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Some Aspects of the Musical Theory of Vincenzo Galilei and Galileo Galilei

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1973

D. P. Walker
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Extract

In this paper I concentrate on two points which are, I hope, of interest not only to musicologists but also to historians of ideas in other fields. I deal mainly with the works of the two Galileis, but of course mention the views of other musical theorists, in particular of Zarlino, since a large part of Vincenzo Galilei's writings is directed against him. This brings me to the first of my two general points: that polemical writings often present to the historian peculiar difficulties of interpretation, especially when the two adversaries, on the one hand, genuinely hate each other, and, on the other, may in fact agree on the main subject under discussion. This was, I believe, the case in the controversy between Vincenzo Galilei and Zarlino, and the resultant dishonesty and evasion of crucial problems makes very tricky the task of disentangling their true thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 100 , 1973 , pp. 33 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Girolamo Mei, Letters on Ancient and Modern Music, ed. Claude V. Palisca, American Institute of Musicology, 1960, pp. 63–69. Palisca has published an article (‘Scientific Empiricism in Musical Thought’, Seventeenth Century Science and the Arts, ed. H. H. Rhys, Princeton, 1961, pp. 91–137) which covers much of the same ground as this paper, but our points of view, as will be seen, are radically different. The same is true of a recent article, largely based on Palisca's, by Stillman Drake, ‘Renaissance Music and Experimental Science’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxi (1970), 483–500.Google Scholar

2 Mei, op. cit., p. 67.Google Scholar

3 Dialogo delta musica antica, et della moderna, Florence, 1581 (facsimile edn., New York, 1967).Google Scholar

4 See Dialogo, dedication to G. Bardi; and V. Galilei, Discorso intorno alle opere di Gioseffo Zarlino et altri importanti particolari attenenti alla musica, Venice, 1589 (facsimile edn., Milan, 1933), p. 14.Google Scholar

5 Gioseffo Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, Venice, 1588.Google Scholar

6 See footnote 4.Google Scholar

7 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, MSS Galileiani, Anteriori a Galilei, vols. 1–8; cf. Palisca, ‘Galilei, Vincenzo’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, iv (1955), 1265–70.Google Scholar

8 Zarlino, Sopplimenti, pp. 204–5; Galilei, Dialogo, pp. 49–55, and Discorso, p. 55; cf. Johann Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Max Caspar, vi (Munich, 1940), 143–5.Google Scholar

9 See Barbour, J. M., Tuning and Temperament, East Lansing, 1953, pp. 196–9; D. P. Walker, ‘Kepler's Celestial Music’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxx (1967), 230.Google Scholar

10 Sopplimenti, pp. 140–49.Google Scholar

11 Dialogo, pp. 30–31, 39.Google Scholar

12 Discorso, pp. 109–17.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 117–18. On p. 36 Vincenzo announces that he will give this description in a shortly to be published treatise on dissonances. But in his manuscript treatise (see footnote 17 below) there are only two mentions of the subject. In the first he says (i. 149v) that we sing Ptolemy's syntonon ‘con le conditioni però da me awertite’; in the second (i. 194), that equal temperament differs ‘pochissimo’ from what we sing.Google Scholar

14 Discorso, p. 124.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 14.Google Scholar

16 Letters on Ancient and Modern Music, pp. 73–77.Google Scholar

17 MSS cit. (see footnote 7): (a) Treatise on Counterpoint (no title; begins: ‘L'arte de la Practica del moderno Contrapunto’); (b) Discorso intorno all'uso delle Dissonanze. There are three versions of each treatise. The first version has additions, mostly at the bottom of the page, which are incorporated into the second; this in turn has additions which appear in the text of the third version. The three versions of each, in order of composition, are as follows: (a) ii. 3–54v, i. 6–51v, i. 55–103v; (b) ii. 55–120, i. 104–47v, i. 148–196v.Google Scholar

18 MS cit. (b), i. 181v-186v.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. (a), i. 57–60; (b), i. 148, 167, 194v.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. (b), i. 190–91.Google Scholar

21 Jacobus Sadoletus, Opera quae extant omnia, Verona, 1737–8, iii. 111–12, 115–16.Google Scholar

22 MS cit. (b), i. 194v.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. (a), i. 100.Google Scholar

24 Sopplimenti, pp. 8, 18–24, 135–40, 143–6.Google Scholar

25 A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore, 1935.Google Scholar

26 Cf. M. Shirlaw, The Theory of Harmony, London, n.d., chaps. III-IX. Rameau first constructed his theory on the purely mathematical basis of Descartes and Zarlino; but was overjoyed when he found, on reading Sauveur and Mersenne, that this basis rested on physical facts (ibid., p. 134).Google Scholar

27 Discorso, p. 117.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 31.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 21.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., pp. 77, 80, 86.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

32 Vincenzo (ibid., pp. 81–82) compares intervals in music to words in language; both are wholly artificial—only the sound of the voice is natural.Google Scholar

33 Discorso, pp. 127–8; Dialogo, pp. 47–48 (cf. p. 32 on the intolerable effects of Pythagorean tuning); MS cit., iii. 56, 58 (Discorso particolare intomo all'Unisono).Google Scholar

34 Dialogo, p. 55: ‘con più gusto è universalmente intesa la quinta secondo la misura che gli dà Aristosseno, che dentro la sesquialtera sua prima forma, nè da altro credo veramente ciò awenga, che dall’ haverci il mal uso corrotto il senso: imperoche la Quinta dentro la sesquialtera, non solo pare nell' estrema acutezza che ella può andare, ma più tosto che ell' habbia un poco del duro per non dire (insieme con altri d'udito delicato) dell' aspro. dove nella maniera d'Aristosseno pare, che quella poca scarsità gli dia gratia, & la faccia divenire più secondo il gusto d'hoggi, molle & languida'. This shows the great imperfection of modern music.Google Scholar

35 MS cit., iii. 38 (Discorso intorno a diversi pareri che hebbono le tre sette piu famose degli antichi Musici; intomo alla cosa de suoni, et degl' acchordi); cf. Dialogo, p. 47.Google Scholar

36 Sopplimenti, pp. 100–102. Vincenzo (MS cit., i. 84v) criticizes Zarlino on this point and sneers at his use of the natural notes of the trombone to back up his theory.Google Scholar

37 See below, pp. 43ff.Google Scholar

38 Discorso, pp. 102–4. In the Dialogo (pp. 127, 133) Vincenzo accepts the Pythagoras story.Google Scholar

39 Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, II. i.Google Scholar

40 De Insittutione Musica, I. x-xi.Google Scholar

41 The author of the excellent English translation of Macrobius's commentary, W. H. Stahl (Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, New York, 1952, p. 187) very commendably experimented with hammers and anvils, but could produce no musical sound.Google Scholar

42 Cf. the frontispiece of Gafurio's Theorica Musice (1480), showing Pythagoras making these experiments all producing the same ratios, shown by the numbers 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16 (reproduced in R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, London, 1949, p. 108).Google Scholar

43 Discorso, pp. 102–4.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., p. 105.Google Scholar

45 MS cit., iii. 50v; Galilei here (iii. 49–51) also claims that 8:1 is the true form of the octave, since all the consonant ratios can be found in the numbers 1 to 8—another rather crazy attempt to smash Zarlino's senario.Google Scholar

46 Cf. Zarlino, Sopplimenti, p. 31, on the monochord.Google Scholar

47 See references given in Correspondence du p. Marin Mersenne, i (Paris, 1945), 203–4.Google Scholar

48 Oeuvres completes, xix (The Hague, 1937), 362–3.Google Scholar

49 ‘Newton and the “Pipes of Pan”’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, xxi (1966), 108–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Ibid., pp. 115–17.Google Scholar

51 Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, II. i–iv.Google Scholar

52 Naturalis Historia, II. xxii.Google Scholar

53 See Le Opere di Galileo Galilei (ed. nazionale), Florence, 1890–1909, xix. 594, 599, 602, 604.Google Scholar

54 We know that he read and admired Mei's Discorso sopra la musica antica e moderna in the same year that it was published (1602). See Galilei, Open, x. 86–87.Google Scholar

55 Mersenne, Correspondance, ii. 173–6 (letter of Mersenne to Galilei, February 1629); cf. ibid., i. 194–5.Google Scholar

56 Galilei, Opere, xv. 159, 311–12.Google Scholar

57 Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, Leida, 1638; ed. A. Carugo and L. Geymonat, Turin, 1958; Opere, viii. 138 ff.Google Scholar

58 Opere, viii. 143–4.Google Scholar

59 Carugo and Geymonat (ed. cit., p. 713) quote from a work of D. Bartoli (Del suono, de' tremori armonici e dell' udito, Rome, 1679, p. 140), who failed to make the glass experiment work.Google Scholar

60 Mersenne, Les Nouvelles Pensées de Galilei, Paris, 1639, pp. 95–96.Google Scholar

61 Mersenne, Correspondance, i. 136, ii. 231–2; Harmonie universelle, Paris, 1636 (facsimile edn., Paris, 1965), Livre III: Des Mouvemens, pp. 161–2; cf. Palisca, ‘Scientific Empiricism in Musical Thought’, Seventeenth Century Science and the Arts, p. 135.Google Scholar

62 Galilei, Opere, viii. 142–4.Google Scholar

63 Beeckman notes (letter to Mersenne, October 1629: Mersenne, Correspondance, ii. 279) that the liquid in the sounding glass appears to boil.Google Scholar

64 Opere, viii. 144–5.Google Scholar

65 Ibid., viii. 145: ‘strisciando ora con maggiore ed ora con minor velocità, il sibilo riusciva di tuono or più acuto ed or più grave; ed osservai, i segni fatti nel suono più acuto esser più spessi, e quelli del più grave più radi…’.Google Scholar