Artusi, Ética y Camerata Florentina (EN)

Giovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musical Science
Author(s): Chadwick Jenkins

Source: Acta Musicologica, [Vol.] 81, [Fasc.] 1 (2009), pp. 75-97
Published by: International Musicological Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27793373
Accessed: 29-03-2019 04:14 UTC
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?iovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musical Science
Chadwick Jenkins
City College of New York
One may, however, give the name of musician to he who, through long practice, has
made works by composing and performing and knows how to explain such work, becau
se he has learned the good precepts of the musician and has placed them in operation.
Qiovanni Maria Artusi, L'arte del contraponto.1
Qiovanni Maria Artusi, judging from the written record,

was a rather contentious man. While living a mostly
quiet scholarly life as a canon regular in the Congregation of San Salvatore at Bologna, he
became embroiled in a number of polemics that, at times, seem to have denigrated into
bitter dispute.2 At one point, Ercole Bottrigari, one of his most vehement opponents, initi
ated a legal action in which he accused Artusi of plagiarism culminating in a police search
of the latter's room.3 Artusi has proved an equally difficult figure for modern scholars.
While most musicologists would agree that the seconda prattica controversy
between Claudio Monteverdi and Qiovanni Maria Artusi marks one of the central episodes
in music history, Artusi himself remains more reviled than known. Although musicologists
portray the controversy as a decisive moment in which musical practitioners (specifically,
composers) of the late-Renaissance avant-garde irrevocably broke with older traditions in
order to forge an experimental and bold seconda prattica, the image ofthat controversy
proffered by most musicological accounts is regrettably simplistic and decontextualized.4
. Qiovanni Maria Artusi, L'arte del contraponto (Venice: Cjiacomo Vincenti, 1598), 3: "Si potra per? dare
il nome di musico ? quello, che per un longo uso havra dato opera al comporre, et sonare, sapendo
render ragione di quanto opera, havendo imparato i buoni precetti dal musico, e postoli in opera."
Ali translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
2. Artusi entered the order on 14 February 1562 and professed on 21 February 1563. See Claude V.
Palisca, "Artusi, Qiovanni Maria," ?rove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 18 November 2006),
htttp://www.grovemusic.com.
3. An amusing and useful account of Artusi's protracted feud with Bottrigari may be found in Maria
Rika Maniates, "The Cavalier Ercole Bottrigari and His Brickbats: Prolegomena to the Defense of Don
Nicola Vicentino against Messer Qandolfo Sigonio," in Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past,
ed. Christopher Hatch and David W. Bernstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 137-88.
4. The standard account is Claude V. Palisca, "The Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy," in The New
Monteverdi Companion, ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 127-58.
This article is reprinted, along with a helpful timeline that places the controversy within a histori
Acta Musicologica, LXXXI /1 (2009), . 75"97?
Chadwick Jenkins - Qiovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musicai Science
Despite Palisca's attempts in his other writings to reveal the more radical nature of Artusi's
overall project (the theorist was one of the most eloquent apologists for Aristoxenus, an
advocate for loosening the strictures involved in dissonance treatment and insisted that
equal temperament was what was actually sung in the modern compositions of his time),
the Bolognese theorist is consistently portrayed as an arch-conservative, bent on protect
ing and buttressing the tenets of Renaissance practice explained in Qioseffo Zarlino's
treatises while attempting to force Monteverdi to submit to a theoretical stranglehold
mired in an outdated reliance upon ancient conceptions of music.5
Owing to the work of Claude Palisca and his many followers, we are aware of
Artusi's technical reasons for criticizing Monteverdi (specifically, his aberrant dissonance
treatment and his use of mixed modes) but the philosophical, moral, and aesthetic under
pinnings ofthat criticism largely remain obscure.6 And yet these are essential if we are to
grasp a form of musical understanding against which the music of the late Renaissance
was judged by an important group of musical thinkers. In most musicological accounts, we
gain little insight into what was at stake at all for Artusi within the controversy while we
are told that for Monteverdi and the composers that followed?rallying around the notion
of the seconda prattica like a banner in Palisca's evocative image?the polemic served as
a catalyst for greater compositional freedom and expression, inciting them to ever bolder
cal trajectory, in the collection Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994). In later references to this article, I will employ the page numbers from this
later collection. Other important accounts of the polemic include: Tim Carter, "Artusi, Monteverdi,
and the Poetics of Modern Music," in Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning, eds.,
Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca (Stuy vesant: Pendragon Press,
1992) , 171-94; Cjary Tomlinson, Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987), 1-30; Suzanne ?. Cusick, "Rendering Modern Music: Some Thoughts of the
Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy," Journal of the American Musicological Society 43, no. 1 (Spring
1993) : 1-25; Charles S. Brauner, "The Seconda Pratica, or the Imperfections of the Composer's Voice,"
in Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning, eds, Musical Humanism and its Legacy:
Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca (Stuy vesant: Pendragon Press, 1992), 195-212.
5. This despite the fact that it equally has become a platitude to insist that Artusi was not nearly as
conservative as musicological accounts have portrayed him?another trend established by Palisca.
Although nearly all authors pay lip service to the idea that Artusi has been unfairly painted as an
obtuse pedant, most of these accounts immediately go on to reify that same exaggerated negative
image. For Palisca's discussion of Artusi's approach to counterpoint see Claude V. Palisca, "The
Revision of Counterpoint and the Embellished Style," in Studies in the History of Italian Music and
Music Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 3-29; for Artusi's defense of Aristoxenus see Palisca's
"Aristoxenus Redeemed in the Renaissance" in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music
Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 189-199.
6. There are two important exceptions to be noted, both of which address the issue of sensus and ratio in
Artusi's conception of music: Michael Fend, "The Changing Functions of Senso and Ragione in Italian
Music Theory of the Late Sixteenth Century," in Charles Burnett, Michael Fend, and Penelope Cjouk,
ed., The Second Sense: Studies in Hearing and Musical Judgment from Antiquity to the Seventeenth
Century (London: The Warburg Institute, 1991), and Massimo Ossi, Divining the Oracle: Monteverdi's
Seconda Prattica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
76
Chadwick Jenkins - Qiovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musical Science
experimentation and innovation.7 In short the polemic ended in an unmitigated success

for the seconda prattica composers and success is the idol of history. We, as historians,
often spend our time documenting the succession of success?even if sometimes we are
left to document the success of decline. Therefore, it seems natural to us to understand
the Artusi/Monteverdi controversy as the legacy of innovation rather than the culmination
of a powerful and persuasive system of music theory that in some ways presaged and
buttressed the very form of musical expression that is now seen as having toppled it.8
In this paper, I intend to explore one aspect of the philosophical and moral
underpinning to Artusi's approach to music: that is, his insistence that music is a science.
Although the Zarlinian conception of music as science is widely recognized, the ethical
nature of music's status as a science has not been adequately explored. Furthermore,
scholars have largely ignored Artusi's moral position while dismissing the opprobrious
epithets he leveled at modern composers as mere rhetorical verve. However, Monteverdi's
contumacy with respect to dissonance treatment was, in Artusi's mind, merely a symptom
of a much larger disease. Rather it was Monteverdi's refusal to further the Zarlinian project
of musical modernity (a project intimately tied to music's status as a science) that led Artusi
to decry the seconda prattica as essentially immoral. If music is an act of communication
founded upon shared notions of proper discourse, then the music of Monteverdi threat
ened to produce a non-communicative form of anti-music, thereby derailing the progress
of musical science toward its proper telos. This paper investigates the moral implications
of the Zarlinian definition of musical science to demonstrate that Artusi's attacks on the
Monteverdi's dissonance treatment and employment of the modes are ultimately sub
sumed beneath a more pressing concern for the ethics of musical composition.
Musical Science and the Apprehension of Truth

For Zarlino and Artusi, music was a science in the Aristotelian sense: that is, it
was a system of definite rules that followed from first principles. However, science does
not burst forth complete upon its first conception like Athena from the head of Zeus.
Rather, human knowledge is cumulative as Aristotle clarifies in Book I of the Metaphysics
(a passage Artusi and Zarlino cite repeatedly); a theorist builds on the work of previ
ous theorists, clarifying the manner in which the precepts follow from first principles.
Moreover, since music has a theoretical and a practical component, the practical must be
made to manifest theoretical understanding in actuality. That is, ideally speaking, com
positions are the physical manifestation, the sounding presence, of speculative thought.
Once the science has fully attained its structure wherein its definite rules, following from
7- Palisca, "The Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy," 57.

8. For an attempt to argue this point see my "Ridotta alla perfettione: Metaphysics and History in the
Music-Theoretical Writings of Qiovanni Maria Artusi" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2007).
77
first principles, extend to cover all aspects pertaining to its study, the science can be said
to be (in Zarlino and Artusi's borrowing of a phrase from St. Thomas Aquinas) reduced to
perfection (ridotta alla perfettione).
From the very opening of the Istitutioni Inarmoniche, Zarlino announces his
intention to explore both the theoretical and the practical sides of music. To illustrate
the integral relationship between the two parts of music, Zarlino supplies the reader with
a vision of what he will later come to call the musico perfetto in the person of his revered
predecessor and teacher Adrian Willaert whom he describes as:
truly one of the most rare intellectuals that has ever pursued practical music, who in
the guise of a new Pythagoras minutely examining that which can occur in [music] and
finding infinite errors there, began to remove them and to reduce [music] toward that
honor and dignity that it had and that it rightfully should have. And he demonstrated
a reasonable order of composing with an elegant manner every musical cantilena and
in his compositions he gave the clearest example.9
As suggested by the appellation "new Pythagoras/1 Zarlino claims that Willaert

moved from observation toward consideration (as did Pythagoras in the blacksmith shop);
while determining the extent of the errors committed in the music of his time, he set
about trying to remove them. In this fashion, the composer was able to eliminate the
errors, thereby reducing music to honor and dignity. Willaert demonstrated his knowledge
of music through compositions.
However, it is in Chapter 11 of Book I ("The division of music into the specula
tive and the practical; through which one establishes the difference between the musician
and the cantor") that Zarlino provides his first extended discussion of the relationship
between the speculative and the practical sides of music.10 Zarlino insists that certain
sciences divide into speculative and practical parts. The purpose of the former "consists
only in the cognition of the truth of the things understood by the intellect," while the
latter depends solely on use (essercitio).11 Following Ptolemy, Zarlino insists that the
speculative side of music "was discovered through the accretion of the science inasmuch
g. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 2: "veramente uno de pi? rari intelletti, che habbia la musica prattica
giamai essercitato: il quale a guisa di nuovo Pithagora essaminando minutamente quello, che in essa
puote occorrere, et ritrovandovi infiniti errori, ha cominciato a levargli, et a ridurla verso quell'honore
et dignit?, che gi? ella era, et che ragionevolmente doveria essere; et h? mostrato un ordine ragionevole
di componere con elegante maniera ogni musicale cantilena, et nelle sue compositioni egli ne h? dato
chiarissimo essempio."
10. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 20: "Divisione della musica in speculativa et in prattica; per la quale
si pone la differenza tra il musico et il cantore."
11. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 20: "Quella il cui fine consiste nella cognitione solamente della verit?
delle cose intese dall'intelletto (il che ? propria di ciascuna scienza) ? detta speculativa; l'altra che
dall'essercitio solamente dipende, vien nominata prattica."
78
as through its means we are able to find new things and augment them but practice is
only concerned with making/'12
The speculative derives from our desire to know. The theoretical is of greater
worth than the practical in that "every art and every science naturally holds the reason
for which something is done as being more noble than the operation itself."13 The relation
ship between the speculative and the practical is analogous to the relationship between
the soul and the body insofar as the soul is considered nobler than the body and directs
the actions of the body. Thus the practical is directed by the speculative; without the
guidance of reason, the works produced through practice are worthless: "if the hands
do not make that which reason has commanded of them, they will wear themselves out
vainly and without any fruit."14 Although speculation is of higher worth, the maintenance
of both aspects of music is essential for its survival:
And although speculation does not have a need for the work per se, all the same the
speculative cannot produce anything in act that it newly discovered without the help
of the artisan or of an instrument, because such speculation, even if it were not in
vain, would seem nonetheless without fruit when it does not reduce to its ultimate end,
which consists in the use of natural and artificial instruments with the means of which
it comes to achieve [that end], since moreover the artisan without the help of reason
could never lead his work to any perfection. And for this reason these two parts are
very much conjoined together in music (considering it in its ultimate perfection).15
Insofar as we are concerned with speculation qua speculation, there is no need

for practice. Such a pursuit would not necessarily be in vain inasmuch as it satisfies the
speculative per se (that is, in its own right). However, when considering speculation qua
component of music, such a "pure" use of speculation would be pointless (without fruit)
because it would not contribute to the ultimate end of music in which the speculative
is but a constituent part. The ultimate end of music as a whole is for the discoveries of
speculation to be placed in act through practice. Equally, without knowledge of the sci
12. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 20: "La prima, come vuol Tolomeo, fu ritrovata per accrescimento
della scienza, imperoche per il suo mezo potemo ritrovar nuove cose, et darle augumento: Ma la
prattica solamente ? per l'operare." Although Zarlino here attributes this point to Ptolemy, this is
also an important Aristotelian notion that Zarlino employs throughout his writings.
13. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 20: "conciosia che ogni arte, et ogni scienza naturalmente ha per pi?
nobile la ragione con la quale si opera, che l'istesso operare."
14. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 20: "se le mani non operassero quello, che dalla ragione gli ? com
mandato, vanamente et senza frutto alcuno si affaticarebbeno."
15. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 20: "Et quantunque la speculatione da per se non habbia dibisogno
dell'opera; tuttavia non pu? lo speculativo produrre cosa alcuna in atto, che habbia ritrovato nuo
vamente, senza l'aiuto dell'artefice, overo dell'istrumento: percioche tale speculatione se bene ella
non fusse vana, parrebbe nondimeno senza frutto, quando non si riducesse all'ultimo suo fine, che
consiste nell'essercitio de naturali, et artificiali istrumenti, col mezo de i quali ella viene a con
seguirlo: si come ancora l'artefice senza l'aiuto della ragione mai potrebbe condurre l'opera sua a
perfettione alcuna. Et per questo nella musica (considerandola nella sua ultima perfettione) queste
due parti sono tanto insieme congiunte."
79
enee of music (derived from speculation), practice could not attain perfection. Although
speculation is superior to practice, it remains subordinate to music as a whole and has its
ultimate end in the goal of music qua music (that is, both speculation and practice).
This entire chapter is a close paraphrase of the last chapter in Boethius's first
book of his De institutione musica.16 However, it is a paraphrase with some significant
differences. The assertion that speculation (tied as it is to reason) is more honorable than
practice (which Boethius construes as a form of servitude) and the assertion that specu
lation is "not dependent on the act of making" both derive from Boethius.17 However,
Zarlino immediately begins to make distinctions totally foreign to Boethius's conception of
the relative values of what is for the medieval theorist a three-fold typology within music:
knowing (speculation), making (composition) and doing (performance).18 For Boethius,
speculation has no need of music qua sounding practice but for Zarlino music in its perfec
tion requires both. Although practice is less worthy than speculation, the latter depends
in important ways on the former. Practice puts the speculative aspect of the science of
music in act. Boethius views music primarily as a means of knowledge whereas Zarlino
insists that it is knowledge that has its ultimate realization in production. Throughout his
writings, Zarlino maintains the Boethian insistence that speculation is of a higher order
than practice (insofar as the former is a free activity in the Aristotelian sense and the
latter is labor) and yet tempers that insistence by equally demanding that the perfect or
true musician be involved in both contemplation and production.
Zarlino continues by drawing on the distinction between the musicus and the
cantor that had become a distinctive feature of music theory stemming from the powerful
influence of Cjuido d'Arezzo's Regutae rhythmicae in antiphonarii sui pro?ogum pro?atae,
coupled with Boethius's three-fold division of people involved with music.19 Inasmuch
as one might desire to separate the two parts of music, Zarlino avers, the musician
pursues contemplation (science) whereas he who composes is merely a composer and
he who performs merely a performer; he even borrows Boethius's somewhat belittling
assertion that the instrumentalist is named after his instrument (e.g. the person who
plays an organ is an organist). However, Zarlino goes further than his sources allow and
insists that if the man versed in speculative musical science "puts into operation the
16. Anicus Manlius Severinus Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, trans. Calvin M. Bower (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989), 50-51. For another (very brief) discussion of the similarities (but not the differ
ences) see Paolo Da Col, "The Tradition and Science: The Istitutioni harmoniche of Cjioseffo Zarlino," in
Cjioseffo Zarlino, Le Istitutioni harmoniche, ed. by Paolo Da Col (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1999), 39.
17. Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, 50.
18. Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, 50: see Bower's footnote 136 on Boethius's threefold distinction.
19. Quido d'Arezzo, Regulae rhythmicae in antiphonariisuiprologum prolatae reproduced in Scriptores eccle
siastici de musica sacra potissimum, Vol. 2 ed. by Martin Cjerbert, Sankt Blasien, and Typis San-Blasianis
(Hildesheim, 1784), 25-34. Zarlino owned a handwritten copy of this treatise; see Da Col, 39.
8o
things pertaining to practice, he will make his science more perfect and one will be able
to call him a perfect musician."20
In his summary of Zarlino's system, L'arte del contraponto ridotte alle tavole of
1586, Artusi presents three tables that present the possible divisions of music. The third
table, simply called "Altra divisione/1 is reproduced in Figure 1. Artusi (at least within this
treatise) maintains the superiority of theory and retains Zarlino's list of proper names
for different types of people involved in music. However, Artusi condenses Zarlino's pas
sage cited above to claim that practice is that which "reduces in act those things found
by the musician."21 Artusi's daunting list of the pursuits the musico perfetto must master
(including history and philosophy) makes readily evident in a wonderfully concise manner
something that is introduced in Zarlino's Book I, Chapter 2: that music "embraces all the
disciplines" because "music hold the principle [place] among the liberal arts."22
In 1588, thirty years after the initial publication of the Istitutioni harmoniche,
Zarlino felt called upon to defend further the theoretical project he had laid out in that
treatise and in the Dimostrationi harmoniche of 1571. The result was the publication of
the Sopplimenti musicali. The immediate impetus behind the creation of this third major
music-theoretical treatise was a letter sent to Zarlino by Vincenzo Qalilei on 7 June 1578
claiming that although Qalilei had been Zarlino's "most domestic pupil both of counter
point and also many other things pertaining to theory," "he had profited little by it."23
Zarlino refuses to name his assailant, claiming that although he was forced into this pub
lication by the assault, he still felt the need to clarify certain things in his earlier treatises
20. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 21: "se alle cose apparinenti alla prattica dar? opera, far? la sua
scienza pi? perfetta, et musico perfetto si potr? chiamare." Christopher Page traces the process by
which he asserts that disdain for the cantor dissipated between 700 and 1000 owing, in part, to the
musical activities of monks after the Rule of St Benedict, which mitigated the distinctions among
class and the contempt for manual labor. See Christopher Page, "Musicus and cantor," in Companion
to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. by Tess Knighton and David Fallows (London: J.M. Dent &
Sons Ltd., 1992), 74-78.
21. Artusi, L'arte del contraponto, 3. The notion of "reduction into act" derives from a Scholastic (spe
cifically, Thomist) reading of the Aristotelian doctrine of potency and act. For a full exploration of
the impact of that doctrine on Zarlinian and Artusian thought, see my dissertation, "Ridotta alla
perfettione," particularly Chapter 3.
22. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 4: "Di modo che da alcuni di essi fu scritto, che la musica tra le arti
liberali tiene il principato, et da alcuni fu detta 'e a e a, da voce greca, che circolo vuol
dire, et a e a disciplina, quasi circolo delle scienze: conciosia che la musica, si come dice Platone,
abbraccia tutte le discipline." "In this manner, it was written by them [the ancient philosophers and
particularly the Pythagoreans] that music holds the principle place among the liberal arts and [thus]
it was called "enkuklopaideia' by them from the Qreek word 'k?klos' meaning 'circle' and 'paide?a'
meaning 'discipline?almost a circle of the sciences?because music, as Plato says, embraces all
of the disciplines." Zarlino then works his way through the seven liberal arts, demonstrating their
relationship to music.
23. Letter excerpted in Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 5-6: "domestichissimo scolare et di contraponto,
et ancora di molte cose attenenti alla theorica"..."haveva profilato poco."
Chadwick Jenkins - giovarmi Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musicai Science
Figure 1: Another division

It happens in music as it occurs in the other sciences, which from their scientists
come two parts, divided in:
. Speculative [study], which comes to be called theory. This consists in the truth of
things that is understood by the intellect, & by its means they discover new things &
one finds it to be nobler than the practical to the same extent that the soul is nobler
than the body. From this comes [literally: one extracts that]: The so-called theorist,
who has the faculty of judging not by sense, but by that reason, which is contained in
such a science, and it could be:
A. A simple theorist, without having an understanding of anything that
pertains to practice.
B. A person who is both theorist and practitioner, and is called a perfect
musician, if he has an understanding of:
1) Arithmetic
2) Qeometry
3) Proportions
4) Performance
5) Tuning
6) Singing
7) Composition
8) Cjrammar
9) Metric
10) History
n) Dialectic
12) Rhetoric
13) Philosophy
2. Practice, which reduces in act those things found by the musician, and its end remains
in making, and is found to be less noble than theory to the same extent that the body
is less noble than the soul. From this they say that: the practitioner is he who learns
the precepts of the musician with long study, and creates an effect, and if he makes
this effect with:
A. The pen, one will call him a composer who composes pieces.
B. Some instrument, one will call him after that instrument.
C. If an organ, an organist.
D. If a lute, a lutenist.
E. If a harp, a harpist.
F. If a eitern, a citernist.
Q. With the voice, he simply comes to be called a singer.
Notes: From this one understands how much they fool themselves who indifferently give the name of musi
cian to singers and players and other sorts of practitioners.
One could however give the name of musician to him who through long practice has composed and
played, knowing how to reason about such work, having learned the good precepts from the musi
cian, and putting them in operation.
From this also one recognizes how much the modern Parmegiano fools himself who many times
obstinately replies and holds that practice is nobler than theory, a totally false and erroneous
proposition.
82
and moreover he does not want to appear to have a vendetta against his "Discepolo."24
Rather he addresses issues in the Sopplimenti that he "did not care to put in the [earlier]
volumes, thinking then, that what was written should have been sufficient/125 Although the
publication was instigated by the attack, Zarlino wants to make it clear that the task of
clarification is necessary given that some of his readers were not careful in their studies;
hence, the use of excerpts of ?alilei's letter, Zarlino claims, is not meant as a counterattack
so much as a clarification of the misunderstandings that may arise through the careless
reading and application of his theoretical works. However, in the course of clarifying the
foundations on which he had built his theoretical system, Zarlino investigates anew the
position of music qua science.
Perhaps owing to the defensive nature of the project, the Sopplimenti evinces
an evangelical zeal largely absent from the preceding treatises. There had always been a
restorative drive behind Zarlino's writings, to be sure. From the beginning of the Proem
from the Istitutioni, he declared that (paraphrasing the art historian Qiorgio Vasari):
[Then] whether it was through the malignity of time or through the negligence of men
who held in low esteem not only music but the other studies as well, it fell from the
high peak on which it was placed to the lowest depths.26
The passage from Vasari that Zarlino employs here is significant. Vasari claims
to have written Le vite, in part, for the artists themselves, "who, having seen in what
manner [art] was conducted from a small principle to the greatest height, and how from
so noble a position it fell to extreme ruin/' will find some insight into their pursuit.27 The
notion of a science gradually building upon a small discovery (of a principle) is one of the
major threads in Zarlino's writings that we have been tracing in this study.
However, the call for music's rehabilitation so characteristic of the Istitutioni is
supplanted in the Sopplimenti by a moralistic undercurrent that sweeps Zarlino's music
theoretical concepts out toward deeper concerns.28 After a dedication replete with refer
24- See Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 86-87 for a further defense of this stand.
25. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 6: "quelle cose, le quali non mi curia di porre ne i due nominati volumi,
pensando allora, che quello c'havea scritto, dovesse esser'? sufficientia."
26. Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 1: "Bench? 0 sia stato per la malignit? de tempi, o per la negligenza de
gli huomini, che habbiano fatto poca stima non solamente della musica, ma de gli altri studi ancor;
da quella somma altezza, nella quale era collocata, ? caduta in infima bassezza." Da Col notes the
similarity to Vasari; see Da Col, 36.
27. See Qiorgio Vasari, Le vite dei pi? eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti (Rome: Qrandi Tascabili
Economici, 1991), 109: "avendo veduto in che modo ella da piccol principio si conducesse alla soma
altezza, e come da grado s? nobile precipitasse in ruina estrema . . ."
28. One of the sources of this heightened moral stance may be the dedicatee. Whereas the Istitutioni
was dedicated to Vincenzo Diedo, a patriarch of Venice and the driving force behind such architec
tural projects as the S. San Pietro di Castello (for which Zarlino thanks him in the dedication) and
the Dimostrationi was dedicated to the "Prince of Venice" Alvigi Mocenigo, the dedicatee of the
Sopplimenti was none other than Pope Sixtus V.
83
Chadwick Jenkins - ?iovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musical Science
enees to the Bible and other liturgical writings, the Proem commences with what at first
appears to be fairly familiar rhetoric:
It is a thing manifest to every scholar: that one does not find any agent that operating,
does not move to some end, nor anyone who does not know that such an end is acquired
only through the means of work, when it is made perfect. It is quite true that since there
is not a single end but diverse and almost infinite [ends], all of which one chooses for a
certain good that everyone loves and desires, so also there is not a single operation but
almost infinite, diverse [operations]; These are understood within the operative arts,
the end of which is the perfect work, and in the speculative [arts], that have for their
object and their goal (elettione) the apprehension of truth. Therefore the sciences and
the arts have a need for each other, for the acquisition ofthat end, which being one
of the principles not subsumed by another science, is more desirable than that which
is subsumed by another; we maintain that the achievement of the end ofthat one [art]
is made with the help and by the means of this one [science] and such an end we hold
and believe to be the Fine or the Qood, as we wish to say.29
This passage foregrounds many of the elements that are featured prominently
in Artusi's definition of the purpose of music. As Artusi will later, Zarlino insists that there
are diverse ends and therefore diverse operations. The key is applying the operation that
is proportionate to the desired end. In this effort, science must assist art by supplying the
latter with the proper goal. Furthermore, all subordinate and separate goods are united
in that all of them are chosen "for a certain Qood that everyone loves and desires." Music,
like all of the sciences, participates in the hierarchy of ends (indeed, the excerpt reads
like a paraphrase of Aquinas's discussion of the hierarchy of ends in the opening of the
Summa contra Qentiles). There is only one ultimate goal and that is knowledge of Qod
and living in moral accordance with His Being. As we achieve each end in a subordinate
science we participate in a larger arc that describes a general drift toward the Qood.
However, Zarlino's faith in the progress of understanding is not wholly untrou
bled. Since the publication of his previous treatises, certain dissenting voices have arisen
decrying his system. Their writings evince a misunderstanding that seems to have arisen,
according to Zarlino, "perhaps not out of malice but out of ignorance or perhaps out of
29- Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, : "E cosa manifesta ad ogni studioso; che non si trova alcuno agente,
che operando non si muova ? qualche fine, et non sappia, che cotal fine s'acquista se non col mezo
dell'opera, quando ? fatta perfetta. ? ben vero, che si come non v'? un solo fine, ma diversi et quasi
infiniti, i quali tutti si pigliano per un certo bene, ch'ogn'uno ama et desidera; cosi anco non vi ?
una sola operatione, ma quasi infinite et diverse; Il che si comprende nell'arti operative, il cui fine ?
l'opera perfetta; et nella speculative, che hanno per oggetto et per elettione loro l'appresione della
verit?. Hanno per? le scientie et l'arti dibisogno l'una dell'altra, per l'acquisto di questo fine, il quale
essendo di una delle principali non sottoposte ad altra scientia, ? maggiormente desiderabile, di
quello che ad un'altra si sottoponga; istimando noi, che'l conseguire il fine di quella, sia fatto con
l'aiuto et col mezo di questa; et tal fine tenemo et credemo per certo essere il Bene ? Buono, che
lo vogliamo dire."
84
both."30 These misunderstanding are one reason Zarlino decided to write the Sopplimenti.
He then adduces another related impetus for adding to his theoretical output:
I will add the second reason, perhaps of no less importance than the first: among
those who have written about the science [of music] after me there are some [who
are] ambitious and little grateful for the work I have done for the public benefit,
perhaps owing to the desire for having and obtaining the principle [place] among the
musicians. They have forced themselves through dishonest means (one might say the
worst means, hateful to men) to detract (inasmuch as they were able) from my [works]
little understood by them, by producing their compositions in which they have fatigued
themselves in order to make others understand that one could learn the good together
with the beautiful in music as well as the truth of things from no one but them. But,
praised be Cjod, this was not without great gain and enrichment of the cognition of
this science because while with the means of the many errors they committed (errors
they had chosen against me as their foundation), [and while] in demonstrating their
caprices they have almost ruined and thrown to the ground all the good that up to
now was constructed and produced in this science and art, they have given me the
occasion to seek and investigate further many things in order to confirm what was
found and predicated of the truth by me and to remove and demonstrate their errors
in these Sopplimenti.31
Certainly, it is tempting to dismiss this passage as an unwarranted moral attack

meant to vilify another musician who dared to question Zarlino's authority in matters
musical. However, this passage is far more revealing of a worldview concerning science still
prevalent in the late Renaissance than such an easy assessment would allow. As science
is reduced to perfection it more closely approximates (and ideally will eventually become
identical with) its principles. A principle is not mutable; it is perfect and fully formed.
Therefore, the science of music is (in its perfect completion) a whole to which nothing can
be added nor taken away. As we have seen, it is open to all sciences to pursue either of the
two contraries (as opposed to natural substances which can only move in one direction);
thus medicine may move toward health or its contrary, sickness. Zarlino asserts that it is
30. Ibid., 3: "non dir? per malitia, ma per ignorantia, ? forse per l'una et l'altra."
31. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 3: "[Aggiunger? la seconda [ragione], forse di non minore importan
tia, che sia la prima, la quale ?, che tra quelli che dopo me hanno scritto delle cose della scientia,
sono stati alcuni ambitiosi, et poco grati delle fatiche ch'io ho fatto ? publico beneficio, forse per
il desiderio di havere et ottenere il principato tra i musici, si sono sforzati, con modi poco honesti,
anzi dir? con pessimi mezi, et da huomini ingrati, di detrahere, per quanto hanno potuto fare, alle
mie da loro male intese fatiche, ponendo in luce alcune loro compositioni; nelle quali si hanno
affaticato grandemente di dare ad intendere, che non da altri che da loro si possa apprendere il
buono et insieme il bello della musica, et il vero delle cose; ma lodato sia Iddio, che ci? non ? stato
senza gran guadagno et accrescimento della cognitione di questa scientia; percioche mentre col
mezo di molti loro commessi errori, i quali hanno pigliato contra di me per loro fondamento, nel
dimostrare i suoi capricci, hanno quasi roinato et posto ? terra tutto quello di buono, che f?n'hora
in questa scientia et in quest'arte havea costrutto et fabricato; m'hanno dato occasione di cercar
et investigar pi? oltra, molte cose, per confirmar questa da me ritrovata et predicata verit?, et di
levare et dimostrare ne i presenti Sopplimenti cotali suoi errori."
85
the duty of the science's practitioner to move it toward its proper goal. In this he closely
follows Aquinas from the Summa contra Qentiles, in which he writes:
It belongs to one and the same science, however, both to pursue one of the two
contraries and to oppose the other. Medicine, for example, seeks to effect health and
to eliminate illness. Hence, just as it belongs to the wise man to meditate especially
on the truth belonging to the first principle and to teach it to others, so it belongs to
him to refute the opposing falsehood.32
Those who seek to subvert the progress of a science toward that final end or
ultimate perfection therefore pose a serious threat. Although Zarlino claims that to some
extent they are a benefit to the science in that they exemplify what one should not do or
believe, they still present the possibility of derailing the perfection of a science should there
not be someone (like Zarlino) capable of demonstrating their errors to those with reason.
The reason behind their contumacious refusal to contribute to the progress of
music and their vain pursuit of a glory and fame not equal to their actual achievements
is most important: self-love. Those who succumb to such narcissistic tendencies lose
sight of the "public benefit" that derives from work conducted not for glory but in the
quest for attaining the Qood. Musicians characterized by self-love fail to understand the
ultimate end (telos) of music. As Artusi will write, citing Horace, "Est caecus Amor sui"
("Self-love is blind").33 Such malicious writers, finding themselves incapable of discover
ing anything of truth by their own means, turn their attention to debasing the work of
others. Furthermore, with their "wicked work they give rise to spoliation and ruin of the
world to some degree, introducing into [the world] the worst examples and villainous
habits that move men to produce bad work."34 If music has a definite goal, as Zarlino
assures us it does, then any attempt to subvert that goal is evidence of moral turpitude
and must be controlled through the establishment of clear and definite rules. Only in
this way can the scholar "bring to light our Musical Africa that continuously gives birth
to and brings forth some new thing, otherwise the others will make seen an unusual
and horrible monster."35 The type of monster appearing in this irrational land is clearly
ridiculous: malformed, incoherent.
32. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra ?entiles, Book I: ?od, trans. Anton C. Pegis, FRSC (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 59.
33. L'Art usi, 43V.
34. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 5: "con le lor malvaggie opere danno occasione di guastare et roinare
in qualche parte il mondo, introducendo in esso pessimi essempii et scelerati costumi, che muovono
gli huomini ad operar male."
35. Ibid: "porre in luce, l'Africa nostra musicale, che di continuo partorisce et manda fuori qualche
nuova cosa, oltra gli altri fece vedere un'insolito et horribile monstro." The image from Horace,
which Zarlino cites verbatim on the same page, comes from the very opening of the Ars Poetica:
"Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas undique collatis
membris, ut turpiter atrum desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne." H.R. Fairclough translates
86
Artusi too sees the confrontation with the modernt as a morally driven issue.
In his eyes, the modern composers are attempting to "corrupt spoil and ruin these good
rules [of composition]."36 Like Zarlino, Artusi refuses to name directly his opponent, viewing
Monteverdi as a symptom of a greater problem that must be addressed. Furthermore, Artusi's
struggle is against the self-love of the moderns that leads them to abandon the overarching
project of musical progress in favor of the empty glory of misguided public approbation.
The Proem of the Sopplimenti establishes that music participates in the larger
overarching progress of knowledge toward the ultimate Qood, that it is a moral duty to
proceed according to the clear rules (derived from first causes) toward the attainment of
music's teleologica! goal, and that the attainment of this goal requires the interaction
between theory and practice. However, it is still not clear exactly where the science of
music lies within the greater structure of human knowledge and it is the clarification
of its position that largely occupies the remainder of the first book of the Sopplimenti.
Aristotle divided human knowledge into three broad classes: the theoretical, the practical,
and the productive. The goal of the theoretical sciences was pure knowledge; since such
knowledge was considered worthwhile in itself, theoretical knowledge was the highest
form of knowing. The privileging of theoretical knowledge (knowledge for its own sake) is
a common trope in music-theoretical writings and we have seen multiple instances of it in
Zarlino's work (he, in turn, partly inherited it from Boethius as well as Aristotle himself).
The theoretical sciences further divided into theology, mathematics, and natural science.
Perhaps Aristotle's most astounding work within natural science is his Physics, while
theology is one of the topics discussed in his Metaphysics. The mathematical sciences
comprise the members of the quadrivium (including music) and it was in light of music
qua mathematical science that Boethius primarily discussed the subject. The practical
sciences include subjects such as ethics and politics and are concerned with right action
(Zarlino includes dancing within this category in that there is no product left over when
the performance is complete).37 Finally, the productive sciences, including crafts and
rhetoric, are concerned with activities that result in an object. In his brief discussion of
this passage as: "If a painter chose to join a human head to the neck of a horse, and to spread
feather of many a hue over limbs picked up now here now there, so that what at the top is a lovely
woman ends below in a black and ugly fish." See Horace, Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, transi, by
H. R. Fairclough (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 450-451. Zarlino makes no effort to
integrate this sentence fragment from Horace into his discussion. Indeed when Artusi uses the same
image, he too neglects to bother trying to make it fit. It merely appears, repeatedly, as a recogniz
ably ridiculous image. Notice also the somewhat pejorative use of the word "partorire." This word
was one of the rhetorical devices cited by Suzanne Cusick as being employed by Artusi to feminize
modern musicians, a point that was challenged (rather hastily) by Charles Brauner. This is clearly
the proximate source for Artusi's use of the image of a "musical Africa." This passage is discussed
in some detail in Chapter 2 of this dissertation.
36. L'Artusi, 42 "corrompere, guastare, rovinare quelle buone Regole."
37. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 20.
87
these categories, Zarlino refers to the theoretical sciences as science while the productive
and practical sciences are called arts. Of both types of arts (which he calls prattica and
fattiva?his examples being dancing and painting), he writes:
However, art is, as has been said, the correct logic [ragione] for doing things and is the
operative habit [the method of operating]?understanding by 'logic' that habit which
rules and directs the artisan in operating; the form of this art being the similarity to
the ultimate effect, understood by the artisan, or that similitude that the artificial thing
represents?with respect to form alone, however.38
Hence although the arts (productive and practical) are concerned with actions,
those actions are guided by reason and its involvement in theoretical knowledge. Moreover,
reason guides those actions by being concerned with the form that most accords with the
ultimate effect of the product or action.39 We can gather from this that music, as a pursuit,
is at the very least both theoretical and productive inasmuch as the theoretical element
of the science drives the production of compositions. Furthermore, although Zarlino never
stops to clarify, we can assume that?given his discussions (and Artusi's elaborations on
those discussions) of performance and the proper roles of the performers?Zarlino and
Artusi believed music participated in all three categories of human knowledge, the most
important part of which is the theoretical insofar as that informs the productive and the
practical. See Figure 2.
In clarifying the difference between science and art, Zarlino has recourse to
a short excursus on cognition.40 Cognition, according to Zarlino, is of four types: 1) that
which is far from reason; 2) that which is conjoined with reason; 3) cognition with regard
to the particular; 4) cognition with regard to the universal. These are not isolated cat
egories and it is their various combinations that give rise to "experience, and part of art
and science, and also art and science in their perfection."41 Cognition of the particular
denuded of reason creates an experience (defined as cognition of a single thing without
knowing the cause of that thing).42 There is also universal cognition without reason,
38. Ibid: "? per? l'arte, come si ? detto, ragione diritta delle cose, che si possono fare, et ? habito op
erativo, intendendosi per? per la ragione quell'habito, che regge et indriccia l'artefice all'operare;
essendo la forma di essa arte la simiglianza dell'ultimo effetto, inteso dall'artefice, over quella
similitudine, che rappresenta la cosa artef?ciale, quanto alla forma per? solamente."
39. It may seem at this point that Zarlino has shifted the focus decidedly toward the productive arts,
but this need not be so, nor do I see any cause that would justify such a reading. Take dancing as
an example. While there is no product left over after the actions of the artist, the artist still reduces
her/his dance to perfect act through the proper execution of the dance according to the rules es
tablished by the science ofthat pursuit.
40. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 24-26.
41. Ibid., 24-25: "la esperientia et parte dell'arte et della scienza, et anco l'arte et la scientia nella loro
perfettione."
42. Zarlino gives the example in medicine of knowing the cure for a single ailment while knowing neither
where the ailment came from nor why the cure works.
88
Figure 2: Music within the Structure of Human Knowledge
Science
Theology Mathematics Natural Science Ethics Politics Etc. Art Rhetoric Etc.
Music as Science Music as Art
Music in its Perfection
which leads to memory?characterized as a wider type of experience or experience

proper.43 This two-fold categorization of cognition without reason derives from the open
ing of Aristotle's Metaphysics wherein the philosopher declares: "Now in men experience
comes from memory, for many memories of the same thing produce the capacity of a
single experience."44 Indeed, Aristotle employs the same medical example to distinguish
between experience and art (or science): "For to judge that this [medicine] has been ben
eficial to Callias and Socrates and many other individuals who suffer from this disease,
is a matter of experience; but to judge that it has been beneficial to all individuals of a
particular kind, as the phlegmatic, the bilious, or the feverish, taken as a class, who suffer
43- Memory is depicted here as the accumulation of observations without necessarily having the ability
to abstract from those experiences in order to gain an understanding of their cause. Zarlino again
provides a medical example.
44. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1: 98ob28-98ia2. The translation comes from Aquinas,
Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, trans. ]ohn P. Rowan (Notre Dame: Dumb Ox Books, 995 ?
89
from this disease, is a matter of art.'*5 When such experience comes from the opinions
of others and not through direct experience (or, as Zarlino adds, is at least confirmed by
experiment) then it is a matter of history or commemoration.
The arts, however, "come from reasonable opinion and from intelligence
because with reason [the intelligence] comprehends universals."46 Cognition of the particu
lar united with reason "constitutes a part of art or science.'*7 It is art when "the subject
is mutable and science when it is not mutable.'*8 Both art and science are made perfect
when cognition of the universal is conjoined with reason. Art employs opinions and the
intelligence (and hence has a historical component) whereas science utilizes the intel
ligence and the intellect. Then Zarlino proposes a slightly altered vision of the structure
of knowledge; having differentiated art and science, he introduces another category:
But wisdom is very different from both of these, being that it is a virtue or force, as we
like to say, of the soul that raises itself to the contemplation of supreme and celestial
things and with reason goes forward and considers immortal things and is born from
science and intellect, wherein one says that it is cognition and entire apprehension
of those supreme causes or things that have their true being, which (according to the
doctrine of Saint Thomas) one finds to be of three sorts...49
The three sorts are: 1) those things whose existence depends upon matter and
cannot be defined without matter (Zarlino gives the examples of stone, wood, meat, and
so on); 2) those things whose existence depends on matter but do not depend on matter
for their definition (such as mathematical figures like the triangle, the circle, etc.); 3 those
things that depend on matter neither for their existence nor their definition (such as
angels, the rational soul and Qod himself).
This three-fold division does indeed figure into the passage Zarlino cites from
Aquinas's Commentary on the Physics (the proem of the first book); however, the refer
ence to wisdom as knowledge founded upon science but that transcends it to contem
plate divine things has another source in the opening paragraphs of the Summa contra
Qentiies.50 After defin ing true wisdom as that wh ich seeks knowledge of the divine, Aquinas
45? Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1:98137-12. Translated in Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's
Metaphysics, 1.
46. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 25: "vengono dall opinione ragionevole et dalla intelligentia; percioche
essa ancora con ragione comprende gli universali."
47. Ibid: "constituisce una parte dell'arte ? della scientia."
48. Ibid: "Et prima, dell'arte, quando il suo soggetto ? mutabile; dipoi della scientia, quando non ?
mutabile."
49. Ibid., 26: "Ma la sapientia ? da queste due molto differente; essendo che ella ? virt? ? forza, che
dire la vogliamo, dell'animo che si leva alla contemplatione delle cose supreme et celesti; et con la
ragione che le v? innanti, v? considerando le cose immortali; et nasce dalla scientia et dallo intel
letto: onde si dice, che ? cognitione et intiera apprensione di quelle supreme cagioni ? cose, c'hanno
il lor vero essere; le quali (secondo la dottrina di S. Thomaso) si trovano essere di tre sorti . . ."
50. Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 1-2; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra ?entiles, Book
I: Qod, trans, by Anton C Pegis, FRSC (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 59"6i.
90
clarifies the manner in which attaining full and complete knowledge of each science
contributes to the pursuit of the ultimate Qood (proximity to divinity):
The ultimate end of the universe must, therefore, be the good of an intellect. This good
is truth. Truth must consequently be the ultimate end of the whole universe, and the
consideration of the wise man aims principally at truth.51
Zarlino declares music to be of the second type: that is, it requires matter
(in this case, sound) for its existence but not for its definition. As such, music is called
"mathematical and is a mean between the natural and divine, such as those (so to speak)
that participate in the nature of both/152 Moreover, Zarlino claims to follow Plato in view
ing music as a bridge that moves us from the contemplation of natural objects to the
divine.53 If a composer refuses to engage music as a science?if he treats music as a mere
sonorous diversion?the he forfeits music's rightful place within the hierarchy of ends
and derails man's progress toward Truth.
Music as Rational Communication

However, a further and more immediate consequence arises when composers
neglect their duty to musical science. Practitioners who flagrantly disregard the rules of
composition verified by speculative thought corrupt the communication of meaning. Artusi
connects rule-bounded composition with communication in the following excerpt:
Do you not know that all of the sciences and arts were regulated by the theorists and
that, with regard to both, they left us the first elements, the rules, and the precepts
upon which they [the sciences and arts] are established, so that by not deviating from
the principles and good rules one can understand what another says or does?5*
Ultimately, this was the problem with the extravagances Artusi discerned in
the music of Monteverdi. To transgress the limits set by the very essence of a thing is
to transmogrify it into something monstrous. To deviate from the proper teleological
goal of music, to willfully thwart it from attaining perfection in order to appease one's
vanity (which Artusi cites as the root cause of their contumacy), is to give rise to a non
communicative form of anti-music.
Qiulio Cesare Monteverdi, in defense of his brother, insisted that only practical
knowledge was sufficient in judging the quality of compositions. Artusi, however, main
51. Ibid, 60. This passage immediately precedes the excerpt presented earlier in which Aquinas empha
sizes the moral duty of the scholar to pursue the proper end of each science.
52. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 26: "mathematiche et mezane, tra le naturali et le divine, come quelle
(dir? cosi) che partecipano della natura dell'una et dell'altra." Emphases mine.
53? Ibid., 28.
54. Artusi, L'Artusi, 42 "Non sapete, che tutte le scienza et tutte l'arti, sono state da sapienti regolate,
et di ciascuna ci sono stati lasciati i primi elementi, le regole, et li precetti, sopra le quail sono
fondate, affin che non deviando da i principii, et dale buone regole, possi uno intendere, quello che
dice, ? fa l'altro?"
91
tained that one severs practical compositions from theoretical precepts only at the cost
of incoherence.55 Music owes its power to its manifestation as an act of communication.
Proper music means something; it has rational content and it can only be received as a
communication when it speaks within the parameters of musical discourse. This is what
Artusi means by his constant reference to the "good old rules"?not simply contrapuntal
rules but more broadly the rules of suitable discourse. The rules vouchsafe the social
aspect of musical science.
In L'arte del contraponto, Artusi set forth a division of the science of music
based on how it relates to the faculties of the human receptor. This division comprises
three parts: 1) Music that moves the sense alone; 2) Music that moves both the sense and
the intellect; 3) Music that moves the intellect alone. The first category, Artusi claimed, is
improperly called music.56 It derives from the sounds of animals such as nightingales and
blackbirds; it is irrational in that it owes its existence to irrational animals. Because there
is no semiotic purpose behind birdsong, Artusi does not consider such so-called "music"
to involve the intellect at all. It produces sound but not voice, the latter being defined by
Artusi as more than the sound produced by the vocal apparatus but rather vocal sound
that conveys meaning based on semantic content (that is, vocal sound as the bearer of
text but also as the bearer of musical meaning; instrumental music imitates vocal music
and hence derives its musical meaning from it just as art imitates nature).
Artusi reinforced this distinction a few pages later when he put forward the
Zarlinian proposition that "every voice is a sound but not every sound is a voice; the former
[voice] is the repercussion of breath from the vocal apparatus that goes forth with some
signification."57 This distinction between voices and sounds would seem to have its roots
in Antiquity (for instance, the Aristoxenian distinction between sounds in general and
the phthongos, a sound usable in music) but in Zarlino, and consequently in Artusi, the
distinction serves to buttress the notion that vocal music is the natural form of music.58
55- See Oliver Strunk, ed., Source Readings in Music History (New York and London: W.W. Norton and
Company, 1998), 539.
56. Qiovanni Maria Artusi, L'arte del controponto, (Venice: ?iacomo Vincenti, 1598), 2.
57. Ibid, 9: "Ogni voce ? suono, ma ogni suono non ? voce, et questa ? ripercussione d'aria respirata
all'artena {sic; recta: arteria) vocale che si manda fuori con qualche signifcatione." Emphasis mine.
58. For the Aristoxenian definition of phthongos, see Andrew Barker, ed., ?reek Musical Writings, Volume
II: Harmonic and Acoustic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 136. Here Barker
translates the definition as follows: "A note [phthongos] is the incidence of the voice on one pitch:
for it is when the voice appears to rest at one pitch that there seems to be a note capable of being
put into a position in a harmonically attuned melody." For an alternative translation that makes
the definition of note reliant upon its being positioned within a harmonically attuned melody, see
Thomas ]. Mathiesen, Apollo's Lyre: ?reek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 306; see in particular his argument against Barker's
translation in fn. 38 on that page. Zarlino's original distinction, which Artusi cites almost verbatim,
can be found in Part II of the Istitutioni, 78. Of course, there is an important difference between
Zarlino's distinction and that set forth by Aristoxenus. Phthongos refers to any musical sound (vocal
92
Music by its very nature, therefore, is a rational discourse in sound but it emphatically does
not include (properly speaking) the "music" of irrational nature (such as birdsong).59
The third category subsumes musica mundana and humana and treats music
that is not heard but only understood. The second category is what "the Ancients called
instrumental, and is, as Aristide [Quintilianus] says, a science of singing well."60 This is
music, properly speaking (music produced by instruments, including the human voice). It
divides into the theoretical (contemplating musical things to the satisfaction of cognition)
and the practical (composing, singing, and performing). The implication is clear: music
being a mixed science (a mathematical science involving natural substances) it necessar
ily involves both the sense and the intellect. Only that form of music that utilizes both is
properly called music. Artusi clarifies the point in his Aviso: "Music, which we must treat
[in this treatise], is a speculative mathematical science, the teacher of all songs, concern
ing which, with sense and reason, it considers the sounds, voices, numbers, proportions
and their differences, and orders the low and high sounds with certain proportional terms
in their proper places."61
As this addendum reveals, Artusi largely eschews consideration of areas of
music that do not confront actual man-made sound (indeed the notion of musica mun
dana and humana only reappear in his later treatises as metaphors at most). This is not
to say that he doggedly pursues the practical in isolation from the speculative. Rather
Artusi concerns himself primarily with speculative issues that arise directly out of practical
matters. Music properly understood is the knowledge that one derives from a specula
tive contemplation of a human practice in which certain natural objects (the sounds and
particularly the consonances) are utilized to their fullest potential; the insights that arise
from that contemplation are then to be incorporated into the practice itself?the ulti
or instrumental) whereas Zarlino posits the voce as the proper musical sound leaving an instrumental
sound suitable for music in a subordinate position?somewhat like the shadow of the voice or a
voice divested of true semantic content.
59. On earlier music-theoretical distinctions between irrational Nature and the rational nature of music,
see Elizabeth Eva Leach, "Qendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone: Fourteenth-Century
Music Theory and the Directed Progression," Music Theory Spectrum 28, no.i (Spring 2006): 1-21.
Of particular interest is the mid-fourteenth century theorist Johannes Boen who specifically places
the songs of angels and birds outside of the purview of musical concerns (p.2).
60. L'arte del controponto, 2: "da gli antichi ? chiamata instromentale, et ?, come dice Aristide, una sci
enza di ben cantare." As we have seen in earlier portions of this dissertation, the term "instrumental"
here corresponds to Boethius's third category of music and includes both the music produced by
artificial instruments and that produced by human voices. Artusi, following Zarlino, further refines
Boethius's category through privileging vocal music as natural music while instrumental music is
derivative of it.
61. L'arte del controponto, 2: "La musica, di cui trattare dobbiamo, ? una scienza speculative math
ematica, maestra de tutte le cantilene, le quali col senso, et con la ragione considera i suoni, le
voci, i numeri, le proportion'!, et le loro differenze; et ordina le voci gravi, e l'acute, con certi termini
proportional! ne'debiti luochi."
93
Chadwick Jenkins - ?iovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musicai Science
mate fusion of practice and theory (theory employed in practice and practice as a form
of theorizing) constitutes Artusi's vision of the Zarlinian Musico perfetto.
For Artusi, the music of the seconda prattica flirted with irrational blandish
ments of the sense of hearing. If music is a rational discourse in sound, then these com
positions do not represent music at all but rather anti-music, corruption passing itself off
as an advance in compositional technique. Composers need theoretical knowledge. It is
not superadded to their knowledge as musicians; it is their knowledge as musicians:
Luca: But I still think that the practical musicians think little about what Salinas says
because while they struggle to put notes together, of what use is knowledge of the
speculative to them?
Vario: It was useful to the first discoverers, who then left so many fine and simple rules
that everyone who is not senseless enters this school in order to be called a musician.
And it is useful for the understanding of the nature and propriety and the passions of
the intervals, to know in which particular place they must be arranged and placed in
order to produce the best effect, which they would not produce being placed by chance
in compositions as they are now by the majority of composers and it satisfies them
that according to their wishes they make noise. It [speculative knowledge] is useful
in knowing how to account for the things that they do, every artist being obliged to
account for the things they make in their art. But music has that imperfection that
those who know how to account for their work and the compositions made by them
are rare and one might say that they are like white crows.62
In order to earn the name "musician," one must attain theoretical knowledge
(enter into this school). Without such knowledge, one is not a musician but a charlatan.
The moral underpinning of the argument emerges most clearly in Vario's stipulation that
artists are "obliged to account for the things they make in their art."
Why, we might ask, are composers obligated to provide explanations for their
compositions? Should it not be sufficient that they create the compositions, as Luca asks?
Indeed why not leave it to the critic or the theorist to seek explanations? The answer
lies in understanding just what kind of action composition really is. Human beings share
with other animals the ability to have sensations. Sensations for each individual are
62. Artusi, L'Artusi, 33V: "Luca: ma credo ancora che li pratici pensino poco ? quello che dice il Salines;
perche mentre che si affaticano ? mettere insieme quelle solfe, che le giova la cognitione dello specu
lare? Vario: Ha giovato alli primi inventori, i quali hanno dipoi lasciato tante belle regole, et tanto
facili, che ogn'uno, che non sia pi? che insensate, entra in questa schola, per esser chiamato musico.
Et giova alla cognitione di saper conoscere la natura, e la propriet?, et la passione de gl'intervalli; in
qual luoco particolare debban? essere collocati, e disposti di modo che faccino miglio effetto, che
non farebbono essendo come sono talhora, et per il pi? dalli pratici posti nelle cantilene ? caso;
et le basta che secondo la volont? loro faccino romore: Qiova al saper render conto di quelle cose
che opera; essendo in obligo ogni artefice di render conto delle cose che egli fa nell'arte sua; ma ha
questa imperfettione la musica, che rari, et si pu? dire, che siano come le corvi bianchi, quelli, che
sappino render conto delle loro operation!, et cantilene da loro fatte.
94
"the ultimate in private property/'63 This is why Artusi insisted that an ensemble should
always be tuned by a single ear. Even two equally accomplished musicians will not hear
the tuning of an ensemble in exactly the same way. Human beings differ from the other
animals insofar as they have rationality and their rationality entails understanding and
judgment. Understanding differs from sensation with respect to its communicability; it
is "the ultimate in public property."64 Understanding and judgment open out onto the
world of possibility. If I understand something, I also understand its negation. By being
open to possibility, the human being not only reacts (in the manner of the other animals)
but also consciously acts. Qenuine human action involves choice.
Here we must turn to the Thomistic distinction between human acts (actus
humani) and the acts of a human being (actus hominis). The acts of a human being need
not be any different from the acts of other animals and living things. But human acts are
those acts that are specific to a human being?that is, they entail the specific difference
of humans: rationality. Any human act is necessarily open to the question: "toward what
end are you doing this?" Now music, of course, involves sensations but as Artusi insists it
also involves knowledge and understanding; moreover, it appeals to human judgment. In
this strict sense, proper music is truly capable of communication. One ought to be held
accountable for all human acts and therefore any composer should be able to ask the
question "toward what end are you doing this?" with respect to each composition. The
composer holds the responsibility for rational discourse.
With each composition, the composer must be responsible to music on two
interrelated levels. On one level, the composer must fashion this particular work in such
a way that it embodies the necessary elements of proper musical discourse: that is, it
must be essentially composed of consonance and only accidentally employ dissonance so
that (in Zarlino's felicitous phrase) the dissonances are made to consonate) and further,
it must reveal itself to be in a specific mode since the mode is the substantial form of a
composition and without substantial form, the composition is simply not properly called
music?it lacks proper being. But the proper rendering of a composition depends upon
knowledge of the speculative side of musical science in that it is from this theoretical
understanding that the composer should realize the appropriate perfection of the piece.
Zarlino writes: "For bringing things of music to life is really nothing other than leading
them to their ultimate end, or perfection, as also happens in other arts and sciences (such
as medicine) which contain both speculative and practical aspects."65 Thus the perfection
63- The manner of characterizing sensation as "the ultimate in private property" derives from Brian
Davies, "Introduction," in Brian Davies, ed., Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 12.
64. Ibid, 13.
65. Qioseffo Zarlino, On the Modes: Part IV of the Istitutioni harmoniche, 1558, trans. Vera Cohen (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 103.
95
of a composition depends upon an understanding of musical science in its current state

of development.
This entails the second level of commitment for the composer. The composer
participates in the overarching development of music as a science. Each composition is a
stage along the way toward musical science's ultimate telos. The development of musical
science is a process with an end. Its end or telos derives from its natural substrate (the
natural character of pitched sound itself). As Aristotle wrote in the Physics: "Each step
then in the series is for the sake of the next; and generally art partly completes what
nature cannot bring to a finish, and partly imitates her.1166 By choosing not to complete
(perfect) what nature cannot bring to a finish, the seconda prattica composers thwarted
the proper development of music. If music is essentially consonant, then these composers
have given birth to pure monstrous noise.
And indeed this paves the way for Artusi's overarching moral outrage against
the seconda prattica composers. For as Aquinas wrote: "Some likeness must be found
between [an effect and its cause], since it belongs to the nature of action that an agent
produce its like, since each thing acts accordingly as it is in act/'67 If the compositions
present an aberrant form of anti-music, if they thwart the rational act of musical com
munication, if this music (by titillating the ear at the cost of rational understanding) is
immoral, then their creators are also immoral. Zarlino and Artusi insist that the cause of
their immoral behavior is self-love and the pursuit of glory by lavishing novelties on an
audience. Zarlino writes that these composers, with their "wicked work . . . give rise to
spoliation and ruin of the world to some degree, introducing into [the world] the worst
examples and villainous habits that move men to produce bad work."68 They seek to
appease their vanity and cast aside the project of musical modernity like so much rub
bish. If music has a definite goal, as Zarlino and Artusi assure us it does, then any attempt
to subvert that goal is evidence of moral turpitude and must be controlled through the
reinforcement of clear and definite rules.
From the distance of four centuries, Artusi's arguments may strike us as beside
the point. Music, to our ears, need not be essentially consonant and Monteverdi's music,
despite the lasciviousness of some of the texts, hardly strikes us as immoral. But for us,
of course, music is also no longer considered a science in the sense that Artusi believed
66. Aristotle, Physics, 199315-20. The translation comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on
Aristotle's Physics, trans. Richard ]. Blackwell, Richard ]. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel (Notre
Dame: Dumb Ox Books, 1999), 128.
67. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Qentiles, Book I: ?od, trans. Anton C. Pegis E.R.S.C (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1955), 138.
68. Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, 5: "con le lor malvaggie opere danno occassione di guastare et roinare
in qualche parte il mondo, introducendo in esso pessimi essempii et scelerati costumi, che muovano
gli huomini ad operar male."
96
it to be. Perhaps in the end, Artusi's notion of the music of his time was far richer in
philosophical depth and meaning. And while I would never want to forego the music of
Monteverdi and his many successors, I do find it somewhat appealing to try to come to
grips with the way Artusi understood that music. If, as I have argued, understanding is
truly communicable then we might be able to engage with Artusi's rather foreign way of
grasping music. Even though we will never hear what he heard, we may learn to under
stand what he thought of what he heard.
97

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Giovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musical Science

Author(s): Chadwick Jenkins

International Musicological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

Qiovanni Maria Artusi, judging from the written record,

Acta Musicologica, LXXXI /1 (2009), . 75"97?

experimentation and innovation.7 In short the polemic ended in an unmitigated success

Musical Science and the Apprehension of Truth

7- Palisca, "The Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy," 57.

As suggested by the appellation "new Pythagoras/1 Zarlino claims that Willaert

Insofar as we are concerned with speculation qua speculation, there is no need

Figure 1: Another division

Certainly, it is tempting to dismiss this passage as an unwarranted moral attack

Figure 2: Music within the Structure of Human Knowledge

Music as Science Music as Art

Music in its Perfection

which leads to memory?characterized as a wider type of experience or experience

Music as Rational Communication

of a composition depends upon an understanding of musical science in its current state

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