Marchetto da Padova [ Marchetus de Padua ]

Jan Herlinger

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.17738
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
updated bibliography, 9 November 2009

( fl 1305–19). Italian music theorist and composer . In his Lucidarium in arte musice plane he developed
the theory of ‘permutation’ to account for the chromatic progressions common in music of his time,
proposed a division of the whole tone into five equal parts that proved a milestone in the history of
tuning, and developed a comprehensive theory of mode that accommodated melodies irregular in
range or construction. His Pomerium in arte musice mensurate, the earliest major treatise dealing
systematically with a mensural system that permitted a duple as well as a triple division of the breve,
became the foundation of the mensural theory of the Italian Trecento.

1. Life.

There is documentary evidence that a ‘Marchetus’ was appointed teacher of the boys at Padua
Cathedral early in 1305, held that office still in July 1306, and donated the income from a benefice to
the cathedral in the summer of 1307. According to colophons of the treatises, he began the Lucidarium
in Cesena and completed it in Verona; he completed the Pomerium in Cesena. On the basis of
circumstances and persons mentioned in the dedications of the treatises, Strunk determined that
Marchetto wrote the Lucidarium in 1317 or 1318 and the Pomerium shortly thereafter but no later than
1319; these dates stand despite alternate proposals by Vecchi and Gallo. The date of the Brevis
compilatio, an abridgement of the Pomerium, is not known. Gallo attributed the motet Ave regina
celorum/Mater innocencie/[Ite missa est] (ed. in PMFC, xii, 1976) to Marchetto on the basis of the
acrostic MARCVM PADVANVM in its duplum; attributions of other compositions to him on the basis of
stylistic similarity to this motet or correspondences with theories expounded in his treatises are
conjectural.

2. The treatises.

The Lucidarium and the Pomerium are cast in a scholastic mould, with their statements qualified and
elaborated through dubitationes, responsiones, contradictiones, solutiones and dilatationes. The
Lucidarium surveys the theory of musica plana taken in the broadest sense of the term: the gamut and
its registers, the fundamentals of non-mensural notation, mutation, permutation and chromatic signs,
intervals and their ratios, counterpoint, tuning, the modes, and philosophy of music. Although
conventional in many ways, it is boldly innovative in others. Marchetto was the first medieval theorist
to discuss chromaticism, introducing the term ‘permutation’ to account for the chromatic progressions
that flourished in Italian polyphony of the early Trecento and could not be accommodated by the
conventional system of mutation between hexachords. Marchetto proposed dividing the Pythagorean
whole tone (represented by the ratio 9:8) into five equal parts (comprising the diesis, ⅕ tone;
semitonium enarmonicum, ⅖ tone; semitonium diatonicum, ⅗ tone; semitonium cromaticum, ⅘ tone).
This procedure was impossible within the scope of Pythagorean arithmetic, which did not allow for the

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geometric division of any superparticular ratio. Marchetto’s proposal avoided the complex ratios of the
Pythagorean major and minor semitones and provided a conceptual representation of a pair of
semitones more markedly different in size from these. Marchetto claimed his division could be used
where musica ficta rules demanded the closest approach to a perfect consonance; he indicated its use
by a special chromatic sign called falsa musica.

Marchetto developed a doctrine of mode flexible enough to encompass chant melodies irregular in
range or construction. He regarded pentachord and tetrachord species, and their intermediations
(interruptiones), as of greater importance in determining mode than final or range. A mode, he
claimed, is either perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, or mixed depending on whether its range is
respectively normal, narrow, wide in the direction away from the mode’s authentic or plagal partner, or
wide in the direction of that of the partner. A fifth category, ‘mingled’ (commixtus), applied where the
mode in question showed qualities of a mode other than its authentic or plagal partner. Marchetto
described a mode as either regular, irregular, or ‘acquired’ according to whether its pentachord and
tetrachord species were orientated respectively towards the final, the cofinal (the note a 5th above the
final), or some other note; the species could be orientated towards any note so long as they were
constructed using the regular notes of the gamut (the naturals plus the B♭s below and above middle C).
The occurrence of notes other than these rendered a mode artificial. Marchetto cited specific melodies
to illustrate all these types.

The Pomerium is significant as the earliest major treatise dealing systematically with a mensural
system which permitted a duple as well as a triple division of the breve. After discussing the qualities
of downward and upward tails, rests, the dot, and the chromatic sign he called falsa musica, Marchetto
showed how a breve could be divided into two to twelve semibreves in tempus perfectum, downward
and upward tails being attached to the semibreves where necessary to differentiate them in length. In
tempus imperfectum a breve could be divided into two to eight semibreves, their lengths again
differentiated by tails where necessary. Though Marchetto cited Franco frequently throughout the
treatise, the Franconian background of the Pomerium is especially evident in the closing discussions of
discant, ligatures, the plica and the rhythmic modes. Marchetto, however, expanded on Franco by
describing modes of imperfect time alongside those of perfect time (even allowing for the alternation
of perfect and imperfect longs); his description of what has come to be called the ‘same-pitch’ ligature
(see Long’s emendation of Vecchi’s Pomerium text; see also Nádas) demonstrated the possibility in
Italian Trecento notation of syncopation not only within but across breve units. Marchetto’s discussion
in the Pomerium of the differences between French and Italian practice provides crucial information
for deciphering the rhythm not only of Italian music of the early 14th century but of contemporaneous
French music as well. The Brevis compilatio covers the same material as the Pomerium, but more
succinctly and without its scholastic refinements.

3. Influence on later theory.

The Pomerium became the foundation of Italian Trecento mensural theory, which over the next 100
years developed along the lines set down by Marchetto. Although Italian mensuration was moribund by
the early Quattrocento, at least four of the seven surviving copies of the Pomerium date from that
century, one of them copied by Gaffurius as late as 1473, another owned by Giovanni Del Lago.

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The Lucidarium, on the other hand, survives complete or nearly so in 15 manuscripts (truncated in
three more), the latest dating from 1509. These include the manuscript copied by Gaffurius and that
owned by Del Lago; the latter made corrections in his, and quoted from it in letters of the 1520s, 30s
and 40s. The wider distribution of the Lucidarium was certainly due in part to theorists’ interest in
Marchetto’s epochal division of the Pythagorean whole tone into five equal parts: the division showed
that Marchetto had ceased to regard the whole tone as a ratio (and one impossible of geometric
division) and had begun to regard it as a quantity, divisible in several ways. Had this departure from
the strictures of Pythagorean arithmetic not been made, the manifold experiments in tuning and
temperament that flourished over the next centuries would not have been possible. Indeed, the
conservative Prosdocimus de Beldemandis (Tractatus musice speculative, 1425) complained that
Marchetto’s doctrine of tuning had spread throughout Italy and beyond its borders; Italian theory
manuscripts of the 14th and 15th centuries include many references to dieses of ⅕ tone and
enharmonic, diatonic and chromatic semitones; Tinctoris defined these intervals in his Terminorum
musicae diffinitorium; 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century theorists followed Marchetto’s lead, proposing
other fractional divisions of the whole tone (e.g. the Berkeley Anonymous, Ciconia, Gaffurius, Burzio,
Aaron, Vicentino). But by far the most influential of Marchetto’s theories was that of mode. The
Lucidarium had spawned two digests of its modal doctrine by the end of the 15th century, each of
which developed its own manuscript tradition; Marchetto’s complex of perfect, imperfect, pluperfect,
mixed and mingled modes surfaced in dozens of later treatises (e.g. those of Prosdocimus, Ugolino,
Tinctoris, Burzio, Gaffurius, Bonaventura da Brescia, Wollick and Lanfranco); the doctrine of mixed and
mingled modes proved particularly useful to those theorists who attempted to explain polyphonic
music in terms of mode. On the basis of his doctrines of tuning and especially of mode, Marchetto must
be considered the most influential music theorist in Italy between Guido of Arezzo and Tinctoris.

Writings
Lucidarium in arte musice plane (MS, 1317/18), ed. in GerbertS, 3, 64–121; ed. and trans. J. Herlinger
(Chicago, 1985)

Pomerium in arte musice mensurate (MS, c1318), ed. in GerbertS, 3, 121–87, and CSM, vi (1961)

Brevis compilatio (MS, after 1318), ed. in CoussemakerS, 3, 1–12; ed. in Vecchi (1956)

Bibliography
Grove6 (‘Mode’, H.S. Powers)

SpataroC

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N. Pirrotta: ‘Marchettus de Padua and the Italian Ars Nova’, MD, 9 (1955), 57–71

K.W. Niemöller: ‘Zur Tonus-Lehre der italienischen Musiktheorie des ausgehenden Mittelalters’, KJb, 40 (1956), 23–
32

G. Vecchi: ‘Su la composizione del Pomerium di Marchetto da Padova e la Brevis compilatio’, Quadrivium, 1
(1956), 153–208

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F.A. Gallo: La teoria della notazione in Italia dalla fine del XIII all’inizio del XV secolo (Bologna,
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J. Herlinger: ‘Fractional Divisions of the Whole Tone’, Music Theory Spectrum, 3 (1981), 74–83

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L. Gianni: ‘Marchetto da Padova e la scuola capitolare di Cividale: un documento inedito del 1317 conservato a
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See also

Diesis (ii)

Notation, §III, 3(iv): Polyphonic mensural notation, c1260–1500

Theory, theorists, §7: 14th century

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