Point/counterpoint: Vicentino's musical rebuttal to Lusitano

Abstract

The famous 1551 debate between Nicola Vicentino and Vicente Lusitano concerned whether contemporary music was written in the diatonic genus, as Lusitano asserted, or whether it represented a mixture of the genera, as Vicentino argued. The judges ruled against Vicentino, who in 1555 published in L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica a full exposition of his views on the genera and a description of the debate and its aftermath. His bitterness over the debate and the ongoing controversy surrounding it are well documented. What has not been recognized, however, is the agenda behind the contrapuntal structure of his polyphonic exemplar of the diatonic genus in the treatise. He asserts that ‘considerable harshness is felt in this music, compared to that which is tempered and mixed [contemporary practice]’. The article shows that Vicentino infused the example with harmonic and contrapuntal devices described elsewhere in his treatise as appropriate for expressing harshness, devices that he, along with Zarlino, learned from Willaert. In this way Vicentino hoped to render it uncouth and thereby distance the diatonic genus from contemporary practice, thus bolstering his stance in the debate. Comparative examination of two other examples of purely diatonic composition by Vicentino and Ghiselin Danckerts, one of the judges in the debate, provides further evidence of Vicentino's agenda.

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