Patterns of invention

The chromatic fourth during four centuries of music Peter Williams Clarendon Press (Oxford, 1998); vii, 262pp; f40. ISBN 0 19 8165633.

Hexachords in lateRenaissance music Lionel Pike Ashgate Publishing (Aldershot, 1998); viii, 237pp; 49.50. ISBN 1 85928 455 8.

ANDREW THOMSON compares two new studies of classic musical formulae

THE IMPOSSIBLITY of writing new tunes once all the permutations of the scale had been exhausted was a proposition which haunted the utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill. To any thinking musician, however, this idea is crudely simplistic, for such crucial matters as structures, contexts and interplay of parameters can transform and give new significance to the most basic, wellworn melodic shapes and formulas. It is to this aspect of musicology that these two very different books address themselves - each full of fascinating things despite the unpromising dryness of their titles, and enlivened with copious musical examples. A notable feature of both studies is the attention given to pedagogical ideas and their creative transformations in the hands of composers.

In a text dense with musical detail and intensive reasoning, the Renaissance scholar Lionel Pike traces the creative use of the hexachord from Willaert to Monteverdi. Anyone who has studied Renaissance music is of course aware of the Italian madrigalists' attempts to maximise the expression of the words by means of word-painting and `eye music', resulting in a highly artificial genre intended for aristocratic connoisseurs in such courts as Ferrara, the musical counterpart to Mannerism in the visual arts. But Pike's researches in Hexachords in late-Renaissance music raise the field to an altogether new level of complexity and contrivance. As he sets out to demonstrate, the principle of the hexachord is vital to the true understanding of this music. Indeed, we shall see that what originated as a mundane means of training musicians and singers in pitch relationships evolved into a significant dimension in the actual compositional process. But at the same time it was undermined and eventually destroyed both by the development of chromatic and enharmonic styles and by educational change. Fortunately, Pike's Introduction provides a lucid explanation of this system - invented by the Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo - consisting of three fundamental hexachords. The solmisation syllables ut re mi fa sol la were attached to a rising series of six notes, starting either on G (durum or 'hard'), or on C (naturale), or on F (molle or 'soft'), all three identical in interval sequence, with the vital semitone at the centre. But as no individual hexachord spans a complete octave, it was necessary to mutate from one to another as required, and thus many notes belonged to more than one hexachord, being known by the combination of their possible syllables (ex.l).

The chapters entitled `Voces musicales' reveal how ingeniously composers went beyond this basic pedagogical function, even making it play a part in the actual text setting - as in the widespread practice of matching syllables of the text with corresponding solmisation sounds - to take some very simple instances, sola is often set to the rising whole tone sol-la and ut sol to the leap of a fifth. In fact this procedure can become highly convoluted by means of inganno (deception) - changes of hexachord occurring within a single phrase, with consequent fragmentation of the system. This is a prime example of the Mannerist cultivation of difficolta for its own sake, displays of sheer technical virtuosity and even wit - which must, however, have been more readily appreciated by the performers than the listeners! Moreover, the different hexachord 'colours' reflecting their respective sharp and flat characters - could be exploited, as in Willaert's Quanto piu m'arde; here the molle and durum combine to express the Petrarchian style poem's marked contrasts of sweetness and harshness. Contrary to received ideas, however, clarity and accurate expression of the texts were not the sole preserve of the `avant-garde', and indeed Pike boldly maintains that some of the more conservative prima prattica composers went even further towards clear illustration of the words. In an illuminating analysis of Palestrina s Stabat mater he demonstrates how the celebrated opening A-C-F chord progression was generated by the close mirroring of the text by solmisation syllables (ex.2).

Improving on borrowed material was regarded as an entirely legitimate weapon in the composer's armoury, to show off the full range of his skill and technique. In the chapters `Emulation and parody', Pike examines a series of madrigal settings of Guarini's poem Cruda Amarilla - a revealing strategy in support of his broader thesis that emulation is one of the main factors in the development of seconda prattica. Whereas Marenzio displays consummate virtuosity in his use of solmisation, Wert and Pallavicino open up the possibilities of a logical extension of prima prattica, in which all voices are consonant with the tenore yet not with each other. This culminates in Monteverdi's setting where, at the words `ahi lasso', we find a startling instance of an unprepared dominant seventh preceded by an unprepared and unresolved ninth - the latter intellectually justified by cunning solmisation (ex.3). These dissonances were intended to evoke the utmost sense of cruelty, as required by the words themselves, occasioning a deliberate assault on the ear. Indeed, as Pike reminds us, Monteverdi's Cruda Amarilla was strongly attacked by the theorist Artusi for its freedom of dissonance, though he weakened his case by failing to address himself adequately to the demands of the text. Pike, a more dynamic conservative, argues for the vitality and potential of traditional practices, above all that Monteverdi's modulatory use of hexachords - the naturale holding the durum and molle in balance - anticipate the major-minor tonal system of the Baroque era.