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Nicola Vicentino and the Enharmonic Diesis: An Analytical and Empirical Study M

Nicola Vicentino and the Enharmonic Diesis: An Analytical and Empirical Study Mikaela Miller Degree of Masters of Arts (Music Theory) Department of Music Research, Schulich School of Music A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Arts McGill University Montréal, Québec, Canada January, 2011 © Copyright 2011 All rights reserved 978-0-494-74940-1 Your file Votre référence Library and Archives Canada Bibliothèque et Archives Canada Published Heritage Branch 395 Wellington Street Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Direction du Patrimoine de l'édition 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada NOTICE: ISBN: Our file Notre référence 978-0-494-74940-1 ISBN: The author has granted a non- exclusive license allowing Library and Archives Canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the Internet, loan, distrbute and sell theses worldwide, for commercial or non- commercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Privacy Act some supporting forms may have been removed from this thesis. While these forms may be included in the document page count, their removal does not represent any loss of content from the thesis. AVIS: L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou autres formats. L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur et des droits moraux qui protege cette thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. Conformément à la loi canadienne sur la protection de la vie privée, quelques formulaires secondaires ont été enlevés de cette thèse. Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. iii ABSTRACT Nicola Vicentino is recognized as a sixteenth-century musical revolutionary; a wealth of scholarly work has been devoted to his theories and philosophies. Attempts to analyze Vicentino’s compositions are limited in number, however, and empirical studies of the perception of his music are non-existent. In his treatise, Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice, Vicentino illustrates the practical application of his theories with compositional examples that employ the microtonal interval of the minor enharmonic diesis, and novel 31-tone tuning system that he developed himself. The first two chapters of this thesis review Vicentino’s theories and philosophies of music, and undertake an analytical survey of the extant enharmonic compositions. This analysis explores the possibilities available in Vicentino’s tuning system, and characterizes the voice-leading and harmonic patterns found in Vicentino’s enharmonic compositions in terms of the use of the microtonal interval, the minor enharmonic diesis. I show that Vicentino uses only a handful of possibilities at his disposal, and that the voice-leading and harmonic patterns involving the minor enharmonic diesis are used in systematic ways depending on the musical context. The final two chapters of this thesis develop and test the hypothesis that trained musicians can hear the nuances of Vicentino’s music when the enharmonic diesis is involved (as Vicentino claims). This hypothesis was experimentally tested in a discrimination study in which trained musicians had to discriminate between short musical excerpts in Vicentino’s 31-tone equal temperament and the standard 12-tone equal temperament. The results of the empirical study show that listeners are able to reliably discriminate between the two systems, and that harmonic and voice-leading contexts affect discrimination ability. iv RÉSUMÉ Nicola Vicentino est reconnu en tant que révolutionnaire de la pensée musicale du seizième siècle; plusieurs ouvrages académiques sont dévoués à ses théories et philosophies. Par contre, des analyses des compositions de Vicentino sont peu nombreuses, et des études empiriques sur la perception de sa musique sont inexistantes. Dans son traité, L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, Vicentino explique les applications pratiques de ses théories en se servant d’exemples musicaux qui emploient l’intervalle microtonal d’un cinquième (1/5) d’un ton ainsi qu’un système novateur de tempérament égal à 31 tons basé sur cet intervalle. Les deux premiers chapitres de cette thèse révisent les théories et philosophies musicales de Vicentino et entreprennent un survol analytique de ses compositions qui survivent jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Cette analyse explore les possibilités du système d’accord tempéré de Vicentino et présente les principes de la conduite des voix et des séquences harmoniques retrouvées dans le contexte de l’intervalle d’un cinquième d’un ton. Je démontre que Vicentino utilise seulement quelques-unes des possibilités à sa disposition, et que la conduite des voix et des séquences harmoniques impliquant l’intervalle d’un cinquième d’un ton sont utilisées de façon systématique, dépendant du contexte musical. Les deux derniers chapitres de la thèse développent l’hypothèse que des musiciens formés sont capables d’entendre les nuances intervallaires de la musique de Vicentino quand l’intervalle d’un cinquième d’un ton est utilisé (comme Vicentino le réclamait). Cette hypothèse est testée par une expérience discriminatoire où des musiciens formés ont eu à différencier entre de cours extraits musicaux, certains provenant du système de Vicentino du tempérament égal à 31 tons et d’autres de l’accord tempéré égal conventionnel à douze tons. Les résultats de cette étude empirique démontrent que les auditeurs sont capables de discriminer entre les deux systèmes de façon fiable, mais que les contextes spécifiques harmoniques et de la conduite des voix peuvent affecter la fiabilité de ces habiletés. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii RÉSUMÉ ....................................................................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ........................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: A REVIEW OF NICOLA VICENTINO’S LIFE AND WORKS ..................... 4 Biographical Information .................................................................................................... 4 Compositional Output ....................................................................................................... 12 The Treatise ...................................................................................................................... 13 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 34 CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS OF THE EXTANT ENHARMONIC COMPOSITIONS OF NICOLA VICENTINO ........................................................................................................... 35 Compositions in Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice .......................................... 36 Previously Discussed Descriptions of Vicentino’s Style .................................................. 39 Voice-leading and Harmonic Features of Vicentino’s Tuning System ............................ 41 Analysis of Excerpts ......................................................................................................... 55 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 63 CHAPTER 3: DEVELOPING A HYPOTHESIS FOR THE PERCEPTION OF VICENTINO’S TUNING SYSTEM...................................................................................... 65 Pitch Perception ................................................................................................................ 66 Music Interval and Categorical Perception ....................................................................... 70 Tuning System Perception ................................................................................................ 84 Perception of Voice-Leading Distance ............................................................................. 86 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 89 CHAPTER 4: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE PERCEPTION OF VICENTINO’S TUNING SYSTEM...................................................................................... 94 Experiment 1 ..................................................................................................................... 96 Experiment 2 ................................................................................................................... 111 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 118 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 120 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 123 TABLE OF APPENDICIES ..................................................................................................... 129 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1-1: Vicentino’s interval affects ..............................................................................21 Table 1-2: Vicentino’s genera divisions in the Book on Music Theory (Boethian) ..........26 Table 1-3: Vicentino’s genera as described in Book I on Music Practice .......................30 Table 2-1: Possible target chords of two-chord progressions from C-major in 31-TET .......................................................................................................49 Table 2-2: Expected and observed proportions of enharmonically-related chords ..........51 Table 2-3: Frequencies of root-relations of enharmonically-related progressions ...........54 Table 2-4: Voice-leading characteristics of the 30 excerpts .............................................62 Table 2-5: Mean values of voice-leading parameters by excerpt group ...........................63 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Vicentino’s division of the whole tone and associated notation ....................19 Figure 2-1: Enharmonic progression between C-major and F-dot-major triads ...............45 Figure 2-2: Example of a diatonic enharmonic progression .............................................47 Figure 2-3: The 31-TET Tonnetz ......................................................................................61 Figure 4-1: Proportion of correct responses by excerpt group in Experiment 1.............101 Figure 4-2: Proportion of correct responses by excerpt in Experiment 1 .......................102 Figure 4-3: Voice-leading reduction of UD_10; voice-exchange ..................................108 Figure 4-4: Division of the whole tone (in cents) for 31-TET, 12-TET, and 12-TETa ...............................................................................................................114 Figure 4-5: Proportion of correct responses by excerpt group in Experiment 2.............115 Figure 4-6: Proportion of correct responses by excerpt in Experiment 2 .......................117 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to my supervisors, Professor Jonathan Wild and Professor Stephen McAdams, for all of their guidance, suggestions, and support. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a research assistant for Professors Wild and McAdams; the assistantship was funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). I am thankful to Professor Wild and Professor Peter Schubert for creating the recordings of Vicentino’s music as part of a project funded by the Fonds Québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), as well as for the financial support provided to me by this latter project. I would also like to thank Professor David Stephens and Bruno L. Giordano for their assistance in conducting the statistical analyses. Thank you to the members of the McGill Music Perception and Cognition lab for all of your input and feedback at all stages of the experimental portions of this project. A special thanks to Guillaume Laroche for his assistance in translating the abstract, and to Meghan Goodchild, Dana Gorzelany- Mostak, and David Sears for their help at various stages of this thesis project. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for uploads/s3/ mikaela-nicola-vicentino-and-the-enharmonic-diesis-an-analytical-and-empirical-study.pdf