Aaron [Aron], Pietro [Piero]

(b Florence, c1480; d after 1545). Italian theorist and composer.

Nothing is known of Aaron's early training, his teacher, or his career
before 1516. He claims to have had the greatest friendship and
familiarity with Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac and Agricola in Florence
(most likely between 1487 and 1495, and not necessarily at the
same time). By 1516 he was a priest in Imola, where he wrote his
first book, Libri tres de institutione harmonica, translated into Latin by
the humanist Giovanni Antonio Flaminio. A contemporary poem by
Achille Bocchi praises Aaron for rescuing music from squalor and
dismal neglect. By March 1520 he was a singer in Imola Cathedral;
he was also paid by the city to teach music to those who wished to
learn. He resigned in June 1522, and by February 1523 he was in
Venice in the household of Sebastiano Michiel, Grand Prior of the
Knights of St John of Jerusalem, to whom he dedicated
his Toscanello. When his patron died in 1536, Aaron became a
Crutched Friar in a monastery near Bergamo. He lived to see
his Lucidario published in 1545, but perhaps not his
undated Compendiolo, in which the Lucidariois mentioned.
Apart from his brief stay at Imola, Aaron held no formal position as
singer or choirmaster, an unusual situation that might be due to his
Jewish origin (a hypothesis explored in Blackburn, Lowinsky and
Miller). Born in tenuous circumstances (Toscanello, preface), he
seems to have been largely self-taught; this may be the reason for
his less systematic approach and questionable statements
(especially in his first treatise), but also for his valuable insights into
contemporary practice: from his first treatise onwards he promises to
divulge many of the secret chambers of this art, never heretofore
revealed. He is especially informative on counterpoint and
compositional process (distinguishing older and newer procedures),
the modal system in polyphonic music and the application of musica
ficta. He is one of the first theorists to discuss mean-tone
temperament. His Toscanello, among the earliest vernacular music
treatises, was highly successful and ran to four editions.
Aaron spans the generation between Franchinus Gaffurius and

Gioseffo Zarlino. His roots lie in the teachings of John Hothby,

Johannes Tinctoris, and above all in Gaffurius's Practica musice.
Despite the humanistic trappings of his first treatise (perhaps owing
to his translator), his orientation is largely practical. No theoretical
innovator, he sought to apply the standard teachings on mode,
counterpoint and musica ficta to contemporary music when doing so
was becoming ever harder. His observations on the problems
involved are particularly illuminating.
Aaron owes much to his friend and fellow theorist Giovanni Spataro.
Mostly by letter (only Spataro's survive), they discussed notation,
composition and arcane uses of accidentals. Their early exchanges
on notation, prompted by the errors in the Libri tres, led to an
improved treatment in the Toscanello, which Spataro reviewed in
nine letters (six survive). Aaron took Spataro's comments into
account (without acknowledgement) in the 1529 edition. Spataro
also wrote a lengthy critique of the Trattato (now lost), which he
called without order and truth; in the Lucidario Aaron quoted
Spataro frequently, this time by name.
In his most original treatise, the Trattato of 1525, Aaron tried to apply
Marchetto of Padua's modal theory to the existing polyphonic
repertory, citing numerous compositions in Petrucci's publications.
For him, as for Tinctoris, the mode was borne by the tenor and
determined by final, range and species of 5ths and 4ths. He
explained endings on a, b and c' not due to transposition (which did
not fit Marchetto's system) by confinals and psalm tone differences,
with preference given to the latter seemingly a measure of
desperation, for want of the new modes later proposed by
Glareanus. He then showed how every syllable of the hexachord
could be found on each note of the Guidonian hand. Severely
criticized by Spataro for using only the flatconiuncta (e.g. ut on D is
D , not D), in 1531 he published a revised treatment an untitled
pamphlet bound with some copies of the Trattato and
the Toscanello in which all the syllables are derived from mi or fa.
The theory had been covered by Hothby, but Aaron's explanations
are much clearer. In the Lucidario Aaron considered the possibility of
F , C , B and E (a subject discussed with Spataro), but as a

confirmed Pythagorean did not equate them with E, B, C and F. The

manuscript Delli principii compares Aaron's, Stefanus Vanneus's and
Gaffurius's initial notes for each mode (given its Greek name).
Despite similar content, the Toscanello is not a translation of the Libri
tres: some sections are omitted (on chant, solmization, mutation),
some duplicated (fundamentals), some improved (notation), some
expanded (notably on counterpoint and composition) and some
added (division of the monochord, tuning of keyboard instruments).
The aggiunta of 1529 counsels composers to sign accidentals,
citing with approval numerous examples of flats written to mitigate
melodic tritones (normally less tolerable than diminished 5ths) or
avoid diminished perfect intervals: accidentals are like sign-posts,
necessary even for the learned.
The Lucidario is an interesting and unusual treatise on a wide range
of theoretical disputes: plainchant, notation and counterpoint, and
further thoughts on topics from his earlier treatises, with replies to
some of Gaffurius's criticisms of the Libri tres. Book 4 incorporates
the 1531 pamphlet, a few more questions of notation and
accidentals, a disquisition on the Greek mode-names and the
famous list of singers a libro and al liuto. The Compendiolo, an
elementary manual largely derived from his first two treatises, is of
less interest.
Aaron's influence extended throughout the 16th century, most
notably in his pupil Illuminato Aiguino's treatises on modes in
plainchant (1562) and polyphony (1581).
WORKS
Io non posso pi durare, 4vv, 15056
Lost works (mentioned in letters): Credo, 6vv; In illo tempore loquente Jesu; Letatus sum;
Mass, 5vv; motet on c.f. Da pacem; other motets and madrigals

WRITINGS
Libri tres de institutione harmonica (Bologna, 1516/R)
Thoscanello de la musica (Venice, 1523/R, 2/1529/R) with suppl.
as Toscanello in musica nuovamente stampato con l'aggiunta,
3/1539/R, 4/1562 [the 1557 edn is a ghost]; Eng. trans. collating
all edns by P. Bergquist (Colorado Springs, CO, 1970)
Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto

figurato (Venice, 1525/R); Eng. trans. of chaps. 17 in StrunkSR

untitled treatise on mutations (Venice, 1531) [attached to some
copies of Toscanello and Trattato]
Lucidario in musica di alcuni oppenioni antiche et moderne con
le loro oppositioni et resolutioni (Venice, 1545/R)
Compendiolo di molti dubbi, segreti et sentenze intorno al canto
fermo, et figurato (Milan, after 1545/R)
Delli principii di tuti li tono secondo mi Pietro Aron (MS,
after 1531, GB-Lbl) [not autograph], bound with Bonaventura da
Brescia:Regula musice plane (K.1.g.10)
9 letters in I-Rvat Vat.Lat.5318, F-Pn Ital.1110, DBsb Mus.ms.autogr.theor.1; ed. in SpataroC
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grove6 (Mode, III, 3; H.S. Powers)
SpataroC
P. Bergquist: The Theoretical Writings of Pietro Aaron (diss.,
Columbia U., 1964)
P. Bergquist: Mode and Polyphony around 1500: Theory and
Practice, Music Forum, i (1967), 99161
C. Dahlhaus: Untersuchungen ber die Entstehung der
harmonischen Tonalitt (Kassel, 1968; Eng. trans., 1990)
B. Meier: Die Tonarten der klassischen
Vokalpolyphonie (Utrecht, 1974; Eng. trans., 1988)
M. Lindley: Early 16th-Century Keyboard Temperaments, MD,
xxviii (1974), 12951
E. Apfel: Diskant und Kontrapunkt in der Musiktheorie des 12.
bis 15. Jahrhunderts (Wilhelmshaven, 1982)
K. Berger: Musica ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in
Vocal Polyphony from Marchetto da Padova to Gioseffo
Zarlino(Cambridge, 1987)
B.J. Blackburn: On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth
Century, JAMS, xl (1987), 21084
H. Powers: Is Mode Real? Pietro Aron, the Octenary System
and Polyphony, Basler Jb fr historische Musikpraxis, xvi (1992),
952
C.C. Judd: Modal Types and Ut, Re, Mi Tonalities: Tonal
Coherence in Sacred Vocal Polyphony from about 1500, JAMS,

xlv (1992), 42867

A.M. Busse Berger: Mensuration and Proportion Signs: Origins
and Evolution (Oxford, 1993)
M. Bent: Accidentals, Counterpoint, and Notation in
Aaron's Aggiunta to the Toscanello, JM, xii (1994), 30644
C.C. Judd: Reading Aron Reading Petrucci: the Music
Examples of the Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli
tuoni (1525),EMH, xiv (1995), 12152
BONNIE J. BLACKBURN