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Historians of music theory long have recognized the importance of the sixteenth-century Florentine theorist Pietro Aaron for his influential vernacular treatises on practical matters concerning polyphony, most notably his Toscanello in musica (Venice, 1523) and his Trattato della natura et cognitione de tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato (Venice, 1525). Less often discussed is Aaron’s treatment of plainsong, the most complete statement of which occurs in the opening book of his first published treatise, the Libri tres de institutione harmonica (Bologna, 1516). The present dissertation aims to assess and contextualize Aaron’s perspective on the subject with a translation and commentary on the first book of the De institutione harmonica.The extensive commentary endeavors to situate Aaron’s treatment of plainsong more concretely within the history of music theory, with particular focus on some of the most prominent treatises that were circulating in the decades prior to the publication of the De institutione harmonica. This includes works by such well-known theorists as Marchetto da Padova, Johannes Tinctoris, and Franchinus Gaffurius, but equally significant are certain lesser-known practical works on the topic of plainsong from around the turn of the century, some of which are in the vernacular Italian, including Bonaventura da Brescia’s Breviloquium musicale (1497), the anonymous Compendium musices (1499), and the anonymous Quaestiones et solutions (c.1500).The topic of plainsong remained fertile ground for discussion and controversy among theorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as arguments over solmization, tuning, and mode attest. Aaron, because of his overriding concern with practical matters, offers unique insight into many of these issues in the De institutione harmonica, the only one of his publications to appear in Latin. The treatise frequently has been overshadowed in part because of its uneven quality and numerous errors, characteristics that have prompted some scholars to question the rigor of Aaron’s early training in theoretical matters. Despite these deficiencies, Aaron’s first treatise deserves a fresh look, for it has much to tell us about an important period in the history of music history as well as about Aaron himself, an earnest musician who was striving to reconcile theory and practice, insofar as he understood both at the time. |
