Author: Doni, Giovanni Battista - manuscripts of italian music theory ...

of the tetrachords, so well organised, would be disrupted by the division of the
disjunctive tones and the genera and the entire Harmony would be in disarray.
Moreover, if Aristoxenus did not avail himself of any other arguments apart from his
requirement what every sound should have its corresponded by fourth and fifth, he did
so because it was sufficient for his scope.
[--] This Statement is demonstrated with the authority of other writers and with
other arguments chapter
One will find almost no ancient author who wrote about music from whom one may
not derive the truth of this statement with certainty, nevertheless, to avoid extending
myself without any need, I will be happy just with these supportive pieces of
evidence.
Firstly, if one looks at Ptolemy, one sees that he places the Systems of any genus with
its Species everywhere and that he places a tone in every octave of every mode
besides its two particular tetrachords, as one can see easily from the proportions
contained within the numbers which indicate each note and interval of the System.
Moreover, Cleonides, Bacchius and all the writers who wrote compendia says this
expressly. Cleonides, for instance, where he discusses the seven species of the octave
which belong each to one of the seven modes, says clearly that one has the tone in the
first place, another one in the second and so forth in this way, firstly in the two genera
Chromatic and Enharmonic, and then, separately, in the Chromatic, which, albeit it
has other tones, it also avails itself of the same illustration from the fact that it has the
tone of the disjunction in one of the Seven intervals. Bacchius says the same in his
Isagoge. [-] It is also clear that this is also what reason requires, as, if it were
otherwise, the disposition of the tetrachords and of the pentachords, or, rather, of all
melodies would be disrupted and would change from a body ordered, structured and
divided into all his parts into a disfigured animal as that fish that they call ,
which is really ‘crude and unstructured’. It is obvious that the melody would be
disrupted because all the Modes, would be in disarray, as our good Vicentino does not
believe that they would suit the two most artificial genera, and an octave could not be
found in these two genera constituted only by eight notes, since, for instance, if one
places two conjunct tetrachords in the Chromatic, seven notes will be laid out, which
lack a tone to complete an octave, and, as such tone should be divided necessarily, one
would need another two notes. The same occurs in the Enharmonic, so that in these
two genera there will not be difference of [sqb] square and b molle, and many more
drawbacks of this type will follow, as, for instance, the loss of that beautiful variety
which he modes produce in all the genera with the help of this tone of the disjunction,
since, (to employ the example above) just as in painting one cannot produce words of
great perfection by using only two extreme colours, thus in music it is not possible to
create perfect melodies just with the large and interval intervals of the tetrachords
(which are just as the extremes) [--] but one would need even more the middle
interval, which is the tone, on the basis of which some admirable union of colours is
produced (which according to Pliny it is the hardest part of painting) as one can see in
the rainbow, which, equally, was called harmoge [harmoge] with a word taken from
music, which means accord, harmonious combination of differing elements or
pleasant union of extremes, as the warmth is in between heat and cold. Should anyone
require further arguments as evidence of this truth, one should read what Bottrigari
writes in his Discourse addressed to Annibale Melone, Dean of the musicians of
Bologna. There, among other matters, one will note Don Nicola’s Inconsistency in