Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

impure? And is artistic impurity an artistic vice?

EX. 17-13B  Orlando di  Lasso,  Prophetiae  Sibyllarum, Sibylla cimmeria,   mm. 35–46

These questions have been debated for centuries, and no matter what we may resolve or agree upon
among ourselves, they will go on being debated for centuries, for the question behind all the other
questions is a fundamental question of values. The best we can do is to try to understand the various
positions that have been taken (including our own, whatever they may be) in their historical context.

In the sixteenth century the contention was between the proponents of the ars perfecta, a wholly or
autonomously musical style founded on a specific musical history and valued for its universality (which
meant its relative indifference to words), and the proponents of stylistic mixture in the name of
expression, which implicitly denied universal or autonomous musical values. Many composers, Lasso
emphatically included, saw no need to choose between the two principles, but adapted their style
according to functional and textual requirements. Partisan positions were more apt to be espoused by
theorists and patrons.

Still, even within the relativist camp distinctions and nuances can be observed. Even Lasso’s sibylline
style was addressed more to the overall character of the text—its supernatural origin, its quality as
mysterious utterance—than to the specifics of its semantic content. Indeed, when it came to the mechanics
of the word–music relationship, Lasso came down in this case on the side of phonology and rhetorical
declamation, just like the chanson composers. If “literary” music means music that embodies or is
responsive to semantic meaning, Lasso’s sibylline motets do not qualify.

But a great deal of sixteenth-century music did qualify, and it is to that style, and to the movement that
supported it, that we now turn. It was a revolutionary movement, and it transformed music fundamentally
and irrevocably.

Its first   fruits  did not look    very    revolutionary,  and the origins of  the movement    remain  unclear.    The