RENAISSANCE INTERVAL-SUCCESSION THEORY: TREATISES AND ANALYSIS

Medieval and Renaissance counterpoint treatises offer a practical guide to composing and improvising polyphony that respects stylistic norms. These counterpoint treatises are also replete with theoretical implications and can serve as a penetrating window into Renaissance musical thought, training, and style. Sarah Fuller has described Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti (hereafter LAC) as a " culmination of contrapunctus theory from the preceding two centuries, " underlining its importance to our understanding of the period. 2 In this chapter I reexamine the LAC in order to rectify the common misconception that its interval-succession list is exhaustive, and to reveal nine tacit contrapuntal principles that Tinctoris systematically followed in the examples in the treatise. In addition to providing insight into Tinctoris's intervallic thinking, my methodology also serves as a general model for taking a corpus-study approach in researching the examples in counterpoint treatises in order to enrich our understanding of them.

2020

Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition, ed. by Philippe Vendrix (Turnhout: Brepols), 2003

Authors such as Knud Jeppesen, with his work on Palestrina (The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance), and Harold K. Andrews (The Technique of Byrd’s Vocal Polyphony) have proposed taxonomies for Renaissance music, based primarily on dissonance treatment. However, there has been much less discussion in the literature of formal issues in Renaissance music: which types of musical material characterize openings, and which suggest development or continuation. This approach recalls William Caplin’s analytic method in Classical Form, in which he shows how each small musical unit has a particular formal function in creating the overall shape of a composition. Peter N. Schubert’s work in this area, in his article “A Lesson from Lassus: Form in the Duos of 1577,” and his text, Modal Counterpoint: Renaissance Style, is a point of departure for the current study. In his text, Schubert identifies “presentation types,” brief imitative or non-imitative musical units that characterize openings, loosely analogous to Caplin’s “basic idea.” In Schubert’s article, he describes how Renaissance composers employed varied repetition of these openings to create longer formal units. Similarly, Jessie Ann Owens, in Composers at Work, has noted how Renaissance composers design short, multi-voiced “modules,” around which they construct longer formal units (such “modules” recall Joseph Kerman’s notion of “cell technique,” first expounded in “Old and New in Byrd’s Cantiones Sacrae”). These authors proceed from the assumption that Renaissance composers did indeed concern themselves with form, insofar as they strove toward designing long, musically unified sections from a brief opening idea. Schubert’s work focuses on presentation types that are possible in a thin texture, namely, the imitative duo and the non-imitative module. Schubert also discusses imitative presentation in three or more voices, which he defines as a canon (an imitative duo with extra voices added at a consistent time interval of imitation). However, Schubert domits certain other possibilities in three or more voices, in which characteristics of the imitative module and non-imitative duo are blended into a hybrid presentation type. This paper, extending Schubert’s principles, proposes additional presentation types with which Byrd can begin a formal unit. These types, beginning with Schubert’s original three (imitative duo, non-imitative module and canon), will be examined, starting with presentation types in two voices, and proceeding through more intricate types in three and four voices. To list two of many possible hybrids that blend features of Schubert’s three presentation types: in a three-voice texture, two of the voices could form an imitative duo while a third voice provides homophonic support (semi-imitative presentation). Similarly, in four voices, a supporting part could underpin a three-voice canon (accompanied canon). After introducing these presentation types, I will demonstrate how William Byrd distinguishes between opening gestures of varying musical weight and formal location in a composition by the kind of presentation type he uses to begin a formal unit. Byrd uses a limited number of presentation types at the beginning of a composition, but permits a wider range of initiating possibilities later in a work. Still other presentation types are unlikely to occur as beginnings at all, but rather arise from later variation and development of material whose initial presentation had been straightforward. A feature of hybrid presentation types that is significant for their formal shape is their tendency to combine elements of presentation with elements of development. For example, a three-voice canon could combine the presentation of an imitative duo (formed by the first two entries) with its immediate transposed repetition (created by the second and third entries). This blending of beginning and middle (development) characteristics is a unique feature of Renaissance style that makes problematic the establishment of fixed categories of presentation and continuation, a problem that less often arises in post-Renaissance music. In Byrd’s music, and by extension, that of his contemporaries, the musical surface demands a more flexible approach in determining points of demarcation between formal building blocks: often, the opening presentational unit will blend imperceptibly with its subsequent continuation. Finally, I will show how the developmental procedures inherent in hybrid presentation types points toward certain variation techniques (transposition, invertible counterpoint, textural thickening) that Byrd employs to develop his musical ideas. Using examples from Byrd’s three sets of Cantiones Sacrae (published 1575, 1589 and 1591), I will illustrate how a Renaissance composer can vary and expand initiating units to create a long span of musical material. I will furthermore show how this progression of material divides into presentation, continuation and conclusion units, based on the contrapuntal techniques that the composer uses in each of these three formal locations.

Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2019

The primary goal of this dissertation is to produce a rigorous methodology for distinguishing between the contrapunctus structure and its elaboration in performing structural analysis of fourteenth-century diminished counterpoint. This methodology is based on historical thought by carefully analyzing contemporaneous treatises and their musical examples in order to better understand the compositional process conveyed both explicitly and implicitly in the treatises. In Chapter 1, I examine the various uses of the phrase “fundamentum discanti” (“foundation of discant”) in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century treatises and discuss its connection to contrapunctus as the structural foundation to support its embellishment, demonstrated through analysis of the musical examples in De diminutione contrapuncti and the Compendium de discantu mensurabili by Petrus dictus Palma Ociosa. Chapter 2 further contextualizes this argument by illustrating the significant conceptual shift regarding the relationship between tonal structure and elaboration from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century. I then consider the relationship between theory and practice in Chapter 3 through a detailed analysis of dissonance treatment in the treatise examples and contemporaneous repertoires in order to determine which repertoires most relate to the teachings of contrapunctus treatises. Finally, Chapter 4 presents structural analyses of fourteenth-century motets and motet-style liturgical polyphony. First, I build upon the analytical methodology presented in Chapter 1 by presenting a number of analytical criteria for determining the contrapunctus structure. Then, I discuss the prevalence of particular elaborative figures and their implications for structural analysis. Finally, I demonstrate how my analytical methodology may be used in conjunction with other methodologies of sonority and cadence to analyze large-scale tonal structures, illustrated with an analysis of Machaut’s Motet 17 as well as a comparison of Vitry’s Flos/Celsa and Gloria Ivrea 64.

The Musical Quarterly, 1980

2015

This chapter examines the interval-succession examples in florid two-voice counterpoint provided in book II of RM together as a coherent group to infer various aspects of Pontio’s intervallic thinking and general theoretical assumptions.

Opus, v.25, n.3, p.30-49, 2019

The structural development of what we understand as cadence has a long and complex history associated with an awareness and appreciation of musical elements assimilated by a decodification process that is related to adapted morphology. Thus, the connection between music and text goes beyond its joint praxis: it lends structural elements from its main vehicle (text), engendering a true corpus grammaticae musicae. In general terms, this principle resulted in parameters from both synchronic and diachronic dimensions, i.e., a specific set of intervals with a particular melodic progression. The argument presented in this study aims to exam the musical treatises through the end of the fifteenth century in testimonies that contain evidence that corroborate a probable dichotomy between understanding of cadence as a "metaphor of instability" and "conclusive unity"'. Cadência como "metáfora de instabilidade" e "unidade conclusiva": um breve excursus entre gramática e música Resumo: O desenvolvimento estrutural do que se entende por cadência tem uma longa e complexa jornada associada à compreensão dos elementos musicais, assimilados por uma decodificação vinculada a uma morfologia adaptada. Assim, a conexão entre música e texto vai além de sua prática conjunta: empresta elementos estruturais de seu veículo principal (texto), gerando um verdadeiro corpus grammaticae musicae. Em termos gerais, este princípio resultou em parâmetros tanto de dimensões sincrônicas quanto diacrônicas: ou seja, um conjunto específico de intervalos com suas respectivas progressões melódicas particulares. O argumento apresentado neste estudo objetiva o exame dos tratados musicais até o final do século XV em testemunhos que contenham evidências que corroborem para uma provável dicotomia entre a compreensão da cadência como "metáfora da instabilidade" e "unidade conclusiva". Palavras-chave: História da teoria musical. Teoria da cadência. Gramática musical. Teoria da música no século XV.