de Vincenzo Galilei.

Philippe Canguilhem. Fronimo de Vincenzo Galilei.

Collection Epitome musical. Paris-Tours: Minerve-Centre d'Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance, 2001. 236 pp. index. illus. tbls. bibl. [euro] 40. ISBN: 2-86931-101-X.

Long overshadowed by his famous son, Vincenzo Galilei has emerged in recent decades as an important figure in late sixteenth-century musical culture. His first profession was as a lutenist, but his intellectual abilities were early recognized by his Florentine patron, Giovanni de' Bardi, who sent him to Venice to study music theory with Gioseffo Zarlino around 1563 (the year before the birth of his first son, Galileo). Vincenzo's relationship with his teacher, at first warm, turned acrimonious when he acquired a better knowledge of the modes and tuning systems of the ancients from the humanist Girolamo Mei; he attacked Zarlino's theories in his Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (1581) and again in his Discorso intorno all'opere di messer Gioseffo Zarlino (1589).

Galilei's early training as a musician informed his ideas as a theorist, and he remained a practicing musician throughout his life, publishing two books of lute intabulations (1563, 1584), a collection of textless duos (1584), and two books of madrigals (1574, 1587). Many writings remained in manuscript during his lifetime: a treatise on counterpoint (edited by Frieder Rempp in 1980) and various discourses on the use of dissonances, the enharmonic genus, the unison, forms of the octave, and the tuning systems of Pythagoras, Aristoxenus, and Ptolemy (edited and translated by Claude V. Palisca in 1989).

Philippe Canguilhem's book casts welcome light on the publication for which Galilei is less well known, his treatise on the art of intabulating music for the lute, first published in 1568, then revised in 1584. Lute music in tablature was printed throughout the sixteenth century, but Galilei was the first to propose a method of converting vocal music to a form playable on the lute; for all the dances and fantasias that sixteenth-century lutenists published, it was still the intabulation of vocal music--madrigals, chansons, motets, and even masses--that forms the bulk of the repertory. Galilei's book is much more than a description of how to set music for the lute: he viewed intabulation not as an end in itself but as an ideal means of studying music and counseled transcribing polyphonic music in a form as close as possible to the vocal original. Apart from keyboard music, sixteenth-century compositions were printed in separate parts; not until 1577 were the first books of vocal music published in score--and then not for singers but for keyboard players, and in the case of Rore's madrigals, also "per qualunque studioso di contrapunti." In his counterpoint treatise, Galilei claimed to have transcribed some 14,000 compositions, and the Fronimo includes an anthology of intabulations: 65 madrigals by 16 composers in 1568, 57 madrigals by 30 composers in 1584, reflecting a broader and more modern repertory.

Galilei pays special attention to diminutions (which must not cause contrapuntal faults), musica ficta (the unwritten accidentals in vocal music, indicated in lute tablature by finger placement, providing a valuable guide for modern editors), and respect for the original counterpoint, including how to condense compositions for five or more voices. Canguilhem discusses and illustrates different styles of sixteenth-century intabulation: faithfulness to the counterpoint (Francesco da Milano) and transformation in virtuoso style (Albert de Rippe), with a particularly interesting section (116-21) on the aesthetics of imitation as exemplified in lute tablatures.

The strong emphasis on counterpoint in the treatise is puzzling when we consider that Galilei's Dialogo contains a vigorous attack on modern counterpoint. As Canguilhem shows, we need to read this statement in context: the objection is not to counterpoint per se, but to the inability of a polyphonic complex to express the passions of the mind, to match the sought-after ideal of ancient Greek music. Instead, Galilei says, this music is much better suited to instruments, one reason being the more stable temperament of the lute. The revision of the Fronimo in 1584 reflects this position, since it comes after his investigations into the ancient modes and tuning systems. Indeed, the second edition is much more of a compendium on practical music, which perhaps explains the curious reference to wind instruments on the title page.

The volume is beautifully presented, with ample illustrations and music examples; the index, unfortunately, is only of names.

BONNIE J. BLACKBURN

Wolfson College, Oxford