(Stand: 25. Juli 2007) ANDERSON, Michael Alan ... - Universität Wien

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE MUSIC CONFERENCE 2007 – WIEN, 7.-11. AUGUST ABSTRACTS
the two. In fact, Le Brung responded to Josquin’s N’esse pas not only on the level of prosody
but also on that of compositional strategy and musical detail. The negative, pessimistic
tone of N’esse pas is confronted with an affirmative, optimistic poem. By changing the
order of the model’s words, the response alters their semantic potential and reverses the
tone of the original setting’s content. Le Brung’s musical treatment not only closely follows
the compositional strategies employed by Josquin but also reflects in musical terms
the reversal of tone effected in the poetic response. Le Brung’s compositional process
sheds light on what a contemporary composer read as important in Josquin’s setting and
allows us, in turn, to interpret Josquin’s chanson with greater depth and clarity.
The macroscopic conception of Le Brung’s response provides a glimpse into the subtle
ways by which contemporary composers demonstrated their prowess in addressing the
poetic and musical challenges posed by the model settings.
� �
KREYSZIG, Walter (University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada)
Sixteenth-Century Music Theoretical Discourse in Manuscript Vienna, ÖNB Codex
Ser. Nov. 12745“: The “systema teleion“ in Franchino Gaffurio’s De harmonia
musicorum instrumentorum opus as Commentary Upon Commentary
Samstag/Saturday, 11.8., 10.15 Uhr, KuGe, SR 3
While Renaissance commentators working in the realm of various humanities generally
focus their deliberations on single volumes, commentators in the disciplina musicae usually
take on a more comprehensive view, often embracing a considerable hiatus, spanning
from Antiquity to the actual date of the commentary itself, so as to provide a more or less
comprehensive account centered squarely on historiography, at the center of which lies
the question concerning the origin of music. The trilogy of Franchino Gaffurio (1451–1522),
comprising the Theorica musice (Milan, 1492), the Practica musicae (Milan, 1496) and the De
harmonia musicorum instrumentorum opus (Milan, 1518), represents a case in point. While the
Theorica musice focuses on the musica speculativa, including an extensive commentary on
the systema teleion and the Guidonain system, and the Practica musicae embraces the practica
compositionis, the De harmonia underscores a return to the systema teleion first discussed in
the Theorica musice as well as in its predecessor, the Theoricum opus musice discipline
(Naples, 1480), the first printed volume in music theory in the history of Western music.
The revisiting of an already fullfledged commentary on the Greek tonality and Western
modality in the De harmonia is amply justified on two levels, on the one hand in Gaffurio’s
self-imposed comparison of the Greek tonoi and the Western modi – a comparison which is
rooted in the similar terminology accorded to both scalar systems, yet with vastly different
meaning assigned to the respective systems of scales in the Greek and Latin traditions
– which accounts for his confusion of the terms octave species, modes, and tonoi in
the glossing of the De institutione musica of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius in Book 5
of the Theorica musice and the ultimate clarification in the De harmonia, and on the other
hand, in Gaffurio’s reconciliation of two important treatises accessible to him in recent
Latin translations, namely, Giorgio Valla’s translation of Cleonides Introduction to Harmonics
(1497) and Nicolo Leoniceno’s translation of Ptolemys’ Harmonics (1499), with both of
these documents providing a new perspective on a topic central to sixteenth-century
commentaries on music. In his commentary on the commentary, as elegantly captured in
- 49 -