Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought by Claude V. PaliscaReview by: John B. HowardNotes, Second Series, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar., 1987), pp. 554-556Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/898200 .

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BOOK REVIEWS Compiled and edited by RICHARD KoPROWSKI

Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought. By Claude V. Pal- isca. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. [xiii, 471 p.; $40.00]

Claude V. Palisca's Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought addresses one of the most glaring lacunae in the field of Renaissance music history: the relationship of the humanistic movement to the devel- opment of musical thinking in the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries. He begins by reviewing in the Preface and opening chapter the interpretations of the term "Renaissance" in the writings of several major musical scholars from the time of Ambros on, observing that most share the conviction that, with music, the Renais- sance began in northern Europe and only gradually, through the influence of North- ern musicians, moved south.

The notion appears to be a historio- graphic anomaly insofar as scholars in other disciplines tend to regard the Renaissance as a cultural movement that originated in Italy and spread thereafter to the North. It is explained by the tendency among mu- sicologists to focus on musical style rather than on the entire universe of musical phe- nomena. Palisca rejects this approach be- cause of its narrowness. In his understand- ing, "Renaissance music is not a set of compositional techniques but a complex of social conditions, intellectual states of mind, attitudes, aspirations, habits of performers, artistic support systems, intracultural com- munication, and many other such ingre- dients, which add up to a thriving matrix of musical energy" (pp. 5-6). The human- istic movement is identified as the single driving force without which this "matrix" could not have developed and is thus es- tablished as the focus of the book.

Specifically, Palisca's purpose is "to show that with music, as with the other arts and letters and learning in general, the move- ment we call the Renaissance began in Ita- ly, and that its chief source of inspiration was the [humanistic] revival of antiquity" (p. 22). The method adopted for accomplish- ing this goal is philological: sources of clas-

sical writings on music available in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- ries are identified (chapters 2-7) and the extent to which the terminology and con- cepts they convey penetrated the writings of Renaissance humanists and commenta- tors on music in general is then analyzed in detail (chapters 8-14).

The state of knowledge of classical, spe- cifically Greek, music theory at the begin- ning of the Renaissance is assessed first. Inventories of humanist libraries are scru- tinized for relevant sources and the pres- ent location of identifiable manuscripts de- clared. In addition, the extent to which the widely circulated sources of the late me- dieval period (Boethius, Cassiodorus, Ma- crobius, Capella) transmitted classical ideas is examined. Palisca concludes that the ma- jority of extant ancient sources containing discussions of music were already known in Italy during the early years of the Renais- sance, but he points out that their dissem- ination was very limited and that some of the better known sources, for example Boethius, presented inaccurate interpreta- tions of classical theory.

Reliable editions and translations of clas- sical Greek writings on music gradually be- came available through the efforts of a number of humanist scholars. Pietro d'A- bano's exposition of Aristotle's Problemata (published 1475) added to the number of sources accessible and also laid the foun- dation for later theorizing on the physical properties of sound. Giorgio Valla's five books on music in his De expetendis et fu- giendis rebus opus (1501) made available works on harmonics of Ptolemy and Bryennius and also set a precedent in ar- ticulating a conceptual link between music, grammar, and rhetoric. Important trans- lations prepared by Carlo Valgulio, Fran- cesco Burano, Nicol6 Leoniceno, and Gio- vanni Battista Augio are discussed and compared-some for the first time in

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Book Reviews 555

modern musical scholarship. And the rel- ative contributions of Antonio Gogava's translations of Ptolemy's Harmonica, the De audibilibus of Pseudo-Aristotle and Aristo- xenus's Elementa harmonica are given par- ticular attention.

From chapter 8 on Palisca proceeds top- ically, devoting each chapter to specialized subjects in speculative or practical aspects of music. The place of cosmology in writ- ings of Italian musical humanists is dis- cussed with reference to Gaffurio, Tinc- toris, Zarlino, Salinas, and Benedetti. Among these theorists only Gaffurio emerges as a true enthusiast of cosmolog- ical musical phenomena, and Palisca ar- gues that this enthusiasm developed as Gaffurio became increasingly aware of rel- evant classical writings between 1480 and 1492. With Tinctoris and later theorists, however, there occurs a movement away from such unquestioning trust of ancient or medieval metaphysical doctrines of ce- lestial harmony toward a theory of music based on principles of mathematics, phys- ics, and mechanics and verifiable through logical demonstration.

This same tendency is also apparent in the writings of Renaissance humanists with respect to musical science in general and the relationship of the Greek tonal systems to Renaissance theories of modality, the subjects of chapters 10-1 1. Again the pat- tern is away from the propagation of leg- ends and unsubstantiated speculation. In the case of modality, for example, the me- dieval confusion of the classical Greek to- noi and octave species with the ecclesiasti- cal modes was only gradually dispelled as methods of philological criticism and sci- entific verification attained relatively greater authority than sheer tradition.

The remainder of the book is concerned with the phenomena of systematic thinking during the Renaissance which not only placed music among the theoretic sciences but also drew solid connections between it and the various language disciplines. Much of the thinking in this area was inspired by accounts of ancient musical traditions, but the development of a systematic approach to the subject also required an astute re- evaluation of music's inherent expressive and cathartic powers and the relationship between text and musical setting. Of the individuals who addressed these subjects, Girolamo Mei and his contacts dominate

Palisca's discussion. Through Mei there de- veloped a system of thought inspired by classical writings on poetics and the like, wherein the quantitative relationship be- tween text and music is definable, and a mimetic relationship between words and the concetti they represent established. While the elements of such a system inevitably re- mained polemical, Palisca is able to dem- onstrate that they did indeed have practical consequences for musical composition, at least in the madrigals, monodic works, and experimental dramatic genres cultivated by the Mei/Bardi circles.

Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought represents an outstanding schol- arly achievement. Its manifold contribu- tions to our understanding of music in the intellectual history of the Renaissance (only a few of which can be discussed or identi- fied here) establish it both as a landmark of historical writing on music and an in- dispensable reference tool. In reaching be- yond the familiar writings of Renaissance music theorists Palisca vastly increases the literary resources available to the scholarly community. While simply identifying these sources is in itself important, the book's au- thority rests to a large extent on the care- fully documented collation of specific terms and the concepts they represent and the author's decision to let the sources speak for themselves: extensive passages are quoted, printed throughout in the original languages with parallel English transla- tions, making the volume a veritable reader in Renaissance musical humanism.

In addition to this wealth of knowledge, Palisca's philological method yields a fresh view of those musicians of the period whose works are already well known to scholars. Of particular note is the treatment of Gaf- furio, which sheds new light on his devel- opment as a theorist and commentator on music as well as the chronology of his writ- ing activities. And the stature of Girolamo Mei, already established in the author's earlier publications, is here reaffirmed and placed in a much broader intellectual per- spective.

Palisca's principal purpose-to analyze the extent to which ancient concepts of music were transmitted and how they shaped musical thought in the Renais- sance-is indisputably and elegantly ac- complished. It is less certain that his cor- ollary point made in chapter 1, that an

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556 MLA Notes, March 1987

exposition of this subject also leads to a re- vision of the problem of the geographic origins of the musical Renaissance, has also been demonstrated. This is so because the subject matter rarely extends beyond the theoretical and philological parameters which define the body of the book. Cer- tainly one can agree with the statement that the concept of Renaissance must embrace more than musical style. But in this book the music of the period is almost com- pletely excluded.

Recent research by other scholars based more directly on the analytic study of mu- sical works has suggested that some ideas which are classical in origin, such as that of musical imitation, had identifiable conse- quences in composition even during the late fifteenth century (and also in the works of Northern composers). Insofar as this is the case, and to the extent that Palisca by and large does not consider the arguments of these scholars in discussing mimesis, mo- dality, and so forth, one can conclude only that the final word on the origins of the Renaissance in music is yet to be uttered.

More germane to the true focus of the book is a matter which pervades it but which is nowhere developed as a topic in itself: the humanist concern for method. In the discussion of those sources in which an un- derstanding of the Greek tonal system and its relationship to Renaissance theories of the modes gradually evolved, for example, it becomes clearly apparent that the way in which humanist scholars scrutinized sources and tested the validity of the arguments they transmit was itself of major importance. In other words, logic and dialectic-transpar- ent instruments which prescribe the struc- ture of argument in the exposition of a subject-formed an instrinsic part of the philological studies of Renaissance schol- ars, thereby helping shape the conclusions

drawn from their study of classical musi- cal writings and thus also contributing to the development of Renaissance musical thought. For this reason it would have been useful had the subject of method been ad- dressed in a separate chapter or even briefly identified in the preliminary material.

The design of the volume itself generally enhances it usefulness but is deficient in some minor respects. A comprehensive in- dex facilitates access to information in the book and adds to its value as a reference tool. Citations in footnotes and the bibli- ography are limited to works that contrib- ute substantively to the text. Digressive ref- erences to secondary sources are thereby eliminated, but the bibliography cannot, as a result, claim comprehensiveness in the subject; it could also be argued that in a work based so thoroughly on a study of primary sources and which will certainly find use as a reference work, a separate bibliography of these sources would have been in order. Figures are carefully chosen and placed to amplify textual material, but the value of some facsimile reproductions is minimized by poor legibility, and musical examples are not set consistently in the same font.

The few minor criticisms of this book of- fered above must not detract from Profes- sor Palisca's extraordinary accomplish- ments in this book; indeed, they can be raised only because the book expands so significantly the domain of Renaissance musical studies. Humanism in Italian Re- naissance Musical Thought is essential read- ing for scholars and students of Renais- sance music and an indispensable work in any research library.

JOHN B. HOWARD Harvard University

Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society, 1650-1750. By Eleanor Selfridge-Field. (Studi musicologici, 3.D. 1.) Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 1985. [xxxix, 417 p.; $60.00]

Pallade veneta was the name of a short- lived Venetian publication that was issued monthly from January 1687 through May 1688; the same title also served for a much longer-lived manuscript periodical, issued in weekly installments probably from the early 1690s until sometime after the mid-

dle of the 18th century (the last known is- sue is dated September 1751). Although different in purpose and scope-the more substantial prints report events of interest from throughout the Veneto while the brief- er manuscripts concern themselves chiefly with the city of Venice itself-both of these

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