More than twelve tones
Polyphonic compositions are more than just footnotes in the history of music. This book provides the proof and argues on the basis of examples from the Roman Baroque.
The dual aim of "pure" intonation and reviving the music of ancient Greece occupied composers, theorists and instrument makers from the Renaissance to the 18th century. This resulted in numerous compositions, some of them innovatively notated, as well as keyboard and string instruments with additional keys or frets. Martin Kirnbauer proposes the term "polyphonic" for all these musical experiments with more than twelve notes. He chooses a particularly eventful period from the centuries-long preoccupation with polyphony: the situation in Rome under Pope Urban VIII. Barberini (1623-1644). Kirnbauer examines the practical circumstances surrounding the performance of chromatic and enharmonic music and the scope of the confrontation with the ancient genera.
First of all, André Maugars' reports on polyphonic music practice in Rome, which were published around 1639 in his Réponse faite à un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique d'Italie are placed in their context. Domenico Mazzocchi had just published his Dialoghi, e sonetti and its Madrigali a cinque voci (both published in Rome in 1638). Their places of performance, the circles around Giulio Raimondo Mazzarini and Cardinal Francesco Barberini, are described with their diverse cultural points of reference. Giovanni Battista Doni provided a theoretical framework for these efforts. He studied the ancient scales and partly realized his plans for new string, plucked and keyboard instruments. Music by Pietro Eredia, Luigi Rossi, Virgilio Mazzocchi and Pietro della Valle was written in this environment.
Cardinal Francesco Barberini's experimental viola da gamba ensemble is particularly noteworthy. In his "accademia delle viole", "madrigali al tavolino" were mostly performed instrumentally, not only Carlo Gesualdo's works from the beginning of the century, but also new compositions by Michelangelo Rossi, Domenico dal Pane and others. As late as the 1680s, Alessandro Scarlatti was still writing works in this old-fashioned genre for Christina of Sweden's Roman court. Apart from his madrigals, further echoes of polyphonic music can perhaps be found in the chromatic slow movements of the "Sonate a quattro senza cembalo" (Four Sonata a quattroed. by Rosalind Halton, Edition HH, Launton 2014). Several sections of Athanasius Kircher's encyclopaedic Musurgia Universalis from 1650 with the musical examples of Galeazzo Sabbatini and Emperor Ferdinand III printed in it can be related to the circle of Doni and Barberini.
The fact that Kirnbauer's habilitation thesis at the University of Basel (2006) is now available as the third volume in a series of publications by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis already indicates his close connection to musical practice. The musicologist, who works as a curator for musical instruments at the Museum of Music in Basel, has also tested polyphonic music in practice and supervised its recording on several CDs (Canzon del Principe for Divox antiqua, La Tavola Cromatica for surround sound, Domenico Mazzocchi: Musiche sacre, e morali for AS Musique). The technical details of the tunings are clearly presented; the description of the cultural-historical context and the many discussions of the works characterize the book. The extensive appendix contains longer excerpts, in some cases entire works from this exciting repertoire. Kirnbauer convincingly proves, as announced in the preface, that the testimonies of polyphonic music are "more than footnotes in the historiography of music": They represent a practical expansion of tonal space with far-reaching consequences for composition and performance practice.
Martin Kirnbauer, Vieltönige Musik: Spielarten chromatischer und enharmonischer Musik in Rom in der ersten Häfte des 17. Jahrhunderts, (=Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Scripta, Vol. 3), 405 p., Fr. 68.00, Schwabe, Basel 2013, ISBN 978-3-7965-2735-7
