Musica Ficta

This dissertation focuses on the medieval and Renaissance understandings of musica ficta with respect to considering its repertorial and theoretical contexts, from the ninth to the sixteenth century.  Contrary to common understandings that musica ficta was linked primarily to the rules of counterpoint, and therefore to polyphony, the author argues that musica ficta was the product of earlier monophonic contexts that called for solutions mainly through solmization.
The entire process of solmization is laid out, first regarding recta solmization and then moving to ficta solmization.  The three main procedures for clarifying hexachords (mutation, permutation, and transmutation) are discussed. Each is addressed in detail; types and subtypes (such as 'explicit,' 'implicit,' and 'indirect' mutations), species (recta- and ficta-mutations), cases ('regular' and 'irregular' mutations, permutations by leap and stepwise, transmutations in upper- and subsemitone situations, as well as in propinquity) are identified and defined.  The dissertation introduces to ficta scholarship notions of transmutation and of solmization by means of octave equivalence.  In the latter, a momentary shift between two hexachords of the same kind (say, two C-hexachords in different octaves) may be solmized without an actual change between them (i.e., without mutation).  'Transmutation' is conceived as an umbrella term that encompasses other types short-range shifts between hexachords, in which one borrows a note from a different hexachord in order to permit the solmization of a transitional step that falls outside of its limits.  This may happen, for example, when a note from an F-hexachord is solmized within a C-hexachordal gesture, in order to momentarily reach a b-flat above a.  These concepts and terminology as promulgated in the language of medieval didactic writings are also considered in terms of contemporaneous rhetorical and philosophical practices, in an attempt to tease out the conceptual background that may have informed the approaches to solmization and the realization of musica ficta taken by theorists, pedagogues, and performers.

Die vorliegende, vom Kyrie I der Missa Sine Nomine ausgehende Untersuchung widmet sich bemerkenswerten Eigenarten der Kompositionstechnik Alexander Agricolas (1446–1506), dem schon die unmittelbaren Nachfahren bescheinigten, Dinge »auf ungewohnte Weise zu wenden« (Hulrich Brätel 1536). Tatsächlich zeigen sich bestimmte Paradoxien im Tonsatz des späten 15. Jahrhunderts bei Agricola auf besonders eigentümliche Weise. Die Studien von Fabrice Fitch (2005; 2007) vertiefend, diskutiert der Beitrag die Frage, auf welche Weise Agricola seinerzeit Regeln ›verkehrte‹ und sich über satztechnische Normen hinwegsetzte. In diesem Zusammenhang wird der Begriff der ›mi contra fa-Latenz‹ vorgeschlagen, um den grundsätzlichen Problemen der Musica ficta zu begegnen.

This essay, starting with the Kyrie I of the Missa Sine Nomine, is dedicated to some remarkable compositional idiosyncracies of Alexander Agricola (1446–1506), of whom his contemporaries attested the talent of “turning things in an unexpected manner” (Hulrich Brätel 1536). Certain paradoxes in the formal composition of late 15th century music appear in Agricola’s work in a strange fashion. Drawing on and furthering the studies of Fabrice Fitch (2005; 2007), this paper reveals how Agricola breaks with compositional conventions. To frame this analytical discussion, I propose the term “mi contra fa-Latenz” to explain some of the fundamental problems of musica ficta.

_Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts_, ed. Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1996), pp. 215-226.
Explores contemporary lute intabulations in order to formulate  practical guidelines for the addition of accidentals to a polyphonic source.  The contrapuntal situations are grouped into three categories:  almost universally corrected by the additional of accidentals, sometimes corrected, and almost never corrected.

Contrapuntal passages in Franco-Flemish music around 1500 that suggest the use of forbidden intervals such as augmented unisons, diminished octaves and fifths, are not uncommon.  These intervals are forbidden primarily by our preconceptions of how this music should sound, and secondarily by the application of a rule of counterpoint, mi contra fa, which is widely thought to be a performer's rule, a "rule of Musica ficta".  This paper concentrates on the type of evidence that suggests that such forbidden intervals were actually heard during the 15th and 16th centuries.  There is manuscript evidence implying that the harmonic result of Franco-flemish polyphony, false consonances in particular, sometimes stimulated revisions from those listeners with a pen in hand, whether they were singers, scribes, or editors in a fuller sense.  Linear situations would stimulate the addition of accidentals by performers, harmonic events might cause their erasure, and the transmission of polyphonic notation often caused the regularization of complex signature configurations and therefore the loss of information, which would in turn cause performers to respond with accidental additions or erasures.  The results of this investigation not only tell us something about what musicians would hear and respond to in the course of their singing, but also provide a sense of the relationship between the written and sounding expressions of music.

Director del taller “Taller vocal de interpretación de música barroca: las Vísperas de Monteverdi desde las fuentes originales”, (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, campus “Antonio Mahado” de Baeza, del 3 al 5 de diciembre de 2018), junto con Fernando Pérez Valera (Universidad de Alicante).
El presente taller, de carácter teórico-práctico, se centrará en el estudio y montaje, desde una perspectiva históricamente informada, de una de las obras más emblemáticas de la historia de la música universal: las Vísperas de la Virgen (1610) de Claudio Monteverdi. Se trata de un taller experimental en el que se recreará el método de trabajo de una capilla vocal de principios del siglo XVII, leyendo las Vísperas a partir de la notación original contenida en los libretes impresos de 1610. Por otro lado, la sección de canto llano que complementa el oficio de Vísperas (antífonas a los salmos) también se estudiará y se trabajará sobre fuentes contemporáneas italianas o españolas. Ello implica, en primer lugar, experimentar el solfeo histórico (solmisación), entre otros aspectos de la práctica interpretativa histórica, atendiendo a los tratados de teoría musical de ese periodo, además de a las propias fuentes musicales originales. Entre otros, se prestará especial atención a los siguientes temas:
1. Aspectos generales de interpretación a partir de fuentes originales:
- Solmisación. El hexacordo y las mutaciones. La mano guidoniana y el gamut.
- Notación mensural: figuras y pausas. El tactus. Figuras con punto y síncopas; figuras ligadas. El color. Proporción tripla y sesquialtera
- Contrapunto, texturas, cánones y cláusulas.
- Música ficta: ajuste intervalos perfectos armónicos y melódicos; fórmulas cadenciales.
- Conceptos de ornamentación y su puesta en práctica, tanto en el canto llano como en la polifonía, de acuerdo con los criterios estéticos del momento y a partir de las referencias que se encuentran en tratados de la época.

2. Aspectos performativos de las Vísperas de Monteverdi:
- Reconstrucción de las antífonas de canto llano que acompañan a los salmos
- Estructura general de la parte polifónica: obras basadas en cantus firmus y obras libremente compuestas. 
- Estilos de canto: obras para solistas y a varios coros.
- Cuestiones de ornamentación e improvisación. 
- Otras dimensiones interpretativas: pronunciación, tempo, transportes y afinación.

Puesto que el taller es principalmente práctico, se dirige fundamentalmente a músicos (cantantes, directores de coro, musicólogos especializados en música antigua) interesados en acercarse a este repertorio desde una nueva perspectiva.

Unpublished paper, originally presented at the 14th Annual Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music, King's College, London, 1986. Revised version presented at the Southeast Chapter of the American Musicological Society, Greensboro NC, 1987. Handout with examples and tables at the back.

The present study deals with a hermeneutic reconstruction of the issue of partium toni discourse in Marchetto da Padova’s treatise Lucidarium in arte musicae planae. Contemporary propositions of the issue, according to Marchetto divided the whole tone into five equal parts called dieses, are postulated in the first part. By means of dieses he
deduced three types of semitones, which are currently interpreted as two-fifths, three-fifths and four-fifths of a whole tone. This provides a number of interpretative issues which are described in more detail in the second part of the study.

Submitted to the Journal of the Alamire Foundation
The basis of the article was a talk that aimed to describe the issue of musica ficta in ten minutes. The author avoids use of the term "musica ficta" when possible, because of the mismatch between the old and the modern meanings.  The modern meaning can result in very different performances of 15th and 16th c. works following opposing interpretations.  There are essentially three—a linear view, a vertical or harmonic view, and the most common one—the viewpoint that "this is too treacherous an area to be sure of anything, and maybe it didn't matter."  The author does not present his own viewpoint, other than to indicate that the relativism of the last one requires disproving one of the other two, too large a job for ten minutes.

[ENGLISH — main text in Portuguese]
The solmization procedures applied in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which produced the modern solfege, served not only as means for a first contact between the performer and the musical works, but also served for the understanding of melodic structures used in musical composition.  As the diastematic musical notation became established, these procedures were also used as parameters (even paradigms) for composers, in order to produce their musical works from the standpoint of solmization, thus allowing the performer a more immediate access to the piece. In order to introduce concepts which composers and performers would use to approach the musical manuscripts (or even printed music) of that time, this essay will present procedures called mutatio, permutatio, and transmutatio (used for solmization in these epochs), in light of the evidence extant in historical texts.

[PORTUGUÊS]
Os processos de solmização utilizados durante a Idade Média e Renascimento, que geraram o atual sofejo, serviram não apenas para viabilizar um primeiro contato do intérprete com as obras musicais, mas serviram também para entendimento das estruturas melódicas utilizadas na construção musical. A partir do estabelecimento da notação musical diastemática, esses processos também foram utilizados como parâmetro (ou mesmo paradigmas) para que compositores elaborassem obras em função da solmização, permitindo assim uma acessibilidade imediata aos intérpretes. A fim de introduzir conceitos que compositores e intérpretes teriam utilizado em seus contatos com as partituras da época, o presente artigo apresentará os procedimentos denominados mutatio, permutatio e transmutatio (utilizados na solmização desses períodos), de acordo com a evidência de presente nos textos históricos.

Como extensão de um trabalho anterior, a análise de inflexões ficta e recta em Magnum haereditatis mysterium de Willaert foi realizada com base em convenções de clausulae cadenciais, causa necessitatis e causa pulchritudines sobre publicações de época em manuscritos e impressos editados em livros de parte e de côro e em tablatura, além de uma edição moderna por Zenck. Tanto a natureza das ocorrências de inflexões ficta e recta bem como as discrepâncias de atribuição entre a tablatura de Gintzler e a edição de Zenck foram esclarecidas, porém em oposição à idéia geral de que tablaturas sejam fontes seguras para a interpretação por deductio, uma vez observados hexacordes molle e durum concomitantes no exemplar estudado.