Marchetto da Padova: Encyclopedia II - Marchetto da Padova - Writings and influence

Marchetto da Padova - Writings and influence

Marchetto published two major treatises, the Lucidarium in arte musice plane (probably in 1317–1318), and the Pomerium in arte musice mensurate (probably 1318). He also published an abridged version of the Pomerium as the Brevis compilatio, though the date of this is not known. He stated in the Pomerium that he wrote it while staying at the house of Raynaldus de Cintis in Cesena, who was lord of the city from 1321 to 1326, however most scholars believe that the Pomerium was written in 1318.

Precise dating of his work has been important to musicology because of the controversy over whether he was influenced by the innovations of the French ars nova, as written by Philippe de Vitry and Jehan de Muris in the 1320s, or whether the influence went the other way. Most likely Marchetto's work was first, although he was well aware of the French practice — which, like most innovations in music before the 20th century, was only discussed in writing years after the actual musical innovation took place. All of the treatises except for the abridged version are in a heavily scholastic framework, and were almost certainly collections of oral teachings.

Marchetto's innovations are in three areas: tuning, chromaticism, and notation of time-values. He was the first to propose division of the whole tone into five equal parts, a tiny interval known as the diesis. A semitone could consist of one, two, three, or four of these small intervals, depending on whether it was a diesis, an enharmonic semitone, a diatonic semitone, or a chromatic semitone.

In the area of time values, Marchetto improved on the old Franconian system of notation; music notation was by this time evolving into the method known today where an individual symbol represented a specific time-value, and Marchetto contributed to this trend by developing a method of compound time division, and by assigning specific note shapes to specific time values.

Additionally, Marchetto discussed the rhythmic modes, an old rhythmic notation method from the 13th-century ars antiqua, and added four "imperfect" modes to the existing five "perfect" modes, thus allowing for the contemporary Italian practice of mixed, flexible and expressive rhythmic performance.

Marchetto's treatises were hugely influential in the 14th and early 15th centuries, and were widely copied and disseminated. The Rossi Codex, which is the earliest surviving source of secular Italian polyphony and which contains music written between 1325 and 1355, shows obvious influence of Marchetto, especially in its use of his notational improvements.

Without the innovations of Marchetto, the music of the Italian trecento — for example the secular music of Landini — would not have been possible.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Writings and influence", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki