AGOSTINO AGAZZARI (1578-AFTER 1640): THE THEORETICAL WRITINGS

NOTES

• The 1606 Venetian reprint of Agazzari's Sacrae condones…liber quartus and subsequent title-pages of works give him as ‘Armonico Intronato’. He is included under this name in an index entitled ‘I sopranomi, co'nomi propri, e cognomi degl’ Accademici Intronati, menzionati nelle presente carte’ in La Descrittione del nuovo riprimento dell' Accademia lntronata: L'Oratione in lode di quella: e Vimprese di suoi Accademici nuovamente stampate (Siena, 1611), 611. We learn from the entry relating to Agazzari that his insignia as a member of the Accademia bore a small organ and the motto ‘Multisonum melos’. He was also skilled in writing Latin heroic verse (pp.578–79).
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• The Emperor Matthias was not crowned until 1612; Agazzari must have served at his court before this since he was back in Italy by 1602, taking up appointment at the German College in Rome by March 25 of that year. See T.D. Culley, A Study of the Musicians connected with the German College in Rome during the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe, Jesuits and Music, i (Rome, 1970), 113–16.
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• Agazzari mentioned this instrument in his Del sonare sopra l basso.. (Siena, 1607), 4.
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• His extant works are listed in RISM A/I: Einzeldrucke vor 1800 (Kassel, 1971), A 330–91.
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• His last publication dates from 1640. Fetis gives this as the year of his death but provides no documentary evidence for this. G. Barblan, ‘Contribute a una biografia critica di Agostino Agazzari’, Collectanae historiae musicae, 2 (1957), 37–38 makes mention of his time in Siena.
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• I. Ugurgieri Azzolini, Le Pompe Sanesi o'vero relazione delli huomini, e donne illustri di Siena, 2 vols (Pistoia, 1649), ii, 10. Quoted in R. Morrocchi, La Musica in Siena (Siena, 1886), 94–6.
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• Epitome della musica raccolta da Antimo Liberati da Foligno musico della Cappella Pontificia alia Santità di NS Alessandro VII, I-Rvat, MS Chigi F.IV.72, f.68.
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• Del sonare sopra ‘l basso con tutti li stromenti e dell'uso loro nel conserto (Siena, 1607) was reprinted in Sacrarumcantionum…liber II, opus V. motectorum, cum basso ad organum (Venice, 1608). Facsimile editions have been issued (Milan, 1933 and Bologna, 1969), and an English translation is given in O. Strunk, Source Readings in Music History (New York, 1950), 424–31.
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• La musica ecclesiastica, dove il contiene la vera diffinitione della musica come scienza, non piu veduta, e sua nobiltà, di Agostino Agazzari (Siena, 1638).
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• It is mentioned in RISM, B/VI/1: F. Lesure, Ecrits imprimes concernant la musique (Munich, Duisburg, 1971), 69, and by G. Barblan, op.cit., 58. J.N. Forkel includes it in Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik (Leipzig, 1792), 350.
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• None of the group of theorists associated with Florence is mentioned, but the sample of their writings printed in Strunk, op. cit., 290–322 provides an interesting comparison with the approach adopted by Agazzari.
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• Many other distinguished persons of that surname are included in Ugurgieri Azzolini, op. cit.
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• On this period of his career see T.D. Culley, op. cit., 113–18 and 161–5. His appointment to the Jesuit German College could well have been due to the influence of Alfonso Agazzari, who enjoyed an important position in the Jesuit order. This was very probably a relation of Agostino, who greets one Alfonso in a letter to Rome dated March 11 1602. Alfonso Agazzari was well connected with the College since he had been Rector there from 1591 to 1593 (see Culley, op. cit., 115).
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• Agazzari could have left Rome at this point because his music had been banned by the Cappella Sistina. It was probably his advanced musical style which led to the initial decree against him. In the Libro deipunti of the cappella for May 241625 we find that Lorenzo Marubino, a pupil of Agazzari, requested that Agazzari be returned to favour. I am grateful to Jean Lionnet for this information; his article, ‘Una svolta nella storia del Collegio dei Cantanti Pontifici: il decreto del 22 giugno 1665 contro Orazio Benevoli’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 17 (1983), 72–103 deals with a similar decree.
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• The change in attitude and its effect on music has been discussed in G. Dixon, ‘The Origins of the Roman “Colossal Baroque”’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 106 (1979–80), 119–20.
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• See below, 41.
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• Reprinted in Strunk, op. cit., 405–12. Monteverdi also cites Plato in Ficino's translation.
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• Republic, 398c-398d
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• In the following year, 1639, the Congregation of the Sacra Visita issued a decree in an attempt to reform church music (see Appendix, document I). This was not Urban VIII's first effort to deal with the problem; in 1628 a decree was issued which contains some of the same directives, but not the severe penalties (document II). The secular parody mass, a genre which had never really died out, was increasingly popular at this time; examples by Antonio Cifra, Marco Scacchi and Gregorio Allegri make little attempt to veil the nature of the model, either musically or by verbal subterfuge on title-pages.
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• This follows the prescriptions of the Council of Trent cited in his 1638 treatise. An English translation of the relevant section of the Trent documents is found in L. Lockwood, G.P. da Palestrina, Pope Marcellus Mass: an authoritative score, backgrounds and sources, history and analysis, views and comments (New York, 1975), 19.
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• The preface of Viadana's Cento concerti ecclesiastici…(Venice, 1602) states that the concern were performed in Rome five or six years previously. It is reprinted in Strunk, op. cit., 419–23.
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• Liberati, op. cit., f.68.
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• The other two are his Sacrarum cantionum quae quinis, senis, septenis, octonisque vocibus concinuntur, liber primus (Rome, 1602) and Sacrarum cantionum quae quinis, senis, septenis, octonisque vocibus concinuntur, liber tertius (Rome, 1603).
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• Cantiones, motecta vulgo appellatae, quae TV. V. VI. VII. & VIII. vocibus concinuntur, & instrumentis apprimè adplicantur; nunc primum in Germania excusae & publicatae (Frankfurt, 1607).
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• Agostino Pisa found the subject of ‘battuta’ important enough to devote an entire book to it: Breve dichiarazione della battuta musicale (Rome, 1611).
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• The ‘third volume’ is the 1603 publication, of which details are given in note 23. The concertini are the publication of 1606, Sacrae cantiones, binis, ternisque vocibus concinendae, liber quartus, cum basso ad organum (Rome, 1606). Barblan, op. cit., 45–6 mentions the possible existence of three books of Agazzari's motets for two and three voices dating from 1604 to 1605; only Fétis makes reference to these, and no copies are known.
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• This work is discussed in M.F. Johnson, ‘Agazzari's Eumelio, a “dramma pastorale”’. The Musical Quarterly, 57 (1971), 491.
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• This is an extension of Aristotle's thought in his Rhetorica, 1389b
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• His Sacrae cantiones…liber quartus (Rome, 1606) gives his position as maestro at the Seminario Romano; it is dedicated ‘Nobiliss.mis Adolescentibus Seminarii Romani’.
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• For instance, Mercury's part is restricted to five melodies which are repeated with various texts.
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• Agazzari is making the point that the Homeric epics are too long to be sung in a continuous musical setting; something nearer to recitation was clearly the intention.
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• The term is found in G.B. Stefanini's Motetti concertati all'uso di Roma a otto e nove voci con le letanie della B. Vergine nel fine…Libro quarto. Opera sesta (Venice, 1618) and A. Diruta's Compieta concertata, con Vantifone della Beata Vergine, e con un Miserere a versetti concertati alia romana a cinque voci, con il basso continuo…opera quinta (Venice, 1623). It denotes the division of a piece into short sections, each with a particular scoring.
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• Compline would have taken place on stational days during Lent. A large-scale musical setting was required since these were important occasions when a church would welcome dignitaries as well as visitors from other institutions.
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• On the use of instruments in the Roman churches at this time see G. Dixon, ‘Roman Church Music: The Place of Instruments after 1600’, The Galpin Society Journal, 34 (1981), 51–61.
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• Two years later the five-part psalms appeared as Psalmi, ac Magnificat, qui in vesperis solemnioribus decantantur, quinis simplicibus vocibus, cum organo…opus decimum tertium (Venice, 1611), and those for eight voices as Psalmorum ac Magnificat quorum usus in vesperis frequentior est octo vocibus…opus decimum quintum (Venice, 1611).
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• The declamatory recitative style was virtually unknown in Roman liturgical music of the early seicento. Composers who did use it, such as Ottavio Durante and Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger, were employed in the households of ecclesiastical dignitaries rather than as maestri in churches.
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• The dedication of this volume was signed in Siena on 1 December 1610 and that of the eight-part psalms (mentioned in note 35) on 8 November 1611.
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• The style of these Roman publications is discussed in G. Dixon, ‘Progressive Tendencies in the Roman Motet during the Early Seventeenth Century’, Acta musicologica, 53 (1981), 118–19.
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• John vi. 32–36,41–43,52,55,58.
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• Psalm 8.
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• Republic, 398d. This principle is also enunciated in the writings of Zarlino, by whom Agazzari was strongly influenced (see G. Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558), 80: ‘La onde poi da tutte queste tre cose aggiunte insieme, cioe dall'Harmonia propria, dal Rithmo, & dall'Oratione, nasce (come vuol Platone) la Melodia.’).
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• Agazzari could here be alluding to Zarlino's Dimostrationi harmoniche (Venice, 1571), in which he sets out his theoretical basis for the study of music as a science. Comparing it with architecture, he states in the preface (unpaginated): ‘Perche se ben Vitruvio dice, che l'Architettura è Scienza ornata di molte discipline & varie eruditioni: non è però Scienza: ma Arte fattiva, la qual tiene il terzo luogo tra le Arte: & la Musica, oltra che ella non si può trattare (secondo'l parer di Platone) senza la Universal disciplina: è Scienza: per il Soggetto, & per la certezza della Dimostratione, senza dubio alcuno, dell'Architettura assai piu nobile & piu eccelente’. Zarlino's reasons for applying this method to music and for his use of the term ‘scienza’ appear in the same volume, pp. 8–11. Euclid's Elementa forms the basis of his reasoning. Zarlino explains the use of the word ‘scienza’, basing his argument on the Pythagorean notion of music as a branch of the study of numbers, in Le istitutioni harmoniche, 4: ‘poi che mathematica è detta da μαθημα parola greca, che in Latino significa Disciplina, & della Italiana nostra lingua importa Scienza, o Sapienza; la quale (si come dice Boecio) altro non è che una intelligenza…Resta adunque che la Musica sia & nobile & certissima, essendo parte delle scienza mathematiche’.
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• Agazzari's statement (the ‘vera diffinitione’ mentioned in the title) is a synthesis of Pythagorean and Platonic musical theory. The emphasis on number is Pythagorean, while the idea of combining the music with the text is derived from Plato. The way in which the definition is presented with a Latin translation makes it seem like a quotation, but so far my efforts to locate it have been unsuccessful. It is my contention that this is Agazzari's own definition since he announces that the treatise contains ‘the true definition of music as a science’ on the title-page. The Latin translation may be seen as his means of adding more weight to the dictum. Furthermore, he seems to relate the pronouncement to himself and to take responsibility for it in saying ‘I proclaim boldly’. Again Agazzari shows the influence of Zarlino in his phraseology (see Zarlino, ibid., 21: ‘Ma perche di sopra si è detto, che la Musica e scienza, che considera li Numeri, & le proportioni; pero parmi che hora sia tempo di cominciare a ragionar di tal cose, massimamente che dalla prime origine del modo…tutte le cose create da Dio furno da lui col Numero ordinate.’; and 29: ‘Havemo adunque da sapere, che alcuni, volendo dar notitia di questo numero, hanno detto, che il Numero sonoro non è altro, che il numero delle parti d'un Corpo sonoro…’).
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• Here Agazzari is following the traditional division into genus and differentia. The genus is the property of music that it shares with the other sciences, mathematics, astronomy and geometry: it is a science dealing with number. The differentia is the fact that these numbers relate to sound. The four elements referred to here for the first time influence the structure of his discourse and are derived from the four causes of Aristotle (see Metaphysics, 983a).
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• Agazzari has made the error of quoting from Ficino's translation of Plato's Republic (399e-400d) and not from Ficino's commentary on the work as he states he is doing.
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• C. Plini Secundi, Naturalis Historiae, xvi, 66: ‘Caedi solebant tempestivae usque ad Antigeniden tibicinem, cum adhuc simplici musica uterentur, sub arcturo’. He continues by describing the customs regarding the cutting of reeds and the way this was influenced by changes in musical style.
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• This incident was frequently cited by Zarlino (op. cit., 7,71,76,303), who claims Basil the Great as his source. See St Basil, Opera omnia…2 vols (Paris, 1618), i, 578–9; he mentions the Timotheus story while speaking on the power of music in Homelia XXIV: ‘Ad Adolescentes quomodo ex gentilium doctrinis proficiant’.
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• This is another example of an instance derived from Zarlino, op. cit., 70: ‘Non si ode ancora, che col canto loro [the ancients] habbiano fatto divenire alcun furioso mansueto, come mostra Ammonio di un giovane Tauromintano, che dallo accorgimento di Pitagora, & dalla virtù del Musico, di furioso che era, diventò humano & piacevole’.
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• 1 Samuel xvi. 23.
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• M. Ficino, op. cit., 612–15, 650–1,1453 [misnumbered 1417]—8 are the passages in his writings which deal with the effects of music.
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• Republic, 398e
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• This is a second mention of Agazzari's crucial passage: Plato, Republic, 398d (see note 41).
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• The spagnoletta is a triple-metre dance on a defined harmonic scheme (see The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980) under ‘Spagnoletta’).
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• Here two of the Aristotelian four causes are cited, form and aim. The material cause has already been dealt with (sonorous numbers), and after treating form and aim Agazzari moves on to the efficient cause, the singer (see note 44). This analytical method is summed up in the final section of the treatise with slight modifications.
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• Psalm 149; that which follows is the final psalm, Laudate Dominum in Sanctis eius.
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• Revelation xix. 2. There is a textual discrepancy here in the Vulgate; some versions give ‘salus’ for ‘laus’.
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• Revelation xix. 5.
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• Chronicles xv. 16–24,28–9.
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• Chronicles vii. 6.
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• Chronicles xv. 16.
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• I am unable to locate this reference in the works of Prato Fiorito. Dr Christopher Page kindly directed me towards an early source of the story in Caesarii Heisterbacensis Monachi Ordinis Cisterciencis Dialogus, ed. J. Strange, 2 vols (Cologne, 1851), i, p.181: ‘De clericis superbe cantantibus, quorum voces diabolus in saccum misit’.
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• The documents in the Appendix shed some light on the current state of musical practice, as does J. Drexel, Rhetorica caelestis seu attente precandi scientia (Antwerp, 1636), i, 66, translated in K.G. Fellerer, ‘Church Music and the Council of Trent’, The Musical Quarterly, 39 (1953), 589, note 60: ‘Without offense to you let me say, ye musicians, that now a new species of singing is dominant in the temples, but it is showy, curtailed, very little religious, indeed, but more suitable for theatre or dances than for the temple…. I beg you, let at least some of the old religiosity of sacred music be revived…’. Publications dating from the time when Agazzari was writing which show distinct secular tendencies and the introduction of the chaconne style are L. Agnelli, Salmi e messa.. (1637), A. Grandi, Motetti…con sinfonie…libro terzo (1629), T. Merula, Pegaso musicale…libro terzo (cl633–37), 2/1640) and Arpa Davtdica… (1640), C. Milanuzzi, Hortus sacer deliciarum…liber tertius (1636), G.A. Rigatti, Messa, e salmi…libro secondo (1640) and G. Rovetta, Messa, è salmi concertati…(1639), all published in Venice. On this repertory, see J. Roche, North Italian Liturgical Music in the Early Seventeenth Century: Its evolution around 1600 and its development until the death of Monteverdi (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1967), 126–7,153,162, 228–32, 267–72, 278–9.
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• St Augustine, Confessions, 10, 33. Augustine considers it sinful to be moved more by the singing than the truth it expresses.
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• From the sequence for Corpus Christi, Lauda Sion salvatorem, verse 5.
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• St Robert Bellarmino, Opera omnia…7 vols (Cologne, 1617–20), 4, columns 1193–4: De bonis operibus inparticulari, qui est de oratione, Liber Primus, Caput XVI: Defenditur cantus, qui in officio divino adhiberi solet contains this statement: ‘Altera utilitas in eo posita est, quod facilius & libentius Deo laudes persoluuntur, quando officium divinum, alioque prolixum & grave, quadam cantus iucunditate conditur’.
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• Canones, et decreta sacrosancti oecumenici, et generalis concilii Tridentini sub Paulo III, Iulio III, Pio IIII pontificibus max. (Rome, 1564), 146: ‘Ab ecclesiis vero musicas eas, ubi sive organo, sive cantu lascivum, aut impurū aliquid miscetur, itē saeculares omnes actiones, vana, atque adeo prof ana colloquia, deambulationes, strepitus, clamores arceant; ut domus Dei, vere domus orationis esse videatur, ac dici possit’.
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• M. de Azpilceuta, Enchiridion sive Manuale de oratione et horis canonicis…(Rome, 1578). Agazzari has made an error with the reference; the appropriate passage occurs at page 255, beginning at line 10: Chapter XVI. de Impedimento attentionis tangit […] Item 42. Canere prof ana, & benedicere scommatis in divinis malum: ‘Peccare etiam eos, qui eo die [Christmas Day], aut alijs canunt cantiones vulgares, & profanas, licet de se non sint inhonestae, aut vanae, durante officio Divino, ola enim haec distrahunt ab attentione, & devotione officio Divino debita, ut de se patet, & determinavit Concilium Basiliense’.
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• St Jerome, Omnia opera ac studio Mariani Victorii Reatini…, 9 vols (Cologne, 1616), 6, 188. On verse 19 of the fifth chapter of the epistle he comments: ‘Audiant haec adolescentuli: audiant hi quibus psallendi in ecclesia officium est, Deo non voce sed corde cantandum: nee in Tragoedorum modu guttur & fauces dulci med carmine colliniendas: ut in ecclesia theatrales moduli audiantur & cantica, sed timore in opere, in scientia scripturarum. Quamvis sit aliquis, ut solent illi appellare , si bona habuerit, dulcis Deum cantor est: Sic cantet servus Christi, ut nō vox canentis, sed verba placeant quae leguntur…’.
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• St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, xxxix, edited by K.D. O'Rourke (London, New York, 1964), 246–51. The complete Summa was published by Bartolomeo Zannetti in Rome in 1619; this could well have been the edition with which Agazzari was familiar.
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• Acta Ecclesia Mediolanensis tribus partibus distincta. Quibus concilia provincialia, condones synodales, synodi dioecesanae, instructiones, litterae pastorales, edicta, regulae confratriarum, formulae, et alia denique continentur, quae CAROLUS S.R.E. Cardinalis tit. S. Praxedis, Archiepiscopus egit (Milan, 1582), f.75. The reference to chapter 13 is obscure and can be taken as another of Agazzari's bibliographical errors. The document De vita et honestate clericorum contains the following statement: ‘Sacerdotem, clericumq. cuiusvis ordinis, in canticis, hymnis, psalmis, ceterisq. ecclesiastici cultus officijs, religiosa modulatione concelebrandis, divinisq. laudibus sancte concinendis, ita versari convenit, ut voce sua, sacris dicata, abuti non debeat ad prophanas cantiones, et modulationes, atque ad voluptarias, delitiosasq. laicorum oblectiones’.
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• An ‘extravagant’ decree is one originally excluded from the decretals. Although later added to the main body of decrees, they retained the rather curious designation. Extravagantes omnes communes. Sumarijsglossis multijugisq…apostollis: nove lima a F. Joanne Thierry minimo illustrate. Quibus ordinatissimus index elementatius additus est. (Paris, 1532), f.xviii, contains the relevant document. Part of the decree is printed in H.E. Wooldridge, The Oxford History of Music (Oxford, 1905), ii, 89–91.
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• Agazzari now turns to the musician, the agent, in his fundamentally Aristotelian analysis of musical practice.
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• See preface of Sacrae laudes…liber secundus Rome. 1603), above, 41.
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• Roche, op. cit., 279 gives an example of this type of verbal distortion in a setting of the Confitebor tibi for soprano, tenor and two violins from Monteverdi's posthumous collection of 1651 (C. Monteverdi, Tutte le opere, ed. G.F. Malipiero (Asolo, 1926–42, rev. 2/1954), 16, 144).
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• The singing of the ‘Gloria Patri’ over a chaconne is also found in Monteverdi's setting of Confitebor tibi mentioned in note 75.
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• This probably alludes to the fact that it was difficult to see the structure of a work or the treatment of words when music was presented in partbook format.
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• Compare Agazzari, Del sonare sopra ‘l basso, 5, translated in Strunk, op. cit., 426.
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• Agazzari seems to have been mistaken in his belief that this matter was dealt with by the Congregation of Rites. A decree to this effect does however occur in Caeremoniale Episcoporum… (Rome, 1600), 135 in the section (Cap. XXVIII) De Organo. Organista, et musicis seu cantoribus, & norma per eos servanda in divinis; it states, ‘Sed cum dicitur Symbolu in Missa, non est intermiscendum organu, sed ea per chorum cantu intelligibili proferantur’. Other decrees on this subject, including one from the third synod of Milan, are found in Caeremoniale Episcoporum…, ed. J. Catalani, 2 vols (Paris, 1860), i, 529–30.
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• On the notion of principle and the four causes, see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983a. Zarlino, op. cit., 54 applies Aristotle's four causes to music, but in a more secular context. He states that the aim is to play with harmony and derive benefit and pleasure, the agent is the musician, the material is the consonances, and the form is the proportions. This indicates that the analytical method was not new to Agazzari among music theorists.
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• Agazzari could well have had in mind Aristotle's discussion of science in the Ethics, 1139b; this work had been published in both Greek and Latin versions by the time Agazzari was writing.
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• This argument closely relates to Aristotle's demonstration that theology is the highest of the sciences (see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983a, 1026a).
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• Revelation iv. 8. The same reference is cited by Zarlino, op. cit., 5–6.
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• Psalm 88. 1.
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• See Aristotle, De caelo, 304b-305a
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• This obscure phrase presumably relates to the right to participate in the decision-making of the order. The distinction of active and passive is not clear.
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