from the main stem, like the sung sonus from the Nanni’s book contains much valuable
uable informa-
danced ballata.
Moreover, the genesis of a form is not always
unequivocal. On the one hand, the form called
ballata explicitly points to the conception of
dance. On the other hand, a similar poetic struc-
ture existed in Italy as early as the eleventh
century, though not in the Italian language; it
was used by Jews in their religious liturgical
poetry, which in no way was intended for dance.
I regret that the author did not mention the writ-
ings by Aurelio Roncaglia on this topic, namely
on the transition of the Arabic^Andalusian
girdled songs, zajal, from medieval Spain to
Italy, in all probability facilitated by Jews. This
channel of transmission may also explain the
earlier appearance of the religious poetry of the
lauda made in the form of the ballata, even
before the earliest texts of the secular danced
ballata. We may imagine that the two genres,
namely popular dance and the religious litur-
gical poetry of laudas, both in ballata or
ballata-like form, encountered each other at
some point and gave birth to the well-known
Trecento ballata and sonus. Such a larger per-
spective, in this and in a couple of other points,
would have made Nanni’s conception more
dynamic and multifaceted.
It was not entirely clear to me why the mono-
phonic ballata was chosen for analysis, except
that it forms a certain homogeneous group.
Does it mean that in no two-voice ballatas the
principle of chaining time division was retained,
as it was in the one-voice ballatas? Furthermore,
the relevance of ballatas by overtly Florentine
composers, such as like Lorenzo and Gher-
ardello, to the Paduan philosophical context is
somewhat blurred.
It would have been useful to have had more
information about the principles the author
follows in analysing the metric scansion of
verses. Nanni refers chiefly to the older works
by Ugo Sesini (Musicologia e filologia (Bologna,
1970)) and Theodor Elwert (Italienische Metrik
(first edn., Munich, 1968)) and misses up-to-
date resources on metric scansion, such as
works by Pietro Beltrami (La metrica italiana
(Bologna, 1991), merely mentioned rather than
used), Aldo Menichetti (Metrica italiana (Padua,
1993)), and others, with the result that there
are some jarring infelicities.
Most regrettable is the absence of a general
index, though it is not the author’s fault. Unfor-
tunately, no book in the series Musica men-
surabilis has such an index. One does not need
to explain how difficult it is to work with
academic books without the help of an index.
But these small reservations aside, Matteo
131
tion on early Trecento philosophical and
musical conceptions and is well worth study.
ELENA ABRAMOV-VAN RIJK
Jerusalem
doi:10.1093/ml/gcz013
ß The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University
Press. All rights reserved.
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The Sixteenth-Century Trombone: Dimensions, Ma-
terials and Techniques. By Hannes Vereecke. Pp.
254. (Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, 2016.
E75. ISBN 978-2-503-56639-9.)
Eleven trombones survive from the sixteenth
century, all of them hailing from the second
half of the century and ten of them manu-
factured in Nuremberg. The focus of Vereecke’s
study is a detailed examination of the physical
characteristics of the ten Nuremberg examples
in order to further the cause of replicating
them for use in performing sixteenth-century
music. He provides a wealth of data concerning
not only their dimensions (their ‘geometry’, as
he terms it) but also their acoustical behaviour
and the composition of the brass of which they
are made. (Lest there be any confusion, it
should be understood that the word ‘Techni-
ques’ in the book’s subtitle refers to techniques
of manufacture, not performance.) At the heart
of his concern with the instruments’ material
and its treatment is the long-standingçand
still controversialçquestion among players,
builders, and acousticians as to the effect of the
material on timbre and response. Several
people, including the author himself, have
demonstrated that the effect is real, but both
quantifying it and explaining why it exists have
proved to be difficult, despite advances in
acoustical measuring techniques and equip-
ment.
A quick look at the book would lead us to
believe it is a high-quality product, with attract-
ive (and relevant!) cover art, excellent paper,
eye-pleasing layout, effective use of colour, and
a substantial binding (paperback, but in signa-
tures). But as we know, first impressions can be
misleading; the book is poorly edited and care-
lessly proofread. Errors in grammar abound
(including dangling modifiers and lack of
agreement between verbs and their subjects), as
do mistakes in punctuation. There are a
number of missing words and parts of words.
Most of these errors are simply distracting,
since the reader can usually look beyond them
and determine the intended meaning. But in
some cases one remains confused after consider-
able cogitation. For instance, on p. 25, line 24,
the words ‘sound more to the point with
varying bore’ would seem to have inserted
themselves into the sentence. (At least removing
them would begin to make it produce a cogent
statement; whether this is the correct solution
is still a question.) Later in the same paragraph
(on the next page) the phrase ‘the distance
between two consecutive wave peaks or
troughs’ would appear from the sentence struc-
ture to be a separate term, when in fact it is
the definition of the term just previously men-
tioned (‘wavelength’). On p. 54, line 17, the
author speaks of the ‘product of ’ two frequencies
when he should have said ‘difference between’
(as reflected in the equation that follows, which
is correct). On p. 95, line 3, an irrelevant ‘s’ has
mysteriously inserted itself, and on p. 158, line
4, the author mentions an accompanying CD
containing acoustical measurementsçan
offering that seems not to have materialized.
There are also issues with printing that
impede orçin some casesçprevent under-
standing. For instance, it is almost impossible
to discern a line printed in yellow ink (a
problem affecting graphs on pp. 93, 115, and
158); in one case (the graph at the top of p. 119)
a black trace seems to be missing entirely. A
number of graphs and other figures are
reproduced at too small a scale to be read
easily, the most extreme example being the
figures at the top of p. 83; here the difficulty is
compounded by the fact that one of the figures
(that on the left) is not at all what it is pur-
ported to be, but rather a miniature version of
the graph on p. 93!
Following a short introductory chapter,
Vereecke begins his main text with a discussion
of the acoustics of brass instruments. While he
claims this discussion is intended as an intro-
duction to basic acoustic principles, aimed pri-
marily at instrument makers, it is difficult to
see how his rather brief statements of those prin-
ciples could be understood by readers not
already at least somewhat familiar with acous-
tical theory. He often introduces technical
terms without defining them, or, when he does
do so, the definitions themselves often use simi-
larly esoteric vocabulary. And our understand-
ing is not helped by his rather casual approach
to defining the terms of his formulae and equa-
tions; we are often left to guess their meaning.
Readers interested in acquiring a more
thorough grounding in acoustics certainly have
many options in the way of other sources, but
those without that interest and preparation
might be discouraged from perusing the rest of
Vereecke’s book. This would be unfortunate,
132
since there is much of interest in it that does
not depend upon such knowledge.
For instance, he describes an experiment in
which, using the facilities of an expert maker of
reproductions of early brass, he produced six di-
mensionally interchangeable trombone bells
based upon a seventeenth-century original. Five
of the bells were of brass, differing from each
other only in wall thickness and techniques of
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manufacture; the sixth was of German silver, a
material possessing very different mechanical
properties from those of brass. (Somewhat frus-
tratingly, we are not told the specifics of the dif-
ferences among the five brass bells.) Both ob-
jective tests (using acoustical measuring de-
vices) and subjective assessments (by blind-
folded players) were found to be disappointing,
since they were unable to distinguish among
the five brass bells; the players were, however,
consistently able to distinguish the German
silver bell from the brass ones. One can cer-
tainly understand Vereecke’s disappointment
in the minimal results after having expended
so much labour on the project; on the other
hand, one might view these results as actually
encouraging to makers, since they suggest it is
far more important to get the material and di-
mensions right than it is to worry about the
exact treatment the material experiences as
those dimensions are achieved.
Vereecke has much to tell us about that
material. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc,
varying in its mechanical properties with differ-
ent proportions of the two elements; in general,
increasing the zinc content produces harder
and stronger brass. Its properties are also
affected by the addition of some other elements
(commonly lead, tin, arsenic, and nickel),
which are usually present in only tiny amounts.
Modern production processes afford much
greater control of both the purity and amount
of the constituent elements than did those avail-
able in the sixteenth century, which means the
chemical composition of the modern product
can be assumed to be intentionalçsomething
not at all certain in the case of early
brass. Modern brass can vary greatly in the
proportion of zinc to copper, depending upon
its purpose, but the industry standard for
‘common brass’ is 37 per cent zinc; the percent-
age of zinc in the brass used by sixteenth-
century instrument makers is around half that.
Archaeometallurgists have used various tech-
niques to determine the makeup of early brass,
but the currently prevalent method is that
which depends upon the phenomenon of X-ray
fluorescence. XRF, as this method is known, is
both accurate and non-destructive, and the
equipment needed for it is easily portable.
Vereecke has subjected each of the ten
surviving sixteenth-century Nuremberg trom-
bones to XRF testing, with an average of
about sixty-five measurement points per instru-
ment; the result is a large database of metallur-
gical information, far exceeding in scope
anything previously available concerning early
brass instruments and calling into question
some earlier analyses, which were based upon
more primitive measuring techniques or much
smaller samples. While it seems quite clear that
sixteenth-century Nuremberg brass differs
from the brass commonly used nowadays, the
exact effects of the differences on the sound
and behaviour of replica trombones have yet to
be determined, as Vereecke admits.
Vereecke reports the details of his XRF
findings in a series of appendices, which are a
model of clarity in terms of presentation. Meas-
urement points are labelled on photographs of
the instruments, and the percentages of zinc
and lead (the two most significant elements
after copper itself) are represented in eminently
readable bar graphs; these are followed by
tables listing the percentages of all ten of the
elements measured at each point. As he points
out, these findings should be of great interest to
museum curators and other researchers at-
tempting to establish which parts of the
surviving originals are authentic, as the instru-
ments have experienced considerable repair
and restoration since their creation.
Vereecke’s publication of physical measure-
ments of these instruments (in ch. 7) should also
be welcomed by researchers. (While he has ne-
cessarily condensed his findings for inclusion in
a book, he has supplied the relevant museum
curators with full details.) After introducing
each instrument with photographs and a short
rundown of what may be known of its proven-
ance, plus a short description, he labels sche-
matic diagrams of the various trombone sections
(bell, inner slide, and outer slide) with the
salient measurements. In some cases he provides
a list of coordinates of the bell profile. The
author subjected all ten instruments to acoustical
analysis, but he chose five (in view of their
being in closer to their original state) for more
careful attention; of these five, three (those
made by Anton Schnitzer in 1579 and 1581 and
that made by Anton Drewelwecz in 1595) he
deemed particularly good candidates to serve as
models for reproduction, based upon their
superior internal intonation.
Vereecke’s observations about early mouth-
pieces should be of considerable interest to
players (as well as researchers) of early trom-
133
bones. Surviving sixteenth-century brass mouth-
pieces differ significantly from those used by
most players today, in that modern mouthpieces
(including those used by players of ‘period’ in-
struments) are of a one-piece construction,
while the earliest ones were assembled from
separate parts. Three trombone mouthpieces
survive from the sixteenth century, each consist-
ing of a bowl soldered to a tube made of sheet
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brass, with the joint surrounded by an orna-
mental brass ferrule. Since the tube is for the
most part cylindrical, tapering slightly at the
far end in order to fit into the instrument itself,
the overall profile of the backbore (the portion
of the bore from the throat to the end) of such
multi-component mouthpieces is ‘belly’ shaped;
by contrast, the backbore of one-piece mouth-
pieces expands conically.
After picturing and describing the three
sixteenth-century trombone mouthpieces (plus,
for good measure, one of similar construction
from the mid-seventeenth century), Vereecke
reports the results of various tests meant to
quantify the considerable difference in playing
characteristics caused by the differences in
backbore profile. (Players generally find instru-
ments fitted with mouthpieces with a ‘modern’
backbore to be more responsive and easier to
play.) Besides having a conical backbore,
modern mouthpieces generally feature a throat
with a smaller diameter, as well as a rounded
(or chamfered) edge where the throat begins;
the throat edge of early mouthpieces is sharp.
Vereecke tested for these variables as well. Of
particular interest is the fact that players and
listeners involved in subjective tests were some-
times able to detect differences in timbre and
response that were lost on the scientific
measuring equipment.
A few matters of detail. On p. 101 Vereecke
claims the 1578 Jacob Steiger trumpet mouth-
piece in Basel has the same three-part construc-
tion as the surviving sixteenth-century trom-
bone mouthpieces, when in fact it is formed
instead completely from sheet brass and is
comprised of seven pieces, reflecting an even
earlier style of fabrication. (See Sabine K.
Klaus and Stewart Carter, ‘The Jamestown
Mouthpiece: A Historical, Technical, and Com-
parative Study’, Journal of the American Musical
Instrument Society, 37 (2011), 19^44 at 32.) On p.
106 he claims the mouthpiece of the 1593
Anton Schnitzer trombone is unique in that
‘there is no other period trombone mouthpiece
that is so closely associated with a specific in-
strument’ (the mouthpiece having long been
glued in place with rosin). This statement
ignores the 1616 Isaac Ehe bass trombone
mouthpiece (similarly of a three-part construc-
tion) in the Bayrisches Nationalmuseum in
Munich, which is ‘frozen’ in place and cannot
be removed (personal observation by this
reviewer). Finally, concerning the word ‘in-
creases’ (p. 113, line 11), one might wonder if ‘de-
creases’ might actually have been meant, since
the latter would appear to accord better with
the graph at the bottom of the page.
Despite the errors and occasional awkward-
ness of expression noted here, Hannes Ve-
reecke’s book represents an important contribu-
tion to our knowledge of early brass instru-
ments. It is worth the attention of anyone inter-
ested in their history and behaviour.
HERBERT W. MYERS
Stanford University
doi:10.1093/ml/gcz017
ß The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University
Press. All rights reserved.
Plague and Music in the Renaissance. By Remi
Chiu. pp. 284. (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge and New York, 2017. »75. ISBN
978-1-107-10925-4.)
Epidemics strike fear in populations at risk of
contracting disease, and they give rise to
vigorous measures of containment and at-
tempts to understand how they spread. This
fascinating book vividly captures urgent reac-
tions to plague in the early modern period. It
takes an interdisciplinary approach by connect-
ing writings on plague with contexts for
musical performance. The book explores a wide
variety of early modern discourses by phys-
icians and natural philosophers who address
issues regarding plague. It also examines the
effects of musicçboth beneficial and harmful
çon the human body and spirit. Over the
course of five chapters the author contextualizes
more than a dozen motets and madrigals
within discourses related to plague. Milan
plays a rather large role, as does St Sebastian,
patron of those afflicted by plague.
Chapter 1 explores multiple plague tracts that
promote the positive effects of music on soci-
ability and mental health, although they
caution against its intemperate use. The author
explores with clarity and skill the discussions of
early modern writers on plague. Briefly put,
music can promote sound mental health by in-
stilling joy, but excessive pursuit of music can
cause harm, and religious authorities condemn
it. Two motets from Milan by Gaspar van
Weerbeke and Johannes Martini provide con-
crete examples. Both set the same text, O
134
beate Sebastiane. The solemn chordal opening in
each work invokes the saint’s name. The text
goes on to recall how Sebastian previously de-
livered Lombardy from plague, and this
moment is marked by a shift to dance-like
triple mensuration. The author plausibly sug-
gests that this turn to triple time can promote
joy and healing, and he cites comments of Des-
cartes (1618) to support his claim (pp. 44^5).
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The discussion introduces the Bakhtinian
notion of the carnivalesque in times of plague;
social norms are turned on their head and
riotous gaiety is permitted as a means of
sustaining the spirit. There follows a grisly
account of inmates confined to a plague
asylum outside the walls of Milan during the
1570s. The inmates held a dance to relieve
the desperation of their daily existence, and the
friar-warden interrupted the festivities by
throwing the body of a very old plague victim
into their midst, saying ‘Let her dance, too. Is
it really possible you will stay here debauching,
offending God, when your deaths are so close
at hand?’ (p. 49). Chiu cites the tension
between religious and secular authorities; one
side inveighed against debauchery in favour of
protecting the soul, while physicians recom-
mended pursuit of moderate joy in order to
promote health and resistance to plague. In
chapter 5 the author returns to plague in
Milan in the 1570s, and he introduces further
discourse on the conflict between joyful affects
and the depiction of physical and mental suffer-
ing in a contemporary book of madrigals from
the city.
Chapter 2 turns to musical cosmology in the
work of Marsilio Ficino. The reader finds a deft
summary of Neoplatonic strains in Ficino, who
proposed that the beneficial energy of celestial
bodies could be channelled to the human soul
through song. Ficino also wrote a treatise on
plague in which he maintained that energy
from the bad alignment of two planets can
generate harmful effects in humans. For
example, he proposed that the alignment of
Mars and Saturn had given rise to plague in
Florence in the 1470s. Chiu then turns the dis-
cussion to a widely disseminated hymn that
pleads with the Blessed Virgin for rescue from
plague. ‘Stella celi extirpavit / que lactavit
Dominum / mortis pestem quam plantavit /
primus parens hominum’ (The star of heaven,
who suckled the Lord, extirpated the plague of
death, which the first parent of man had
planted; p. 62). In an imaginative move, the
author proposes the Virgin Mary as a star that
brings the planets back into alignment, as sug-
gested by the next stanza: ‘May that star now
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