Gioseffo Zarlino

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(b Chioggia, ?31 Jan 1517; d Venice, 4 Feb 1590). Italian theorist and composer. He was educated by the Franciscans and became a priest. At Chioggia Cathedral he was a singer (1536) and organist (1539-40) before moving to Venice (1541), where he studied under Willaert. From 1565 he was maestro di cappella of St Mark's; his pupils included Merulo, Diruta and Artusi. In 1558 he published Le istitutioni harmoniche, a landmark in the history of music theory; it aims to unite speculative theories based on ancient sources with modern compositional practices. The rules for practical counterpoint (deriving from Willaert) influenced many later generations of composers; those relating to tuning and temperament proved less reliable. He also composed c 40 motets (2 bks, 1549, 1566); a dozen or so madrigals also survive.

The Italian music theorist and composer Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590) wrote the most lucid and comprehensive exposition of 16th-century counterpoint.

Born in Chioggia near Venice, Gioseffo Zarlino received his initial training in religion and music from Franciscans, whose order he entered as early as 1537. Although a promising priest and theologian at the age of 24, he nevertheless abandoned this calling in 1541 to study music with the world-famous Adrian Willaert, maestro di cappella of St. Mark's in Venice. Among his fellow students was Cipriano de Rore, who succeeded Willaert at the Cathedral. In 1565 Rore relinquished the post to Zarlino, who held it until his death.

Because of his position in one of the most important churches of Christendom, Zarlino wrote many Masses and motets for liturgical and devotional purposes. But he was also known for his numerous madrigals and secular music to celebrate political events, such as the brilliant naval victory of Lepanto (1571). Zarlino esteemed and emulated Willaert, crediting him with having the restored music to a level previously enjoyed only in classical times. Like his teacher, Zarlino wrote imitative polyphony in diatonic movement, with chromaticism reserved largely for the madrigals.

Although 16th-century opinion considered Zarlino a talented composer, his main significance then and now lies with his three contributions to music theory: Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558), Dimostrationi harmoniche (1571), and Sopplimenti musicali (1588). The first treatise probably contains his most valuable thinking. For the first time among theorists, Zarlino considered the triad rather than the interval as the basic entity of musical composition. His rules for the proper placement of text are still followed by editors of Renaissance music. The prominent place accorded the Ionian mode on C and the Aeolian on A in part IV of the Istitutioni harmoniche not only stressed the importance of these modes but also anticipated their supremacy in the 18th century. While vigorously opposed by his own student Vincenzo Galilei, he favored the Ptolemaic rather than the older Pytheagorean intonation. In his third treatise, Sopplimenti musicali, written in part as a reply to Galilei's attacks, he proposed for the fretted lute a form of equal temperament, commonly accepted only 2 centuries later.

Even while, or perhaps because, Zarlino was a conservative composer, he wrote the best critique of the music of his time and the age that led up to it. His insights and views had far-reaching results in later years, even though he took little part in the musical revolution inaugurated under his eyes by his own student and most formidable opponent, Galilei.

Further Reading

Part III of Zarlino's Le istitutioni harmoniche was translated by Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca as The Art of Counterpoint (1968). Sections from parts III and IV of the same treatise are also translated in William Oliver Strunk, ed., Source Readings in Music History (1950). For a study of Zarlino's position in 16th-century music and music theory see Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (1954; rev. ed. 1959); Hugo Riemann, History of Music Theory, Books I and II (trans. 1962); and Friedrich Blume, Renaissance and Baroque Music (trans. 1967).

Gioseffo Zarlino

Gioseffo Zarlino (January 31 or March 22, 1517 – February 4, 1590), was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was possibly the most famous music theorist between Aristoxenus and Rameau, and made a large contribution to the theory of counterpoint as well as to musical tuning.

Contents 1 Life 2 Works and influence 3 References 4 Recordings 5 External links

Life

Zarlino was born in Chioggia, near Venice. His early education was with the Franciscans, and he later joined the order himself. In 1536 he was a singer at Chioggia Cathedral, and by 1539 he not only became a deacon, but became principal organist. In 1540 he was ordained, and in 1541 went to Venice to study with the famous contrapuntist and maestro di cappella of Saint Mark's, Adrian Willaert.

In 1565, on the resignation of Cipriano de Rore, Zarlino took over the post of maestro di cappella of St. Mark's, one of the most prestigious musical positions in Italy, and held it until his death. While maestro di cappella he taught some of the principal figures of the Venetian school of composers, including Claudio Merulo, Girolamo Diruta, and Giovanni Croce, as well as Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer, and the famous reactionary polemicist Giovanni Artusi.

Works and influence

While he was a moderately prolific composer, and his motets are polished and display a mastery of canonic counterpoint, his principal claim to fame was his work as a theorist. While Pietro Aaron may have been the first theorist to describe a version of meantone, Zarlino seems to have been the first to do so with exactitude, describing 2/7-comma meantone in his Le istitutioni harmoniche in 1558. Zarlino also described the 1/4-comma meantone and 1/3-comma meantone, considering all three temperaments to be usable. These are the precursors to the 50- 31- and 19-tone equal temperaments, respectively. In his Dimonstrationi harmoniche of 1571, he revised the numbering of modes to emphasize C and the Ionian mode, thereby drawing closer to the harmonic and melodic system basing itself on tonality and the major and minor scales.

Zarlino was the first to recognize the primacy of the triad over the interval as a means of harmonic thinking. His development of just intonation came from a realization of the imperfection of the intervals in the Pythagorean system, and a desire to retain as much purity as possible using a limited number of tones. He was also the first to attempt an explanation of the old prohibition of parallel fifths and octaves as a rule of counterpoint, and the first to study the effect and harmonic implications of the false relation.

Zarlino's writings, primarily published by Francesco Franceschi, spread throughout Europe at the end of the 16th century. Translations and annotated versions were common in France, Germany, as well as in the Netherlands among the students of Sweelinck, thus influencing the next generation of musicians who represented the early Baroque style.

Zarlino's compositions are more conservative in idiom than those of many of his contemporaries. His madrigals avoid the homophonic textures commonly used by other composers, remaining polyphonic throughout, in the manner of his motets. His works were published between 1549 and 1567, and include 41 motets, mostly for five and six voices, and 13 secular works, mostly madrigals, for four and five voices.

References

Wikisource has the text of the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article Gioseffe Zarlino.

• Article "Gioseffo Zarlino", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• Gioseffo Zarlino, Istituzioni armoniche, tr. Oliver Strunk, in Source Readings in Music History. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1950.

Recordings

Gioseffo Zarlino, Canticum Canticorum Salomonis. Michael Noone, Ensemble Plus Ultra. GCD921406

External links

• Le istituzioni armoniche (scan of original Italian by the University of Strasbourg, France)
• Facsimile of Zarlino's Le Dimostrationi Harmoniche (1571) in the International Music Score Library Project

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