occur in any of the others but not in Willaert, see m. 21 in Gombert’s In illo tempore, near the end of Ex.
15-2. The dissonance is in the superius: before moving to B, its C is held against the Gs in the tenor and
sextus, producing a 4–3 suspension, and against the D in the quintus, producing a 7–6 suspension—but
also against the B in the bassus, which produces a 9–8 suspension against what we would call the leading
tone. Today’s students learn to avoid that one by applying the rule that one does not sound the resolution
tone (in this case B) against the suspended tone (in this case C). Zarlino’s readers were the first students
to be so instructed in writing, and Zarlino must have learned the rule from Willaert.
The most important way in which Willaert’s style differs from Josquin’s, however, is that Willaert
(like Gombert and Clemens) was at all times concerned to maintain a seamless, “leisurely flow of
melody,” as he had learned to do from his teacher Mouton. And so he was at all times concerned with
mitigating, eliding, or actually evading cadences. Even without benefit of Zarlino, Willaert’s motet is
already a veritable textbook on smooth cadence-avoidance.
Sometimes the avoidance is achieved by what we still call the “deceptive cadence.” The first
example of this comes at the very first cadence in Ex. 15-5: the end of the opening superius/altus duo (m.
8). The altus drops out instead of sounding its octave G against the one in the superius, and at the same
time the bassus sounds an unexpected E a third below the final. That E, however, while unexpected
harmonically, is very much expected melodically: the deceptive cadence arises right out of the
bassus/tenor imitation of the opening point. Nothing could be smoother. Sometimes the avoidance is more
subtle. The phrase “Et mundi” (first heard in the superius in mm. 13–14) is calculated to enter against, and
draw attention away from, cadences that have been prepared in the other parts.
An especially ingenious cover-up is the one that hides the literal repeat of the opening superius/altus
duo in m. 28 (Ex. 15-5b) behind continuing, harmonically diversionary action in the lower parts. Where
earlier composers, including Josquin, had often inclined toward overtly modeling the shape of their chant-
derived motets on that of the chant itself (in this case the “double versicles” of the sequence), Willaert,
while actually honoring the melodic repeat, tries to obscure the fact. The aim seems always to be the
avoidance of anything that will sectionalize the music, except where the composer expressly wishes to
sectionalize it. The abstractly conceived, “purely musical” or composerly form of the polyphonic motet,
in two cadentially articulated halves expressly labeled “first part” and “second part,” takes precedence
over the form of the liturgical model. The result is a music that is carefully and expertly controlled in
every dimension, yet one without a hint of flashy tour de force. That is as good a description as any of a
“classic” style.
THE PROGRESS OF A METHOD
Classicism, by definition, is teachable. We can be sure that every one of the technical observations just
made about Willaert’s music corresponds to the composer’s conscious practical intentions because the
techniques involved were abstracted and explicitly transmitted as methods by Zarlino. A fairly hilarious
instance of this abstraction and transmission is a bicinium that Zarlino devised to demonstrate “how to
avoid cadences” (Il modo di fugir le cadenze). Its object is to give as many examples as possible of
Willaert’s technique of making the voices “give the impression of leading to a perfect cadence, but turn
instead in a different direction”^13 (Ex. 15-6).
EX. 15-6 Gioseffe Zarlino, Il modo di fugir le cadenze (Istitutione harmoniche, Book III)