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Bonnie J. Blackburn, Edward E. Lowinsky, Clement A. Miller, A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, xliv + 1067 pp.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2008
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References
1 ‘Eine musiktheoretische Korrespondenz des frühen Cinquecento’, Acta Musicologica, 13 (1941), pp. 3–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians, p. 36.Google Scholar
3 He wrote a long treatise entitled Tractato di musica di Giovanni Spataro musico bolognese nel quale si tracta de la perfectione de la sesqualtera producta in la musica mensurala exercitate (Venice, 1531).Google Scholar
4 Venice, 1540.
5 A Correspondence, p. 412. All quotations are from the condensed English translations of the letters.Google Scholar
6 A Correspondence, p. 663.Google Scholar
7 A Correspondence, p. 662.Google Scholar
8 Even though Spataro expressly allowed Aaron to publish his now lost chart under his (Aaron's) name, I believe Lowinsky may be rash to conclude from this that Spataro was the author of Aaron's pamphlet ( A Correspondence, pp. 438–9).Google Scholar It is more likely that Aaron simply revised the chart himself when he received Spataro's letter. In his congratulatory letter of 24 October 1531 (pp. 433–8), Spataro never mentioned that he himself wrote the pamphlet, as he would surely have done, given his vanity, were he the author. The letter sounds more like that of a theorist who is happy that a colleague has finally come round to his point of view.
9 A Correspondence, p. 956.Google Scholar
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18 See my Mensuration and Proportion Signs: Origins and Evolution (Oxford, 1993), pp. 56-7 and 81–2.Google Scholar
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27 The proportions which occur in Spataro's Missa Da pacem are: 9:2, 6:3, 1:18, 21:2, 6:1, 3:7. The piece is lost.
28 A Correspondence, pp. 221 and 225. For a detailed discussion of the relationship between the Rule of Three and rhythmic proportions, see also my Mensuration and Proportion Signs, pp. 198–210.Google Scholar
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34 Wittkower, R., Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London, 1988), p. 97.Google Scholar
35 Peterson, R. G., ‘Critical Calculations: Measure and Symmetry in Literature’, PMLA 91 (1976), pp. 371ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar