Download `Notes secretly fitted together`: Attitudes to Enigmatic Canons in the

Dr. Bonnie J. Blackburn (University of Oxford)
25. Juni 2009, 19 Uhr c.t. – Hörsaal B 206
“‘Notes secretly fitted together’: Attitudes to Enigmatic Canons in the Fifteenth Century”
Abstract
In 1520 the Bolognese theorist Giovanni Spataro was asked about the enigmatic canons in his
Missa de la tradictora. He replied that they were written so long ago, when he was almost a
youth, that he could hardly understand them himself. Nevertheless he managed to come up
with an explanation of the canonic inscriptions, which make use of Greek note names and
mathematical terms. This mass and other works were probably written in the 1480s and
1490s, in a burst of enthusiasm for esoteric canons ignited by his teacher, Bartolomeo Ramis,
whose treatise of 1482, Musica practica, includes a chapter ‘In which canons and
subscriptions are accurately treated’.
Ramis’s own canonic compositions, all of which are lost, were also works of his
youth. What impels a composer to seek esoteric means to present his compositions? Is it a
passing phase? A response to another composer? A desire to excel intellectually? The
composers themselves do not tell us, but some theorists do. Adam of Fulda, writing in 1490,
counsels composers to seek comprehension rather than obscurity, for ‘those who love
obscurity are derided by the experts, since there is rarely obscurity without error’. In the
sixteenth century theorists such as Glareanus, Vicentino, and Zarlino criticize enigmatic
canons because they have nothing to do with good harmony, which is the subject of music.
That so many esoteric works mentioned by theorists are lost may (or may not)
indicate that they were of little value musically and deserved to be relegated to the detritus of
history. But we should remember that canons come in all forms, and many are musically
pleasing. In such works, was the obscurity an afterthought? Merely a clever way of
describing something quite straightforward?
I shall end with a discussion of the section on canons in the little-known treatise by
Florentius de Faxolis. In contrast to his contemporary Adam of Fulda, Florentius was an
enthusiast for canons. He probably knew Josquin personally, and his descriptions of canonic
types can be linked to works by Josquin and his contemporaries, sometimes suggesting new
datings.
Bonnie Blackburn is a musicologist specializing in music and music theory of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. She earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago and has taught
at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the State University of New York
at Buffalo. She moved to Oxford in 1990, where she is a member of the Faculty of Music.
Among her publications are Composition, Printing and Performance: Studies in Renaissance
Music (Variorum Collected Studies Series, Aldershot, 2000); two volumes of the New
Josquin Edition (2003, 2007); A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (with Edward E.
Lowinsky and Clement A. Miller) (Oxford, 1991); and (with Leofranc Holford-Strevens) The
Oxford Companion to the Year (Oxford, 1999).