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Spanish Treatises on Musica Practica c.

1480–1525 469

Chapter 12

Spanish Treatises on Musica Practica c. 1480–1525:


Reflections from a Cultural Perspective
Pilar Ramos López

Renaissance treatises on music theory do not only include didactic instruc-


tions and information on performance practice, but also afford insight into
what was possible as regards thinking about and creating music. This chapter,
which adopts some of the approaches espoused by Roger Chartier (Chartier
2007: 66–71), focuses on the theory of music as a cultural practice; that is to say,
it is interested in the meaning that musicians conveyed to their practices in
their treatises on music. The concept of ‘musica teorica’ as opposed to ‘musica
practica’ was pretty much clear-cut by around 1500: music theory was ‘to spec-
ulate, understand and contemplate music through its rules, documents, and
precepts’ (‘E así la teórica, que es la especulación, intelectión y contemplación
della por sus reglas, documentos y preceptos’); while music practice was ‘to
know how to sing sacred chants’ (‘como la práctica, que es saber en efecto
saber [sic] cantar los cantos eclesiásticos’) (Durán 1498: 155). Thus books on
music practice deal primarily with plainchant, counterpoint, and composi-
tion, whereas, a book on ‘musica teorica’ such as Pedro Ciruelo’s Cursus
quattuor mathematicarum artium liberalium (1516) examines mathematical
problems relating to melodic intervals and modes.1 In this purely theoretical
book, even though tables and schema illustrate almost every page, not a single
musical staff, notated melody or instruction for performance is included.
Most Spanish treatises on practical music written at the time of the Cath­olic
Monarchs (c. 1480–1525) are available in facsimile edition in the series
Colección Joyas Bibliográficas,2 or online,3 or in modern editions with intro-

1 As the title to Ciruelo’s book suggests, it is a compilation: Cursus quattuor mathematicarum


artium liberalium: quas recollegit atque correxit Magister Petrus Ciruelus (Alcalá de Henares,
1516). It is available online at: <http://books.google.es/books/ucm?vid=UCM5316530894&pri
ntsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
2 The facsimile editions included in the Colección Joyas Bibliográficas are Durán c. 1504; Escobar
c. 1496; Espinosa 1520; Martínez de Bizcargui 1508; Molina 1503; Tovar 1510; Podio 1495; Puerto
1504: Ramos de Pareja 1482; and Spañón c. 1500.
3 Éditions et indexations de traités musicaux romans at <http://www.ums3323.paris-sorbonne.
fr/TREMIR/liste.htm>; and Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum at <http://www.chmtl.indiana.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004329324_014


470 Ramos López

ductory studies (see Table 12.1).4 Since most general studies on Spanish music
theory consider these treatises in the context of the writings of other European
theorists (Stevenson 1960: 50–101; León Tello 1991; Escudero García 1984: 33–43;
Vega 1998 [1498]; Blackburn 2001; Schubert 2002: 503–33; Otaola González
2008; Gómez Muntané 2012c; Mazuela-Anguita 2014), it is not necessary to pro-
vide a resumé of each treatise here;5 rather, this chapter focuses on the
theoretical basis underlying musical practice in Spain between 1480 and 1525.
A central problem facing a study centred on theoretical musical concepts in
the early modern Iberian Peninsula is the lack of a lexicon of musical terms. An
added difficulty is the frequency of polysemy both in Latin and Spanish; for
example, the Spanish word to mean line (‘regla’), is also used for ‘rule’.6 ‘Voz’,
like Latin ‘vox’, signifies the voice or the syllabic name of a note, while ‘species’
could refer to a type of scale (seven types), a kind of interval (three types: per-
fect and imperfect consonances, and dissonances) or types of counterpoint.
‘Composed’ could qualify both a written polyphonic passage or work, and an
interval beyond the octave. The word ‘diferencias’ could have three different
meanings: a) the melodic transitions between the recitation formula for the
psalm verse and the antiphon (Latin: differentiae); b) diminutions; and c) vari-
ations. Moreover, musical terms could also have non-musical uses: for example,
‘diferencia’ could simply mean ‘difference’, and ‘mutança’ could refer to musi-
cal mutation, of whatever kind, as well as, in versification, a part of the strophe.
On occasion, the musical lexicon assumed general terms of the period without
risk of misinterpretation: for example, ‘linaje’ (lineage, ancestry) is one possi-

edu/tml/start.html>. The manuscript copies of Ars Mensurabilis and Fernand Estevan’s trea-
tise, commissioned by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri in the nineteenth century, are available as
part of the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica <http://www.bne.es/es/Catalogos/BibliotecaDigital
Hispanica/Inicio/>.
4 For an edition of the anonymous Ars Mensurabilis et inmensurabilis cantus, see Villalba Muñoz
1906; Latin editions of Ramos de Pareja 1482 (Wolf 1901) are available at Biblioteca Digital
Hispánica (see previous note); for a Spanish translation, see Moralejo 1977; for a facsimile
edition, and an edition in Latin with Spanish translation, see Terni 1983; for an English transla-
tion, see Fose 1992; and for an Italian translation, see Torselli 1992. An edition of Durán’s
Súmula de canto llano intitulado Lux Bella is included in Vega 1998, and a study of Del Puerto’s
Portus Musice is found in Rey Marcos 1978b. The instructions on musical notation in Podio’s
In enchiridion de principiis musice discipline are edited in Anglés 1947; see also Gümpel 1973
for a complete edition.
5 The contribution of Spanish treatises to theoretical writing on compositional techniques and
problems of musica ficta is discussed in Schubert 2002 and Berger 1987.
6 The Latin word ‘regula’ was used to mean staff by Gil de Zamora, in his Ars musice, Chapter
VI; see Gerbert 1784, 2: 378; Estevan 1410: fol. 16r.

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