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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Our understanding of the long-term tonal relationships that grow out of seventeenth-century harmonic language is at an elementary stage. An enormous gap seems to exist between our ability to deal with, on the one hand, a sixteenth-century compositional language that basically adheres to a contrapuntal technique and tonally abides by the rules of modality and, on the other, an eighteenth-century tonal language for which we quietly assume harmonic functionality. That scholars have largely avoided an investigation of harmonic language in the seventeenth century is perhaps surprising. Problematic and somewhat enigmatic features of seventeenth-century music are, in some cases, not very different from the characteristics Harold S. Powers attributed to late sixteenth-century modal music: ‘sometimes faintly exotic, often charmingly vague and undirected to our ears, but hardly alien’. Benito V. Rivera appeared to corroborate Powers's perception when he characterized some of the idiosyncrasies of seventeenth-century harmonic practice as ‘isolated harmonic quirkiness’.
1 See Powers, Harold S, ‘Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 428–70 (p 428) In the introduction to his essay he states ‘The primary tonal elements of Renaissance music are pitch-classes and triads, to all intents and purposes acoustically the same as those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music ’ Powers's failure to mention the seventeenth century may be understandable since his interest here lies in highlighting identical harmonic features common to clear-cut modal practice and to functional tonalityGoogle Scholar
2 See Rivera, Benito V, ‘The Seventeenth-Century Theory of Triadic Generation and Invertibility and its Application in Contemporaneous Rules of Composition’, Music Theory Spectrum, 6 (1984), 63–78Google Scholar
3 The author is currently working on a full-length study of the harmonic language of Schütz's compositionsGoogle Scholar
4 Treitler, Leo, ‘The Present as History’, Perspectives of New Music, 7 (1969), 1–56(p 2), repr in Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 95–156 (pp 95–6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Burmeister, Joachim, Musica poetica (Rostock, 1606), 71 (facsimile edn, Kassel, 1955) Burmeister lays out five parts for his analysis (1) determination of the mode, (2) determination of the species of tonality, that is, diatonic or chromatic, (3) determination of the type of counterpoint, that is, simplex, complex or fractum, (4) consideration of the quality the composition's hexachordal attachment, (5) formal division of the composition into affections or periods. As a case in point Burmeister takes the Lassus motet In me transierunt and elaborates on the fifth part of his analysis He divides the motet into nine formal sections or periods For this analysis see also Martin Ruhnke, Joachim Burmeister Ein Beitrag zur Musiklehre um 1600, Schriften des Landesinstituts für Musikforschung, 5 (Kassel, 1955), 164, also Claude Palisca, ’ “Ut Oratoria Musica”. The Rhetorical Basis of Musical Mannerism’, The Meaning of Mannerism, ed Franklin W Robinson and Stephen S Nichols Jr (Hanover, 1972), 37–66 (p 37) Although Burmeister's treatise was written at the beginning of the seventeenth century and his analysis concerns a piece from the late sixteenth century, there is no reason to dismiss his approach, limited as it might be for gaining insight into the meaning of a work of art, for the motets from the time of SchützGoogle Scholar
6 Concerning the question whether a novice should have exact knowledge of musica theoretica and certainly mathematica, I answer that there are two factors about musical judgment logic (ratio = reason/rules) and ear When a composer writes something, he must above all use his ear, crucial for practical music, in judging what it sounds like If one does not completely trust the judgment of the ear, one finds advice from logic which belongs to theory, and one asks for the reasons of [a composition's] good or bad sound Only when logic and ear (common sense) agree is the compositional judgment good ' Andreas Werckmeister, Cribrum musicum oder Musicalisches Sieb (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1700), see facsimile edn (Hildesheim, 1970), 40Google Scholar
7 See Heinrich Schütz, Geistliche Chormusik 1648, ed Wilhelm Kamlah, Neue Schütz Ausgabe (hereafter NSA), 5 (Kassel, 1965), VI and VII Translation by George J Buelow, ‘A Schutz Reader Documents of Performance Practice’, Journal of the American Choral Foundation, 27 (1985), 29–30Google Scholar
8 Siegfried Hermelink borrows Schütz's term for his monograph Dispositiones modorum Die Tonarten in der Musik Palestrinas und seiner Zeitgenossen (Tutzing, 1960) The implication we can draw from this title for Schütz's music is that his vocal polyphony in fact shares modal features with sixteenth-century polyphony A good example of such modal features is discussed by Siegfried Schmalzriedt in ‘Friedenssehnsucht und göttliche Ordnung’, Festschrift fur Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht zum 65 Geburtstag, ed Werner Breig, Reinhold Brinkmann and Elmar Budde (Stuttgart, 1984), 110–27 He shows that the opening of Schutz's motet O lieber Herre Gott from the Geistliche Chormusik perfectly exemplifies modal rules as they were understood by sixteenth-century theorists such as Zarlino The melodic contours of the individual voices in the exordium establish a textbook model for their piagai and authentic ambitus distribution (op cit., 119)Google Scholar
9 ‘Since I had to fit German chorale tunes that are in different toni into one body (composition), I hope that the understanding musician will pardon me where I occasionally had to exceed the limits of the ninth tone in order to follow the [tones/modes of the] church melodies ’ See Heinrich Schütz, Musikalische Exequien, ed Günther Graulich, Stuttgarter Ausgabe, 8 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1973), LXIIGoogle Scholar
10 See Zahn, Johannes, Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder aus den Quellen geschopft und mitgeteilt, 6 vols (Gütersloh, 1889–93, repr Hildesheim, 1963)Google Scholar
11 See Wolfram Steude's preface to Schwanengesang, NSA, 39 (Kassel, 1984)Google Scholar
12 Becker Psalter, Heinrich Schütz Sämmtliche Werke, ed Philipp Spitta and others (Leipzig, 1885–94, 1909, 1927, hereafter SGA), 16, 8Google Scholar
13 Schmalzriedt, Siegfried, Heinrich Schutz und andere zeitgenossische Musiker in der Lehre Giovanni Gabrielis (Stuttgart, 1972), 42–62, 155–61 Schmalzriedt's identification of the modes in Schütz's madrigals is based on the determination of the modal octave of each individual voice part, with ambitus and species division of tenor and cantus determining the authentic or piagai constellation of the mode He demonstrates, however, practical tendencies toward reducing the spectrum of 12 modes the use of Lydian became identical with that of Ionian (with B♭s either in the signature or consistently marked as accidentals), Mixolydian, he claims, also started to resemble Ionian with frequently notated F#s He only tentatively broaches the subject of the evolution of the modes toward a tonal two-mode system by reduction and transposition (p 45) The interaction of individual modal voices in a contrapuntal texture and the resulting harmonic language, modally or tonally inflected, is not discussed by SchmalzriedtGoogle Scholar
14 For a survey of German modal theory see Joel Lester's ‘Major-Minor Concepts and Modal Theory in Germany, 1592–1680’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 30 (1977), 208–53 A revised version of this article is reprinted in Lester's Between Modes and Keys German Theory 1592–1802 (Stuyvesant, 1989)Google Scholar
15 Facsimile edn (New York, 1967), translation by Clement A Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents, 6 (n p, 1965)Google Scholar
16 See Book II, ch 6, as quoted by Lester, ‘Major-Minor Concepts’, 210Google Scholar
17 Facsimile edn (New York, 1965) Translation of Part III in Guy A Marco and Claude Palisca, The Art of Counterpoint (New Haven, 1968), translation of Part IV in Vered Cohen, On the Modes (New Haven, 1983) Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1573), facsimile edn (Ridgewood, NJ, 1966)Google Scholar
18 Tinctoris, Johannes, Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum, Johannes Tinctons Opera theoretica, i, ed Albert Seay, Corpus scriptorum de musica, 22 (American Institute of Musicology, 1975)Google Scholar
19 See Marco and Palisca, The Art of Counterpoint, 21–2Google Scholar
20 For the transmission see Walker, Paul, ‘Fugue in German Theory from Dressier to Mattheson’ (Ph D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1987) Particularly interesting is his account of the Sweelinck manuscript(s), parts of which were copied by Matthias Weckmann around 1637–40 Weckmann and Bernhard belonged to the same generation of Schutz pupilsGoogle Scholar
21 Christoph Bernhard, three treatises in manuscript Von der Singekunst oder Manier, Tractatus compositions augmentatus and Ausfuhrlicher Bericht zum Gebrauche der Con- und Dissonantien, ed Joseph Muller-Blattau, Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schutzens in der Fassung seines Schulers Christoph Bernhard (Leipzig, 1926, repr Kassel, 1963) Tractatus, chs 44–56, 91–106 English translation in Walter Hilse, ‘The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard’, The Music Forum, 3, ed William J Mitchell (New York, 1973), 1–196Google Scholar
22 For the application of Bernhard's figurae to some of Schütz's compositions, see Rifkin, Joshua, ‘Schütz and Musical Logic’, The Musical Times, 113 (1972), 1067–70 Rifkin sees a partial connection between some of Bernhard's reductive method and the reduction that takes place in Schenkerian concepts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Quoted from Joel Lester, ‘Root-Position and Inverted Triads in Theory around 1600’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 27 (1974), 110–19 (p 116) Revised reprint in his Between Modes and Keys German Theory 1592–1802 (Stuyvesant, 1989)Google Scholar
24 Christoph Bernhard had used the term prolongatio as one of the musical figures in his Tractatus (Müller-Blattau, Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schutzens, 76) ‘Prolongatio ist wenn eine Dissonantz sich länger aufhält, als die vorhergehende Consonantz’ (‘Prolongatio is a dissonance that lingers longer than its preceding consonance’) The meaning of his prolongatio has nothing to do with the way in which I am using the term, a usage I am adapting from SchenkerGoogle Scholar
25 See Broszinski, Hartmut, ‘Schutz als Schüler in Kassel’, Heinrich Schutz Texte, Bilder, Dokumente, ed Dietrich Berke (Kassel, 1985), 48Google Scholar
26 Ibid, 39, see also 47–8 On Petrus Ramus see Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (3rd edn, Tübingen, v, 1961), col 777 References to rhetoric are taken from the bilingual Latin/English edition by H E Butler, The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, 4 vols (London, 1920, 4th edn, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1980).Google Scholar
27 The most famous example of demonstrating concrete parallelisms between Quintilian's parts of speech and a composer's structural plan is that of Joachim Burmeister in his descriptive analysis of Lassus's motet In me transierunt in his Musica poetica (Rostock, 1606), see note 5 aboveGoogle Scholar
28 Score, title-page and dedication in SGA, 12, 21–31Google Scholar
29 Published as Musicalia ad chorum sacrum, das ist Geistliche Chor-Music erster Theil, op 11, see SGA, 8, and NSA, 5 My references will be to the SGA, since all the compositions are edited in their original keys and include the basso continuo (a basso seguente) Vol 5 of the NSA does not constitute a critical edition The compositions appear for a cappella chorus and many are transposed in order to suit a modern mixed chorus Although no 20 is printed at its original pitch, I have opted for consistency in using the Spitta edition for both works discussed above References to bar numbers follow the divisions in the Spitta edition (These divisions are, unfortunately, unnumbered They follow the original Mensurstriche, marked in the basso continuo of the original prints.)Google Scholar
30 Schütz counted the modes according to Glarean's system, whereas Bernhard used Zarlino's numbering starting with Ionian as modes 1 and 2Google Scholar
31 See Butler, , The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, Book XII, X. 71–2.Google Scholar
32 See Bernhard, , Ausfuhrlicher Bericht, 96–7Google Scholar
33 Susan Kaye McClary on ‘circumscription’ as a temporary establishment of a tonality, ‘The Transition from Modal to Tonal Organization in the Works of Monteverdi’ (Ph D dissertation, Harvard University, 1976), I am grateful to Susan McClary for making two articles (revisions of chs 3 and 4 of her dissertation), as yet unpublished, available to me See also Carl Dahlhaus on the concept of partial tonalities, particularly in his analyses of some madrigals by Monteverdi in Untersuchungen uber die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität (Kassel, 1968), 257, trans Robert O. Gjerdingen, Studies on the Origin of Harmonic Tonality (Princeton, 1990), 289Google Scholar
34 See Meier, Bernhard, Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie (Utrecht, 1974), 76–86, trans Ellen S. Beebe, The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony Described According to the Sources, rev Bernhard Meier (New York, 1988), 90–101Google Scholar
35 See Herbst, Johannes Andreas, Musica poetica (Nuremberg, 1643), 32Google Scholar
36 See Meier, , Die Tonarten, 78–9Google Scholar
37 I cannot completely agree with Wolfgang Witzenmann's comment ‘Auf das Schlüsselwort “ewiges Leben” hin moduliert Schütz aber melodisch zum authentischen 9 Modus und kadenziert im strahlenden Licht der Durparallele’ (‘To express the keyword “life everlasting” Schutz modulates to the authentic ninth mode and cadences in the bright key of the relative major’ See ‘Modalität und Tonalitat in Schützens “Geistlicher Chormusik” ’, Alte Musik als ästhetische Gegenwart, Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Stuttgart 1985, 1 (Kassel, 1987), 382–90 (p. 386) The C major cadence does not function as the relative major The C is employed as the triad built on the third degree of the mode which happens to be a major triad and is clearly exploited by Schütz for its major quality The idea that the motet vacillates between A minor and C major strikes me, however, as wrongGoogle Scholar
38 Herbst discusses the peregrinus cadence in his Musica poetica, 84, and justifies it as a text-expressive device.Google Scholar
39 See SGA, 14, 65Google Scholar
40 Published in Leipzig by H. Köler see RISM 1641Google Scholar
41 See Rifkin, Joshua, The New Grove North European Baroque Masters (New York, 1985), 34. For one of the most famous seventeenth-century examples of a wedding cantata written on a Song of Solomon text, see Bach, Johann Christoph, Meine Freundin, du bist schön, ed Max Schneider, Das Erbe deutscher Musik Altbachisches Archiv, 1 (Wiesbaden, 1966), 2.Google Scholar
42 See for example Zarlino, On the Modes, 64 ‘This mode is said by musical practitioners to be marvelously suited to lamentful words or subjects that contain sadness or supplicant lamentation, such as matters of love, and to words which express languor, quiet, tranquility, adulation, deception, and slander’ See also Bernhard. Ausfuhrlicher Bencht, 95. ‘Er ist wehmutig und zu traungen Sachen geneiget’ (‘It [the authentic mode] is melancholy and tends to be for sad subjects’), and ‘Wie denn auch seine Harmonie zu klaglichen Worten sich gar wohl reimet’ (‘As its harmony [of the plagal mode] is suited to words of pity’)Google Scholar
43 See Dahlhaus, , Untersuchungen, 260Google Scholar
44 See Bernhard, , Tractatus, 97 ‘In two-part compositions the first part should end on the confinalis, the second on the finalis’Google Scholar
45 For centuries composers recognized the problems caused by the Phrygian mode, namely the lack of a pure fifth above its diapente B Zarlino touches upon the problem in Le istitutioni harmoniche, 1558 edn ‘If the third mode (here Phrygian) were not mixed with the ninth mode (Aeolian), and were heard by itself, its harmony would be somewhat hard, but because it is tempered by the diapente of the ninth mode and by the cadence made on a, which is very much in use in it, some have been of the opinion that the third mode moves one to weeping’ (Vered Cohen, On the Modes, 63–4)Google Scholar
46 Bernhard, Tractatus, 108 ‘Such altercato frequently occurs in the fifth and sixth tones (Phrygian) which modulate to the eleventh (Aeolian) and, at times, to the eleventh and twelfth, while both often end in the fifth tone (authentic Phrygian) ‘Google Scholar
47 The reference to ‘chromatic’ here does not refer to the three genera, diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic, as discussed in Greek theory and taken up, for example, by Boethius in his Fundamentals of Music, trans Calvin M. Bower (New Haven, 1989), 40 It simply characterizes a language that is, through local accidentals, highly inflectedGoogle Scholar
48 See Werckmeister, Andreas, Musicae mathematicae hodegus curtosus oder Richtiger musicalischer Wegweiser (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1687), facsimile edn (Hildesheim, 1972), 123 ‘Denn wenn wir nach unserm temperirten Clavier / da eine octava 12 claves hat / gehen würden / so konten wir jedem clavi wieder 12 modos nach der alten disposition zu eigenen / und hätten also in gesamt 144 modos’ (‘If we went along with our tempered keyboard which has 12 keys, we could assign to each of these keys the 12 modes with their old disposition and would emerge with a total of 144 modes‘) Werckmeister's logical deduction allows him to reduce the 144 modes to only two the modus naturalis (major) and the modus minus naturalis (minor, see p 124)Google Scholar
49 See Bernhard, , Bericht, 136 ‘Zu den Perfect Cadenzen müssen alle Tertien Major seyn, aussgenommen in der Mute des Stückes, diejenigen, welche sich im Bass in re oder mi endigen, in welchen die letzte tertia minor seyn kan, am Ende aber muss sie nothwendig major seyn’ (‘In perfect cadences all thirds must be major with the exception of those that cadence on re or mi in the bass and occur in the middle of the piece They may have a minor third, but for the ending a major third is necessary’)Google Scholar
50 See Maus, Fred Everett, ‘Music as Drama’, Music Theory Spectrum, 10 (1988), 56–73 (p 56)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
51 Kerman, Joseph, Contemplating Music (Cambridge, 1985), 73.Google Scholar
52 An excellent and comprehensive study, particularly relevant to the repertory under discussion here, is Joel Lester's Between Modes and Keys (see above, note 23)Google Scholar
53 Chew, Geoffrey, ‘The Perfections of Modern Music Consecutive Fifths and Tonal Coherence in Monteverdi’, Music Analysis, 8 (1989), 247–73 (p 251)Google Scholar
54 See Einstein, Alfred, The Italian Madrigal (2nd edn, Princeton, 1971), ii, 719, as quoted by Chew (see above, note 53) ‘One need pay no attention to [Monteverdi's] thinly disguised fifths in general, [his] part-writing is not free from slips, especially outright octaves ‘Google Scholar
55 See Johannes Brahms Oktaven und Quinten u A, aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben und erläutert, ed Heinrich Schenker (Vienna, 1933) For Brahms's manuscript entry see p 8, for Schenker's commentary see p 14.Google Scholar
56 Ibid., 14 Trans and ed Paul Mast in Music Forum, 5 (1980), 1–196 (p 144) ‘the way in which theory has treated the question of fifths most clearly reveals its fault of restricting itself to mere appearance, of hearing, so to speak, with the eyes where it is necessary to hear with the ear of an artist‘Google Scholar
57 See his preface to Geistliche ChormusikGoogle Scholar