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Pythagorean Intonation and the Rise of the Triad
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
No sooner did the Gutenberg revolution reach musical academia than some distinguished theorists became embroiled in a rather nasty disagreement about tuning. Two years after the appearance in 1480 of Franchino Gaffurio's Theoricum opus musicae disciplinae, which was the first European printed book on music, Bartholome Ramos de Pareja published in his Musica practica a new and mathematically simple scheme which he said young singers could use for a monochord to provide a model scale for plainchant. Ramos's book appears to have enjoyed more than one reprinting (Ghisi 1935) but was vigorously attacked by John Hothby and, in 1487, Nicola Burzio. Around 1489 Ramos's leading disciple, Giovanni Spataro, gave a copy to Gaffurio, who returned it with critical comments in the margin (see Gaffurio ed. Miller 1977, 20), some of them about the monochord. Ramos left Italy in 1491, but the exchange between Gaffurio and Spataro went on for some thirty years.
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- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1980
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