Musica ficta

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Musica ficta (from Latin, 'false', 'feigned', or 'contrived' music) was a term used in European music theory from the late twelfth century to about 1600 to describe any pitches, whether notated or to be added by performers in accordance with their training, that lie outside the system of musica recta or musica vera ('correct', or 'true' music), defined by the hexachord system of the Guidonian hand. In modern usage, the term is often loosely applied to all unnotated inflections (whether properly recta or ficta) that must be inferred from the musical context and added either by an editor or by the performers themselves (Bent and Silbiger 2001).

One common (but not exclusive) use of ficta was to avoid harsh harmonic or melodic intervals (for example the tritone, the 'diabolus in musica'). An example might be the use of a B-flat instead of a B-natural to avoid a tritone against an F in another part. In modern transcriptions of Medieval and Renaissance music, ficta are usually indicated with an accidental engraved above (instead of before) the note. Editors provide these for modern singers who may not have received the kind of training given to singers several hundred years ago that made such indications unnecessary.

Singers were trained to think in hexachords denoted by the names ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la that contained only one half-step: the one between mi and fa. The name musica ficta refers to the use of hexachords other than the three types that were part of Guido d'Arrezzo's system: molle (soft) on F (with a B♭, providing the semitone with the A below), naturale on C (with the semitone between F and E), and durum (hard) on G (with a B♮, a semitone below C). The ficta hexachords had a note as "mi" other than the ones in the three "recta" hexachords—say F—raised (in modern terms: sharped) by adding the sign ♮. This created a ficta hexachord on D (D E F♯ G A B) that would continue until that part mutated into another hexachord. Likewise ♭ applied to any note other than B would indicate that a note was fa in a ficta hexachord, or before B that the hexachord was molle rather than durum. Unfortunately the use of the signs was by no means consistent. It was assumed that a good singer knew his mi's and fa's, so that the signs were typically only added if the scribe anticipated that singers would otherwise interpret differently.

The exact performance practice of musica ficta, where and when they were used, is a matter of intense investigation and controversy among musicological scholars; it has been controversial, and is likely to remain so, for a long time. Music theorists from Odo of Cluny in the 10th century to Zarlino in the 16th century give highly different rules and situations for application of ficta. The controversy is not only among contemporary musicologists; theorists of the Late Middle Ages were never in agreement on the rules of ficta either. 13th century music theorist Johannes de Garlandia and 14th century theorist Philippe de Vitry both wrote that ficta were essential in singing polyphony, but resisted their use in plainchant, while early 14th century theorist Jacques de Liège insisted that notes in plainchant needed to be altered with judicious application of musica ficta.^{[cite this quote]}

Rules of cadencing and tritone avoidance require notes to be altered under certain circumstances, but sometimes a melodic phrase simply sounds better, or sounded better to a trained 13th–16th-century ear, when it is smoothed out by judicious application of ficta.

In particular, contrapuntal treatises of the Renaissance, such as Johannes Tinctoris's Liber de arte contrapuncti (1477) and Gioseffe Zarlino's Le istituzioni harmonice (1588), described resolution at cadences through a major sixth into the octave or the inversion, a minor third closing to a unison, which, unless the other voice already descends by a semitone, necessitates the rising voice to add a sharp (see dyadic counterpoint) (Tinctoris 1961,^{[page needed]}; Zarlino 1968, 144–45). At such points, accidentals were in fact sometimes notated throughout this period of history.

References

• Bent, Margaret. 1972. "Musica Recta and Musica Ficta". Musica Disciplina 26:73–100.
• Bent, Margaret, and Alexander Silbiger. 2001. "Musica Ficta [Musica Falsa]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music.
• Tinctoris, Johannes. 1961. The Art of Counterpoint (Liber de arte contrapuncti), translated by Albert Seay. Musicological Studies and Documents, 5. [N.p.]: American Institute of Musicology.
• Zarlino, Gioseffo. 1968. The Art of Counterpoint: Part Three of Le istitutioni harmoniche, 1558, translated by Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca. Music Theory in Translation 2. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reprinted 1976, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Further reading

• Allaire, Gaston. - Ficta Music: http://www.allairefictamusic.com/
• Article "Musica Ficta," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vols. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• Randel, Don (ed.). 1986. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-674-61525-5
• Arlettaz, Vincent. "Musica ficta, une histoire des sensibles du XIIIe au XVIe siècle". Liège, Mardaga, 2000. ISBN 2-87009-721-1. English summary online: http://www.rmsr.ch/ficta
• Bent, Margaret. 1984. "Diatonic 'Ficta'". Early Music History 4:1–48.
• Hoppin,Richard H. Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0-393-09090-6