Andlauer, Nicolas.

Author’s abstract:
Francisco Salinas' treatise on rhythm, the second part of his De Musica Libri Septem of 1577, is indicative of trends common to the entire European humanist movement of the sixteenth century. By restoring an "antique" model of musical rhythm, Salinas claims to solve the contradictions of the current mensural system, in the economy of arrangements of sound durations organized by a proportional beat, and follows a simplification imperative which also concerns the other sciences of the number. This epistemological reframing enterprise doubles as an aesthetic valuation of the simplicity of the "meter", by virtue of its power over the spirits, and in the name of extra-musical objectives shared by all reformist currents. The treatise also serves pedagogical and missionary ambitions, and is part of "meter policies" aimed at mastering tools of contrafacture, as at the creation of "new canticles". The know-how he promotes, and which culminates in the art of making musical verses and building up elaborate strophic forms, reveals his kinship with the research of French cultural elites at the same time, which formed a particularly favorable horizon for these theories. The impact that Salinas' text has had on the evolutions of the rhythmic conceptions between the Renaissance and the Baroque age affects both the typologies and notations of new musical languages, as well as the various expressions of a "crisis of rhythmic consciousness" appearing in French theoretical sources from 1581 to 1640.

Composer MILAN, NARVAEZ, MUDARRA, VALDERRABANO, PISADOR, FUENLLANA

Instrument

Century 16CENT

Region SPAIN

Medium

Music genre FANTASIA, VARIATIONS, SONGS

Research field MUSIC, ANALYSIS, REPERTORY & STYLE, THEORY