to which I have referred above).41 See items C.4-6 in the Appendix.
Giovanni Maria Nanino, the putative author of or impulse behind some
of the most striking examples of contrapuntal artifice from the decades
around 1600,42 was also the author of some of the most texturally sim
ple and transparent (and most often reprinted) pieces of the time, where ario
sità and harmonic clarity are the essence of the piece. Nanino himself gave an
example of how freely one could vary and manipulate the texture of such
pieces by arranging his oft-anthologized five-voice setting of Petrarch's «Era
no i capei d'oro» (from his First Book for five voices of the early 1570s) as a
three voice-canzonetta published in 1593.43 Nanino's example demonstrates
41 The major emulations of Rore's setting in Marenzio's setting of «Crudel, acerba, inesorabil
morte» are given below. Details are keyed to the setting of lines 1 through 6 of Petrarch's poem,
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, no. 332, stanza 2, and to the following modern editions of the music:
C. de Rore, Madrigalia 3-8 vocum, in his Opera omnia, ed. by B. Meier, IV, Rome, American Insti
tute of Musicology, 1969 («Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae», 14), p. 80f.; L. Marenzio, Il nono li
bro de' madrigalia cinque voci (1599), ed. by P. Fabbri, Milan, Suvini Zerboni, 2000, pp. 100-104.
Both settings are in transposed phrygian mode, Marenzio's down one fifth to A, Rore's down two
fifths to D. Line 1: Marenzio's ascending and descending minor sixth (Tenor and Bass) echo Rore's
ascending major sixth (Canto and Tenor). Marenzio's Canto picks up Rore's Alto and Basso. Both
settings go into the sharp realm before a phrygian cadence on A. Line 2: Marenzio's Canto (bars
8-10) picks up the cadential diminished third of Rore's Canto. Line 3: both go far into the sharp
realm; both use a texture of answering duets; Marenzio's Canto and Basso are similar in contour
to Rore's Canto and Alto. Line 4: Rore's shocking triply transposed phrygian cadence on G for the
first half of the line (bars 62-63) is if anything exceeded in shock value by Marenzio's chromatic os
cillation between minor second and major second in the lowest voice of the cadences in bars 21-24.
Line 5: the contour of Marenzio's Canto for both the first half (bars 29-32) and the second half of
the line (bars 33-34) are the same as Rore's (bars 67-69, 70-72, remembering that Rore's note val
ues are halved in the edition). Typically Marenzio's contrast of tempo for the second half of the line
is greater than Rore's. Line 6: Marenzio takes the La-Sol-Fa-Mi of Rore's subject for «duro martir»
(bars 79-82), gives it a descending two-note upbeat, and doubles it at the upper and lower third.
42 See D. Sabaino, Aspetti della teoria contrappuntistica e della didattica della composizione nel
la Roma del Giovannelli: i precetti teorici manoscritti attribuiti a Giovanni Maria e Bernardino Na
nino (note storico-filologiche e nuove attribuzioni), in Ruggero Giovannelli: «musico eccellentissimo
e forse il primo del suo tempo», ed. by C. Bongiovanni and G. Rostirolla, Palestrina, Fondazione
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, 1998, pp. 363-387.
43 See G. M. Nanemo, Complete Madrigals, ed. by Chr. Boenicke and A. Newcomb, I, Middle
ton, A-R, 2012, pp. xxv-xxvn, 12-17,125-128, and 167 for both versions of the piece.
22 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
that the Roman secular music culture of the time was stylistically mult
ious, one might almost say bifurcated. The same people who wrote the m
artificioso contrapuntal pieces in what I take to be fully prescriptive nota
also wrote pioneering examples of the lighter madrigals, madrigalett
canzonette of the last quarter of the century, pieces whose notation mig
suggest various kinds of performing arrangements.44
Such pieces were examples of how one could modify and simplify
content of certain kinds of pieces (and poetry) for easy consumption by
exalted patrons (or for the same patrons in less exalted settings). They d
onstrate that the question of the fixity of notation and its prescriptive au
ity for (a possible) performance is not one that characterizes whole
nological or geographical cultures, or one that progresses unidirectio
across time. That highly similar phenomena can be found in musica
tures widely separated in time suggests not only reversals of direction a
time, but also drastic differences according to genre and intended audie
within the same musical culture. It is neither profitable nor accurate to
vide musical cultures as a whole into composer-centered or performe
tered ones. Subcultures of both types, usually determined by genre and
subgenre, exist all the way across this spectrum in most if not all West
musical cultures of the past 500 years at least. And there has been over
time no overall linear movement from a performer-centered to a compo
centered culture, but rather a series of zigs and zags, again dependent la
ly on genre, with all its ramifications of function, intended audience, ho
of listener or user expectations.45
APPENDIX46
A. Evidences of a kind of piece understood as an object of study and commenta

(admiration or censure) based on the notation on the page. A corollary was the
phasis placed on the novelty and difficulty, or artifice, of the style as represent
the page. The examples proposed are ricercars and a certain kind of madrigal.
44 See Nanino's Primo libro delle canzonette a tre voci (1593), Marenzio's five books for
voices, variously called villanelle, arie alla napolitano, canzonette alla napolitana (1584-8
Macque's two books for six voices called madrigaletti e napolitane (1581-82), and the many
ogies of three and four-voice pieces published from the mid 1580s onward featuring mainly R
composers (one dedication - RISM 159112 - calls the pieces «queste canzonette romane»),
45 Reinhard Strohm makes the same point in Looking Back at Ourselves cit., p. 150.
46 Emphases added by the author.
Ricercare
1. Trabaci, Secondo libro de ricercate cit., Tavola dei passi e delle cose più notabile
[wc!], giving page and bar numbers, inversions, inganni, etc. See here Fig. 1-3
above; see also Judd, The Use of Rotational Formats cit., II, p. 136: Trabaci's
listed passages, Judd observes, «appear to be purely self-conscious attempts to
demonstrate his skills», i.e., his contrapuntal skills embodied in notation on the
page.
2. G. Frescobaldi, Fiori musicali, Venice, Vincenti, 1635, Al lettore: «sempre ho di
mostrato al mondo con le mie stampe d'intavolatura ed in partitura di ogni sorte
[di] capricci e d'invenzioni dar segno del mio desideroso affetto, acciò che ognu
no vedendo e studiando le mie opre ne restasse contento ed approfittato»
(with my prints in tablature and in score of all kinds of capricci and inventions,
I have given evidence of my desire that everyone seeing and studying my works
might draw therefrom satisfaction and benefit). See also Sartori, Bibliografia
cit., 1635a. (Frescobaldi's Capricci were also in open score, as were his Fantasie
and Ricercari. This passage seems also to call attention to the notational novelty
of the toccatas, in engraved keyboard tablature, another novel "notion of nota
tion" around 1600.)
A number of modern writers have made similar points:
3. S. Durante, On "artificioso" Compositions at the Time of Frescobaldi, in Fre

scobaldi Studies, ed. by A. Silbiger, Durham, Duke University Press, 1987, pp.
195-217: 199f. Such pieces «were in fact composed more to be looked at
and studied than to be performed ... This music was not intended primar
ily for performance but designed for other composers [I would add patrons
as well] capable of recognizing the artifices». Citing F. Braudel, L'Italia fuori
d'Italia. Due secoli e tre Italie, in Storia d'Italia, ed. by R. Ruggiero and C. Vi
vanti, Turin, Einaudi, 1974, II/l: Dalla caduta dell'Impero romano al secolo
XVIII, pp. 2092-2248: 2173, Durante stresses the «supremacy of intellectu
al culture» in the high culture of early 17th-century Italy, in which «the prac
tice of artifice had taken on the character of an intellectual status sym
bol» (p. 205).
4. Annibaldi, Frescobaldi's Early Stay in Rome cit., p. 117, cites the passage from
Vincenzo Giustiniani quoted in B. 1 below as evidence that «the extreme [musi
cal-technical] sophistication which we find so obtrusive [in the Fantasie of 1608]
was instead the ideal of the connoisseurs of music in early seven
teenth-century Rome». In Frescobaldi's "Primo libro delle fantasie a quat
tro" cit., Annibaldi cites this same passage from Giustiniani (the «fondness of
the Roman connoisseurs of the period for "nuove osservazioni e difficili che non
siano a notizia di tutti li musici"») as «evidence in their very structure [of such
pieces] that they were designed for a competent audience» (p. 33f.). This evi
dence, he says, is: score format, contrapuntal style, and overall shape: «no one
approaching the Fantasie "nel suono de' tasti" ... could be attracted by techni
calities recognizable only with the score in hand» (p. 40).
24 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
5. Gerbino, Canoni ed enigmi cit., p. 11, remarks of these Roman col

of the early Seicento: «Denominatore comune resta l'artificiosi
scrittura, la ricerca di costrutti inusitati ed involuti» (the common
nator remains the artifice of the writing, the seeking after unusual and
plicated constructions). He also notes that they are «liber<e> da vin
eseguibilità» {ibid.), «prive di qualsiasi finalità esecutiva»
(free of the constraints of performability; without any kind of aim in
mance).
Madrigals
6. Gesualdo, as reported in a letter of 18 February 1594 by Alfonso Fontaneiii,
«tratta di caccia e di musica e si dichiara professore dell'una e dell'altra. Sopra
la caccia non s'è esteso meco più che tanto, perché non ha trovato da me trop
po rincontro, ma della musica m'ha detto tanto ch'io non ne ho udito altretan
to in un anno intiero. Ne fa apertissima professione ed espone le cose sue par
tite a tutti per indurli a meraviglia dell'arte sua» (He [Gesualdo] talks
about hunting and about music and declares himself master of the one and of
the other. He entered into no long discussion with me about hunting, since he
found no great response on that subject; but about music he told me more than
I have heard in an entire year. He makes no attempt to hide his professionalism
and shows his works in score to everyone to induce them to marvel at his art).
The complete Italian texts of the letters are transcribed in Pirrotta, Gesualdo,
Ferrara e Venezia cit.; this passage is taken from p. 307f. The translation is from
A. Newcomb, Carlo Gesualdo and a Musical Correspondence of 1594, «Musical
Quarterly», LIV, 1968, pp. 409-439: 413f.
7. Angelo Grillo to Claudio Monteverdi, letter of summer 1614 upon receiv
ing a copy of Monteverdi's Sixth Book of madrigals: Grillo reports that «que
sti miei monaci, dopo averlo ruminato ben bene, come che l'opera ricerchi
premeditazione e preparazione» (these monks of mine, after having thought
about it quite thoroughly, since the work requires advance meditation and
preparation), had allowed him to hear some of the madrigals. Grillo con
tinues: «sì come il cuore m'è stato rapito dalla soavità del concento, così l'in
telletto m'è stato ricreato dalla novità dell'artificio. Non è musica da
orecchia popolare, né da popolare ingegno, perché popolare non è la ma
niera, popolare non è l'autore, ma sollevato oltre le vie ordinarie e fuor della
plebe de' musici» (Just as my heart was ravished by the sweetness of the en
semble, so my intellect was stimulated by the novelty of the artifice. This is
not music for the common ear, nor for the common intelligence, because the
style is not common, nor is the author common, but elevated above the or
dinary pathways and beyond the vulgar crowd of musicians; E. Durante - A.
Martellotti, Don Angelo Grillo O.S.B., alias Livio Celiano, Florence, SPES,
1989, p. 461).
8. The reverse side of this idea is embodied in the passage from V. Galilei, Dialo
go della musica antica et della moderna, Florence, Marescotti, 1581, p. 88: «il di
letto che da essi si trae è tutto della vista» (the pleasure that one draws from
[these pieces] is entirely a visual one). Cit. and quoted in A. Einstein, The Ital
ian Madrigal, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1949, p. 235.47
And see section D below.
B. Evidences of the idea of the musical-technical sophistication of the connoisseur

in this culture and of the prestige ascribed there to technical novelty and artifice in
the object.
1. V. Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica (ms., 1620s): «Perché, acciò un'azione

musicale riesca di stima, sarà necessario che sia composta con le proprie e vere
regole di questa professione, anzi di più con nuove osservazioni e diffici
li che non siano a notizia di tutti i musici in generale» (Because, in order that a
piece of music be greeted with esteem, it will be necessary that it be composed
according to the proper and true rules of this profession, indeed, [that it be
composed] with new and difficult techniques, which are not available to all mu
sicians in general). Quoted from V. Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica, ed. by
P. Isotta, in his Discorsi sulle arti e sui mestieri, ed. by A. Banti, Florence, Sanso
ni, 1981, pp. 17-36: 19.48
2. A similar point is made in the dedication of Filippo di Monte's Sesto libro di ma
drigali a sei voci, Venice, Gardano, 1591, to Giacomo Curtis di Senftenau, «Con
signer secreto di S. M. Cesarea et Vicecancelliere dell'Imperio»: «Della musica
47 The passage from Galilei's Dialogo quoted by Einstein bears the marginal heading Altri
abusi di moderni prattici compositori. See the modem edition and translation: V. Galilei, Dialogue
on Ancient and Modern Music, ed. and transl. by CI. V. Palisca, New Haven, Yale University Press,
2003, p. 220. This brief passage does in fact follow closely upon a passage (p. 119) complaining
about «la perfidia particolare delle fughe dritte e reverse che sì frequente et ostinatamente usano, in
quel genere però di contrapunti detti da essi ricercari» (particularly mischievous direct and inverse
fugues that they [i.e., the composers] use so frequently and obstinately in that genre of counter
points called by them ricercari), and about «la troppa osservanza che usano in esse la più parte de'
compositori, non da altra cosa tirati che dall'ambizione» (too strict observance of the imitations that
most composers employ in these fugues, driven more by ambition than anything else; p. 218). And
it follows directly upon a passage that complains about soggetti cavati and abstruse canonic indica
tions. But the passage itself is about a certain kind of what one might call Augenmusik. It reads (p.
119): «Sì fatte invenzioni sono simili a quelli strumenti musici nella fattura de' quali si scorge gran
dissima fatica, diligenza ed industria degli artefici di essi, ma sonati di poi benché da dotta ed eccel
lente mano, rendono i suoni e voci loro rozze ed incomposte, ed il diletto che da essi si trae è tut
to della vista; quantunque l'intenzione degli artefici (se bene l'effetto non sortì secondo il primo in
tendimento) fu principalmente per sodisfazione dell'udito» (Such inventions are similar to the mu
sical instruments in which we detect very great labor, diligence, and industry in their manufacture
by builders but when played even by a talented and exceflent hand, they put out rough and disor
derly sounds and notes. The pleasure we derive from them is entirely in their appearance, despite
the intention of the builders - unless this effect was intended by them in the first place - to make
them principally satisfying to the hearing; p. 220). I do believe that Einstein was correct, however,
in thinking that the comparison to the instruments (it is marked Comparazione in the margin of the
Dialogo) is also meant to apply to the artificioso counterpoint about which Galilei has been talking.
48 For details on the Giustiniani family around 1600, see S. Danesi Squarzina, The Collections
of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, «Burlington Magazine», CXXXIX, 1997, pp. 766-791, and CXL,
1998, pp. 102-118. On the dating of Vincenzo's Discorsi, see in particular CXL, p. 11 If.
26 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
certo, della quale mi pare di poter dire alcuna cosa, vedo che Vostra Sign
lustrissima sente molto gusto e piacere non solo in comporre, quanto le
cupazioni il permettono alcuna cosa per trastullo, ma in ascoltar anco
care i componimenti altrui» (As to music, about which I believe I ca
with some authority [about which I believe I can say something], I see t
Illustrious Lordship takes great delight and pleasure, not only in com
when his occupations allow him some activities for amusement, but also
tening to and in judging the compositions of others). Quoted in S. Loren
Musica e identità nobiliare nell'Italia del Rinascimento, Florence, Leo S. O
2003, p. 193f., where he mistakenly says the dedication is to Monte's Fir
for six voices.49 The complete dedication is printed in G. Gaspari, Catalo
la Biblioteca del Liceo musicale di Bologna, III, Bologna, Romagnoli -
qua, 1893, p. 122f.
3. E. Strainchamps, Theory As Polemic: Mutio Effrem's "Censure ... sopr
libro de madrigali di Marco da Gagliano", in Music Theory and the Explo
of the Fast, ed. by Chr. Hatch and D. W. Bernstein, Chicago, University
cago Press, 1993, pp. 189-216: 195, comments on «the impulse for t
cal analysis and intense (if misguided) scrutiny on the part of musi
dilettantes and intellectuals, perhaps along with a few professiona
cians, that characterized Florentine society of the day». He cites E. C
Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800, Chicago, University of C
Press, 1973, pp. 116-148, in support of this point.
4. Luigi Zenobi, letter (c. 1600): ed. in B. J. Blackburn - E. E. Lowinsk
Zenobi and His Letter on the Perfect Musician, «Studi musicali», XXI
pp. 61-114. Among his requirements (paragraph 5, p. 80) are the poss
both «contrapunto buono» and «contrapunto artifizioso». The first «s
quello che non ammette falsità manifeste, tuttavia d'ordine e di stile non
na bene affatto ma, come si dice, alla buona, ed è apunto come l'aglio
no a mangiare, ma più al gusto de' contadini e de' bastagi che de' cavalier
licati, li quali non restano sempre con gusto fetente. Contrapunto artifiz
chiama quello ch'è fatto o scritto con isquisitezza d'arte, d'ingegno, di giu
e di arte, il che consiste nell'ordine, nella regola e nel modo non cono
non da ingegni spiritosi ed elevati» (Contrapunto buono is that
while it allows no manifest errors, nevertheless does not proceed with s
and style, but, as one says, merely gets along. It is just like garlic, which
to eat but more to the taste of peasants and porters than of gentlemen
icate people, who do not like to remain with an offensive taste. Contrap
tificioso is that which is made or written with exquisite art, ingenuity an
ment. It consists in the order, rule, and manner known only to ingeniou
49 Lorenzetti repeatedly gives evidence that the noble courtier should pass from a
ticipation in music in the younger years to a more passive role as a judge of the excell
sic (e.g., pp. 51, 96, the latter with a quotation to this effect from Castiglione's Libro d
no, book IV, chap. 46).
sublime minds). Translation from Blackburn - Lowinsky, Luigi Zenobi and His
Letter cit., p. 97. As examples he cites Willaert, Rore, and Luzzaschi.
And see items A.3 and A.4 above.
C. The ricercar and the avantgarde madrigal as subjects of academic and/or theoret
ical discourse and study.
1. A. Banchieri, Conclusioni del suono dell'organo, Bologna, eredi di Gio. Rossi,

1609, p. 18f., emphasizes the importance of the study of ricercars in open score
to teach «sicura fantasia agl'organisti, principianti, e nelle chiese ... e nelle ac
cademie, come più piace» (secure facility of invention to organists, beginners,
and those [playing in] churches ... and in academies, as is pleasing there).
See also items A.3 and B.3 above.
A similar point is made by the frequent study and discussion of contrapuntal details
from some late-century madrigals as quoted on the pages of musical treatises. Some
examples among many:
2. G. M. Artusi, L'Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, Venice,

Vincenti, 1600, fos. 39i>-40r, quotes in open score and censures examples from
Monteverdi's «Cruda Amarilli» and «Anima mia perdona».
3. Entire madrigals from M. da Gagliano, Il sesto libro de' madrigali a cinque voci,
Venice, Magni, 1617, are given, also in open score, in the Censure di Mutio Ef
frem sopra il Sesto libro di madrigali di m.re Marco Gagliano of 1623 (cf. item B.3
above), where contrapuntal irregularities are also marked with signs above the
staff.50
4. The so-called l'Ottuso in his response to Artusi, printed in the Seconda par
te dell'Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, Venice, Vincen
ti, 1603, pp. 13-21: 15-18, cites contrapuntal and melodic irregularities in sever
al madrigals from Marenzio's Ninth Book, as well as from Wert's «Misera, non
credea», from his Eighth Book for five voices of 1586.
5. R Cerone, El melopeo y maestro, Naples, Gargano & Nucci, 1613, book 12,
chap. 7, p. 678, quoting a passage from «Chiaro segno Amor pose alle mie
rime» (bars 26-32) from Marenzio's Ninth Book: «Bien considerado, este canto
es mas para mirar y dexar, que para cantar y go^ar» (Upon consideration,
this piece is more to be looked at and put aside than to be performed and en
joyed). In the same passage Cerone also quotes the opening of Wert's setting of
«Solo e pensoso» (from his Seventh Book for five voices of 1581) and levels at
it the same criticism. Earlier in chap. 5 of the same book (p. 669f.) he had quot
50 See Strainchamps, Theory as Polemic cit., p. 200.
28 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
ed other passages from Marenzio's Ninth Book in unbarred 5-voice open

to discuss the «passos muy licenciosos» in them.51
6. A score of Marenzio's entire Ninth Book dated 1630 exists in Siena, B
Comunale degli Intronati, L.V. 34, with the contrapuntal irregularities m
with asterisks, as in example C.3 above.52 Striking is the frequency in t
temporary theoretical literature of quotation of passages from Luca Mar
final book of madrigals (Il nono libro de' madrigali a cinque voci, Ven
dano, 1599) for discussion of contrapuntal detail therein. This book
have become a touchstone for the discussion of notated contrapuntal det
the early decades of the seventeenth century.
7. See also Giovanni Maria Trabaci's proud listing of the Cose più notabi
Tavola of his 1615 Ricercate (A.1 and Fig. 1 above).
D. Open score as the preferred format for the intellectual study of musical-t
detail, both as the way to present such works in notation and as a sign of t
tion and intent of such works.
1. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, letter of 3 March 1570 to Guglielmo

in response to a motet sent by Gonzaga to Palestrina for his comments a
vice: «e per meglio contemplarlo ho partito il motetto e visto il be
fizio lontano del commune» (and in order to study it more satisfactorily
set the motet into score, and have observed its beautiful workmanship,
moved from the common run). Quoted and translations from Owens, Co
ers at Work cit., pp. 292 and 311.
2. Costanzo Porta, letter of 19 January 1585 to Guglielmo Gonzaga send
motetti d'una parte l'uno ed un altro di dui parti, tutto a sei voci» (two m
one of one part and another of two parts, all for six voices): «Così mi è
di spartirli, come ella vedrà, acciò si degni con quell'occhio serenissi
che ella suole risguardar ogni altro atto virtuoso poi facilmente gustarli»
have been pleased to set them into score, as you will see, so that you mi
deign easily to appreciate them with that most serene eye with which y
wont to regard every other virtuous act). Quoted from A. Bertolotti, Ar
relazione coi Gonzaga duchi di Mantova nei secoli XVI e XVII ( 1885), S
gnese, Forni, 1977, p. 118.
3. Several instances from Th. Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to
Musiche, London, Short, 1597, are cited in Owens, Composers at Work ci
Morley says open score is appropriate to show «the excellencie of
position», or to «more easilie perceive the conveiance of the parts».53
51 Reproduced in Marenzio, II nono libro de' madrigali cit., pp. xif. and xxxixf.
52 Ibid., pp. xxmf. and u.
53 Owens comments that Morley «used scores extensively in the portions of his trea
ed to the study of counterpoint and composition, while generally presenting in separate
plete compositions intended to be performed» (ibid.).
4. O. Nantermi, Partito del primo libro delli motetti a cinque voci, Milan, Trada
te, 1606, cit. in Judd, The Use of Rotational Formats cit., II, p. 85f.: «... avendo
dato alle stampe i presenti motetti (primo parto del debil ingegno mio), venghi
a dedicarle la partitura di essi, la quale sì come non serve ad altro che a scoprir
le viscere ed il core d'essi motetti ...» (Having had printed the pres
ent motets - first fruits of my weak wit - I come to dedicate to you the score
of these, since it is useful for nothing else than to reveal the heart [lit. the inter
nal organs and the heart] of these motets). Quoted from Gaspari, Catalogo del
la Biblioteca del Liceo musicale cit., II, p. 469. The dedication to the partitura is
signed by Nantermi on «3 genaro 1601».
5. Partitura delli sei libri de' madrigali a cinque voci, dell'illustrissimo et eccellentiss.
prencipe di Venosa, D. Carlo Gesualdo. Fatica di Simone Molinaro (Genua, Pavo
ni, 1613). See the introduction to the facsimile edition of this print by Elio Du
rante and Anna Martellotti (Florence, SPES, 1987), p. 9: «In quanto alla Partitu
ra di Gesualdo, essa appare manifestamente riservata a un pubblico di studiosi,
ossia ai "candidi amadori dell'armonia" come li chiama Simone Molinaro» (As
for the score of Gesualdo, it appears manifesdy reserved for an audience of stu
diosi, or for the "pure lovers of music", as Simone Molinaro calls them).
6. Zacconi, Prattica di musica cit., parte II, 1. in, chap. 33 and 34 (pp. 161-163),
repeatedly emphasize the importance of the student's putting musical examples
from the best authors into score as a way of learning especially «contrapunti,
fughe ed invenzioni». In chap. 33 he advises the «musico scolare» that he must
seek out the best books by «autori gravi», then «s'affatichi di partirne gli essem
pi» (he must take the trouble to put the examples into score) in order to use
them as the basis for his own instruction and invention. He then begins chap.
34: «Ho detto nel capitolo precedente che lo scolare provistosi de' libri atti a
simil professione partischi quegl'essempi e gl'essamini ben bene» (I said in the
previous chapter that the student, having provided himself with the books prop
er to such a profession, should put those examples into score and examine them
quite thoroughly).
7. Frescobaldi, Fiori musicali cit. (cf. item A.2 above), Al lettore-. «Stimo di mol
ta importanza a' sonatori il praticare le partiture perché non solo stimo
a chi ha desiderio affaticarsi in tal composizione ma necessario, essendo che tal
materia quasi paragone distingue e fa conoscere il vero oro delle virtuose azio
ni da l'ignoranti» (I judge it to be of great importance to players to practice
[i.e., to be able to read] open scores, because I judge [it to be of importance] not
only for those who want to make some efforts in composition, but necessary [for
players], since such material [i.e., open score], like a touchstone, distinguishes
and allows one to recognize the true gold of virtuous actions from the ignorant
ones).
8. D. Mazzocchi, Madrigali a cinque voci, Rome, Zanetti, 1638, dedication: «Ho
stimato bene per maggior commodità di chi se n'ha da servire il mandarli fuora
insieme con la partitura» (I judged it well for the greater convenience of those
who have to use [the print] to issue [the madrigals] together with the score).
The score, he says, «potrà servire anche allo speculativo, che dove non sarà
30 ANTHONY NEWCOMB
conceduto all'orecchie il poterli sentire, non sarà almeno tolto agli

all'intelletto il godere la miglior parte» (will be useful also for the theor
ly minded, since in those instances in which it will not be allowed to th
be able to hear them, it will at least not be impossible for the eyes or for
tellect to enjoy the best part). Quoted from The Madrigals of Michelang
si, ed. by B. Mann, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002 («Monume
Renaissance Music», 10), p. 12 fn. 15.
9. S. Bonini, Discorsi e regole (ms., c. 1650), ed. by M. A. Bonino, Provo,
Young University Press, 1979, p. 155: in speaking of «il signor Girolamo
baldi», he says his fame is testified to by, among other works, his «ricerc
vi spartiti a quattro voci, dove si vede una mirabil arte» (measured
cars in four-voice open score, where one sees an admirable art).
In the context of the decision around 1600 to print something in open

should take into account the challenges of printing music in this format:
10. B. Grassi, In partitura I II primo libro delle canzoni a una, due, tre, e quat
... del sig. Girolamo Frescobaldi, Rome, Masotti, 1628, Alli studiosi de
«mi sono mosso a mandare alle stampe con tanta fatica e spesa ... qu
lume in partitura» (with so much labor and expense I have made th
to send this volume to the printer in score). He boasts in particular of his
to ensure the careful vertical alignment of the parts, «cosa da me sinora
veduta nelle passate partiture» (something I have not seen up to this
past scores).54
54 This passage calls attention not only to the expense (among other considerat
amount of paper used inefficiently), but also the expertise required of the compo
an edition in open score. It was doubtless no accident that Frescobaldi went to th
printer Tini & Lomazzo for his First Book of Fantasie in 1608, since the Milanese firm
& Lomazzo and Agostino Tradate had made something of a specialty of printing o
beginning around 1600 (see, for example, item D.4 above). This practice seems to
ed with the print from Tini's firm described in Sartori, Bibliografia cit., 1598/,
tains a long dedicatory preface defending the practice. One can find references to
ous prints of vocal music accompanied by full partiture from these two firms produ
decade before the issuance of Frescobaldi's Fantasie in M. Donà, La stampa musical
fino all'anno 1700, Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 1961, pp. 90-102 and lllf. Here, too,
Ferrarese connection. The four-voice motets of Orfeo Vecchi, printed by Tradate i
Donà, La stampa musicale cit., p. Ill, and Gaspari, Catalogo della Biblioteca del Lice
cit., II, p. 508), is one of these prints whose individual partbooks are accompanied by
in open score containing all the music of all the vocal parts. Although signed at the s
as the dedication to the individual voice partbooks, the dedication to the open score is
ferent person from that of the dedication of voice parts. The partitio is dedicated
known Ferrarese amateur composer and patron of music, Antonio Goretti. It was in t
of Goretti in Ferrara in 1598, for example, that Artusi had heard the madrigals of
di that so incensed him.
Riassunto - I mutamenti occorsi nella nota

dotti dall'adozione di nuovi formati e nuove
do influenzato il significato e l'autorità del test
composta e notata. Il presente articolo esamin
l'evoluzione del ricercare strumentale del Cinqu
scuola romana composta nell'ultimo quarto d
centrata sulla musica scritta, letta e apprezzata
come evento sonoro ma come rappresentazione
neggio artificioso del contrappunto. Questo mod
ga all'uso viepiù diffuso della partitura come ve
polifonico delle parti; a sua volta quest'uso ha st
di un nuovo stile (o di nuovi sottogeneri) del ri
ha alimentato tra gli intenditori dell'élite coeva
sapere tecnico-musicale. A suffragio di tale t
rose testimonianze coeve.

NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600 - Newcomb

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NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600 - Newcomb

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Author(s): Anthony Newcomb

NOTIONS OF NOTATION AROUND 1600

The broad area covered by my tide concerns the changes occurring

10 M. Talbot, The Work-Concept and Composer-Centredness, in The Musical Work:

Linked up with these issues of genre, or even subgenre, and esoterica is

trapunti}1 Here one function of the notation in open score - an e

tico over a century later - rhythmic augmentation and diminution, inversion,

22 Frescobaldi, a native of Ferrara who proudly proclaimed himself a pupil of Luzzaschi, is an

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Fig. 3 - Giovanni Maria Trabaci, Secondo libro de ricercate (Nap

di points out the «new, unusual, unexpected and admirable» in the ou

The final step in my argument will be to include the avantgarde madri

rare prints of madrigals in open score is that put together in 1613 by t

widowed Duchess of Ferrara and the sister of Duke Vincenzo of Mantua),

A. Evidences of a kind of piece understood as an object of study and commenta

A number of modern writers have made similar points:

3. S. Durante, On "artificioso" Compositions at the Time of Frescobaldi, in Fre

5. Gerbino, Canoni ed enigmi cit., p. 11, remarks of these Roman col

And see section D below.

B. Evidences of the idea of the musical-technical sophistication of the connoisseur

1. V. Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica (ms., 1620s): «Perché, acciò un'azione

And see items A.3 and A.4 above.

1. A. Banchieri, Conclusioni del suono dell'organo, Bologna, eredi di Gio. Rossi,

See also items A.3 and B.3 above.

2. G. M. Artusi, L'Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, Venice,

50 See Strainchamps, Theory as Polemic cit., p. 200.

ed other passages from Marenzio's Ninth Book in unbarred 5-voice open

1. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, letter of 3 March 1570 to Guglielmo

conceduto all'orecchie il poterli sentire, non sarà almeno tolto agli

In the context of the decision around 1600 to print something in open

Riassunto - I mutamenti occorsi nella nota

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