Defending the dodecachordon: Ideological currents in glarean's modal theory

Journal of the American Musicological Society

Volumn 49, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 191-224

  Fuller, Sarah ^a  

^a STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 62649158190     PISSN: 00030139     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/831989     Document Type: Review

References (70)

1. "Timotheum Milesium, artis Musices authorem celeberrimum, Reverendissime PATER, Athenæus lib. 14 ex Anemone tradit à Lacedæmonibus reprehensum, ut vetustae ac priscae Musicae corruptorem: quoniam Systemate uteretur, quod chordas plureis Alagadide haberet. Divus autem Severinus in Alusices præfatione etiam Laconica eiectum esse asserit Timotheum, quòd ad consuetos nervos unum addiderit nervum, ac effoeminatiorem Alusicen fecerit. Consultumque de eo factum Graecis verbis refert, in quo contineretur: Iccirco Timotheo Alilesio Spartiatas succensuisse, quòd multiplicem Alusicem reddens puerorum animis, quos acceperat erudiendos, officeret, et à virtutis modestia praepediret" (Henricus Glareanus, "Preface," Dodecachordon [Basel, 1547], Alonuments of Music and Music Literature in Facsimile, 2d ser., 65 [New York: Broude Brothers, 1967], fol. a2)
2. English translation from Clement A. Aliller, Heinrich Glarean Dodecachordon, Musicological Studies and Documents 6 (American Institute of Musicology, 1965), 37
3. See the standard edition by Gottfried Friedlein, Institutions music libri quinque (Leipzig, 1867; reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1966), 181-84
4. A. fine English translation is Fundamentals of Music, trans. Calvin M. Bower, Music Theory Translation Series (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 4-5
5. Martha Maas investigates the actual trespasses of Timotheus in "Timotheus at Sparta: The Nature of the Crime," in Musical Humanism and Its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca, ed. Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning (Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1992), 37-52
6. That he felt greatly injured by this and exhorted influential friends to get his name removed from that document is revealed in letters to Aegidius Tschudi of 15 July and 6 August 1560. See Emil F. Müller, "Briefe Glareans an Aegidius Tschudi (1533-1561)," Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte 28 (1934): 184-86
7. Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), 57
8. On Glarean's connection with Zwingli, see Theophil Luther, "Glarean und die Reformation," in Der Humanist Heinrich Loriti genannt Glarean (1488-1563): Beitrage zu seinem Lehen und Werk, ed. Rudolf Aschmann et al. (Glaren: Verlag Buchhandlung Baeschlin, 1983), 72-73
9. This development forced Glarean (who remained faithful to the Roman Church) to remove in 1529 to Catholic Freiburg im Breisgau, where Erasmus soon followed him. See Clement A. Miller, "Glarean, Heinrich," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 7:423
10. In this regard, the dedication of Dodecachordon to a powerful cardinal can also be seen as a strategic defensive move. Such was the anxiety of the Church authorities responsible for countering the Reformation that by the mid-sixteenth century the reputation of even so eminent a scholar and defender of the orthodox faith as Erasmus became tarnished with charges of subversion; see Bruce Mansfield, Phoenix of His Age: Interpretations of Erasmus, c. 1550-1750 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 26-28, 48
11. Historians of theory have recently directed considerable attention to the formative force ideology exerts upon theories of tonal music. Representative studies are Scott Burnham, "Method and Motivation in Hugo Riemann's History of Harmonic Theory," Music Theory Spectrum 14 (1992): 1-14
12. Richard Littlefield and David Neumeyer, "Rewriting Schenker: Narrative - History - Ideology," Music Theory Spectrum 14 (1992): 38-65
13. and Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
14. Some years ago, Lawrence Gushee pointed out the importance of "intellectual style" as well as the "goals and methods of certain institutions" for understanding medieval music treatises, an observation that holds true beyond the Middle Ages. See his "Questions of Genre in Medieval Treatises on Music," in Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. Wulf Arlt (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1973), 366
15. The best and most readily available summary of Glarean's modal system is in Harold S. Powers, "Mode, §111,4: Polyphony-12 Alodes," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 12:407-9
16. See the standard English version, History of Music Theory: Books I and II, Polyphonic Theory to the Sixteenth Century, trans. Raymond H. Haggh (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), 305-11
17. Joel Lester also reviews Glarean's modal precepts in Between Modes and Keys: German Theory, 1592-1802, Harmonologia Series No. 3 (Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1989), 1-7
18. Current scholarship has judged Glarean rather severely as a theorist of modal structure in polyphony. His exclusively linear approach has seemed superficial to Carl Dahlhaus (Studies on the Origin of Harmonic Tonality, trans. Robert O. Gjerdingen [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990], 234; 1st German ed., 1968)
19. and Bernhard Meier (The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony Described According to the Sources, trans. Ellen S. Beebe [New York: Broude Brothers, 1988], 44-46; 1st German ed., 1974)
20. It cannot but seem misguided to others who understand sixteenth-century polyphony to be cast in "tonal types" rather than in modes. See Siegfried Hermelinck, Dispositions modortm: Die Tonarten in der Musik Palestrinas und seiner Zeitgenossen (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1960)
21. and Harold S. Powers, "Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony," this JOURNAL 34 (1981): 428-70
22. Claude Palisca has censured Glarean for having not "the dimmest notion of the Greek tonal system" ("Theory, Theorists, §9," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 18:754)
23. This interpretation is compatible with Harold Powers's description of Dodecachordon as "the product of an extraordinary synthesis of medieval tradition, both practical and theoretical, with Renaissance classicizing humanism, original system building and musical analysis" ("Mode," in The New Grove Dictionaiy of Music and Musicians 12:407)
24. However, it sees Glarean's theory-building less in terms of historical categories (old medieval thought fused with new Renaissance ideas) and more in terms of contemporary ideological forces operating simultaneously within his world view. Bernhard Meier's "Heinrich Loriti Glareanus als Musiktheoretiker" (Beiträge zur Freiburga- Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgescbicbte 22 [1960]: 65-112) is a thorough historical study in the expository tradition. Rudolf Aschmann's review of Glarean's status as a music theorist casts him as principally a teacher while somewhat vaguely granting him a leading position among sixteenth-century music theorists ("Glarean als Musiktheoretiker," in Der Humanist Heinrich Loriti genannt Glarean (1488-1563), 145-86
25. As early as his Isagoge in musicen (1516) Glarean expressed his dissatisfaction with current modal theory. Relevant passages are translated in Frances Berry Turrell, "The Isagoge in Musicen of Henry Glarean," Journal of Music Theory 3 (1959): 129-30, 134-35
26. Ernst Kirsch recognized an important rational component in Glarean's work in his "Studie zum Problem des Heinrich Loriti (Glarean)," in Festschrift Arnold Schering zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Helmuth Osthoff, Walter Serauky, and Adam Adrio (Berlin: Verlag von A. Glas, 1937; reprint, Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1973), 125-36
27. He construed it, however, as a prefiguring of modern (1930s) German rationality and (mis)stated the fundamental issue for Glarean as "the lawfulness of diatonic melody" ("Die Gesetzlichkeit der diatonischen Melodik") (p. 127)
28. Gaffurius, Practica musicae [Milan, 1496], trans. Clement A. Miller (American Institute of Musicology, 1968), 1.7: 48. Gaffurius consistently designates the dividing point of the octave (the final or the cofinal) but does not always bother to state whether the division is harmonic or arithmetic
29. Hermannus Contractus, Musica (connected with tetrachords); William of Hirsau, Musica
30. He further notes that the B-b and F-f octaves possess only one division by fifth and fourth due to the tritone, but draws no particular conclusion from any of this. He seems rather to be observing properties of the various modal octaves, which can be constructed as fifth and fourth (or fourth-fifth) either ascending from the lowest pitch or descending from the highest pitch (Musica, ed. Dennis Harbinson, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 23 [American Institute of Musicology, 1975], 66-67). Given his remarks in the Isagoge in musical on the difficulty of explaining mode properly, Glarean was probably well advanced in his solution by the time he came across William's treatise, sometime after 1529
31. Glarean cannot be said to have spearheaded an immediate rationalist trend among music theorists, however, for Zarlino disregards these demonstrations when he appropriates Glarean's twelve-mode scheine (On the Modes: Part Four of "Le Istitutioni Harmoniche," 1558, ed. Claude V. Palisca, trans. Vered Cohen [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983])
32. Music was, of course, considered to reside among the mathematical arts of the quadrivium. Letter 529 of Erasmus explicitly mentions music among the mathematical disciplines that Glarean has mastered: "He has a great knowledge of history, and in music, geography and all the other subjects that are commonly called mathematical he is most experienced, for this is the field in which he is a specialist" (CWE 4, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson [1977], 220)
33. Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum [1476], ed. Albert Seay, Johannes Tinctoris Opera Tbeoretica, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 22 (American Institute of Musicology, 1975), 1:59-104
34. English translation in Concerning the Nature and Propriety of Tones, trans. Albert Seay, Colorado College Music Press Translations 2 (Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press, 1976)
35. Heyden's musical examples are largely polyphonic, and most illustrate special problems of mensuration. His chapter on tonus cites only fragments of plainsong (psalm and magnificat recitation formulas) and illustrates each mode with only one polyphonic example. The treatise has been issued in facsimile (New York: Broude Brothers, 1969) and in an English translation by Clement A. Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents 26 (American Institute of Musicology, 1972)
36. In a letter of 14 February 1517, Erasmus mentions Glarean's singing skills, remarking that he has "very easy ways, adaptable to any sort of society. Bid him sing, and he will sing without hesitation" (Letter 529, CWE 4:220)
37. In a letter to Zwingli from Paris dated 29 August 1517, Glarean reports that he and Faber Stapulensis have been singing together and generally enjoying each other's company (Huldrici Zuinglii Opera Campleta, ed. Melchior Schuler and Johannes Schulthess [Zurich: F. Schulthess, 1829-42], 7:26-27)
38. Bernhard Meier's characterization of Glarean as "a humanist uncommonly interested in music, but not a professional musician," seems pitched to disparage his experience with sounding music, an impression I do not share (The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony, 35)
39. Clement A. Miller, "Glarean, Heinrich," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 7:423
40. Dodecachordon, 2.16: 103-4; Miller ed., 142
41. The anonymous author of the Quatuor principalia, a work dated 1351, does, exceptionally, list the Credo in his opening remarks on the fourth mode (Edmond de Coussemaker, Scriptorum de musica medii aevi [Paris: A. Durand et Pedone-Lauriel, 1876; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963], 4:239)
42. The Pater noster chant had also been cited by Erasmus for the exemplary simplicity of its melody, with a clear implication that the melody originated with the early church. See Clement A. Miller, "Erasmus on Music," The Musical Quarterly 52 (1966): 334
43. Glarean might not have known that the Roman Church did not require the Creed at Mass until the eleventh century, but he was probably aware that the text relayed doctrines formally enunciated at the Council of Nicaea ca. 325. The melody he cites follows the Cistercian/Dominican transmission with concluding text vitam futuri rather than venturi and D as initial note. On this tradition, see Tadeusz Miazga, Die Melodien des einstimmigen Credo der römisch- katholischen lateinischen Kirche (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1976), 134
44. Tinctoris, in an individual interpretation, had judged it as a mixture of the sixth and eighth tones. He does, however, remark that if begun on Gamma ut (where Glarean writes it), the antiphon would belong to the regular second tone (Concerning the Nature and Propriety of Tones, chap. 16, p. 19)
45. Already in the early eleventh century, Guido of Arezzo had noted that a bb changed the status of G from tetrardus (modes 7 and 8) to protus (modes 1 and 2). See Micreologus, chap. 8, in Hucbald, Guido, and John on Music: Three Medieval Treatises, trans. Warren Babb, Music Theory Translation Series 3 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), 64
46. For bibliography and a concise commentary on the tonus peregrinus, see David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 62-64
47. The antiphon is of the Benedicta tu melody type that appears in Cammemoratio brevis as mode 2 (Musica et Scolica enchiriadis, 163-64) and is elsewhere assigned to mode 4 (e.g., the eleventh-century Lucca Antiphoner; see Codex 601 de la Bibliothèque Capitulaire de Lucques, Paléographie musicale 9 [Tournai: Desclée, Lefebvre, 1906], 7)
48. In the Worcester antiphoner it is notated to end on a; see Codex F. 160 de la Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale de Worcester, Paléographie musicale 12 (Tournai: Desclée, 1922), 9
49. In "Heinrich Loriti Glareanus als Musiktheoretiker," Bernhard Meier calls attention to various emendations Glarean undertakes (98-99)
50. The tradition of correcting chant to accord with theoretical precept extends back to such writers as Berno of Reichenau and John of Afflighem and to monastic reformers, most famously the Cistercians in the twelfth century. Editorial revisions of the New Testament, Greek and Latin, by Valla and Erasmus created an atmosphere conducive to correction of other elements pertaining to Christian worship such as chant. An informative account of Erasmus's editorial efforts is available in R.J. Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe: The Prince of Humanists, 1501-1536 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 175-89
51. Both are attributed to Notier and hence had been sung for over half a millennium by Glarean's day. In the Hypomixolydian Sancti Spiritus, Glarean comments that he has retained the b inflection in couplet 10 found in some codices, even though the beginning of the next verse (with) thereby makes a harsh effect. He continues: "If one wishes to avoid this harshness, he can raise all the notes of the aforesaid verses by a whole tone, and the mode will remain unchanged in nature." Glarean has changed the cadence tone of couplet 10 from the usual G to F to accord better with his modal principles. His reading may be compared with a standard late medieval version in N. de Goede, The Utrecht Prosarium, Monumenta Musica Neerlandica 6 (Amsterdam: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1965), 40-42. Detailed study of Glarean's chant versions and revisions exceeds the scope of this paper but is planned as a subsequent stage of this investigation
52. Erasmus himself had complained about the proliferation of proses and noted their suspect status as late accretions, as Clement A. Miller reports in "Erasmus on Music," 335-37
53. At times, Glarean becomes quite heated about Lydian, as when he speaks of a conspiracy being formed against it and its "banishment decided on openly" ("quasi conspiratione in eum facta, de exilio eius publice sit decretum") (Dodecachordon, 2.25: 130; Miller ed., 166)
54. The humanistic current in Glarean's thinking has been widely recognized. Representative studies include Herbert Birtner, Studien zur niederländisch- humanistischen Musikanschauung (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitä tsbuchhandlung, 1930)
55. Bernhard Meier, "Heinrich Loriti Glareanus als Musiktheoretiker"
56. Clement A. Miller, "The Dodecachordon: Its Origins and Influence on Renaissance Musical Thought," Musica Disciplina 15 (1961): 156-66
57. and Iain Fenlon, "Heinrich Glarean's Books," in Music in the German Renaissance, ed. John Kmetz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 74-102. In contrast to some of these scholars, I regard humanism not as the controlling current in his work but as one among three primary operative strands
58. Rainer Vinke points out that Regius was then representing Duke Ernest of Bavaria ("Urbanus Rhegius," in Contemporaries of Erasmus, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz, 3 vols. [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985-87], 3:152.)
59. Miller, "The Dodecachordon: Its Origins and Influence," also recognizes the seminal influence of Erasmus on Glarean in this respect
60. "Der engste Zusammenhang, der connexus, und zwar ein notwendiger und sinnvoller Zusammenhang des antiken Zeitalters mit dem Zeitalter Christi ist das Wesentliche" (Rudolf Pfeiffer, Humanitas Erasmiana, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 22 [London: The Warburg Institute, 1931], 10)
61. In a letter of 4 January 1522, Urbanus Rhegius praises Erasmus for leading scholars "to the crystal springs of the original Scriptures," and for fostering a situation in which "humane and sacred studies [are] so interconnected that they can be pursued together without conflict" (Letter 1253, CWE 9:4)
62. Erasmus, Antibarbari, trans. Margaret Mann Phillips, CWE 23:57
63. This declaration is inserted into a lengthy commentary on numbers of strings (chordae) and octave species. Lee Patterson captures the power Greek learning held for such scholars as Glarean in his remark that "for the humanism of the Renaissance, on the other hand, history does indeed allow for recuperation. The legitimizing origin is historically instantiated in the models of natural perfection provided by antiquity. By returning to this past the present can construct itself upon a secure foundation of absolute value, absolutes that allow it to escape entirely from the merely local determinations of its specific historical moment." See his Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 18-19
64. Earlier in this letter Erasmus refutes the charge that his New Testament is novel, stating that he has "rather given the old one new life and light" (70). Damaging public accusations that Erasmus supports Martin Luther form the larger context of this communication. On this point, see also Pfeiffer, Humanitas Erasmiana, 8
65. Margaret Mann Phillips, "Erasmus and the Classics," in Erasmus, ed. Thomas A. Dorey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970), 5
66. Turrell, "The Isagoge in Musicen," 130
67. Claude V. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 6
68. This story was well known through Boethius, Book i.i (Fundamentals of Music, 5-6) and through other classical sources such as Quintilian
69. On the character of the Hypoionian, he remarks as follows: "Our time undoubtedly uses this mode [Hypoionian] no less than the Ionian for all frivolities; yet they also sing threnodies arranged in this mode very beautifully" ("Certe aetas nostra, non minus hoc modo quam Ionico ad omneis levitates utitur. Threnos item ad hunc modum institutos elegantissime décantant") (Dodecachordon, 2.27: 137; Miller ed., 173)- 4 On this point, I disagree with Clement A. Miller's statement that "Glarean had a firm belief in a fundamental tenet of Greek culture, the doctrine of ethos" ("The Dodecacbordon: Its Origins and Influence," 157)
70. "Glareans Dodekachordon ist also humanistische Reformschrift: mit großem Aufwand gelehrten Fleißes und mit glänzender Beredsamkeit unternimmt Glarean den Versuch einer Anwendung Erasmischen Gedankengutes" ("Heinrich Loriti Glareanus als Musiktheoretiker," 92)