Johannes Tinctoris
Renaissance music theorist and composer (1435–1511)
- 3 min read
- 4 chapters
Explore on Lably
ToursExplore Lably’s 3D toursLife and career
He is known to have studied in Orléans, and to have been master of the choir there; he also may have been director of choirboys at Chartres. Because he was paid through the office of petites vicars at Cambrai Cathedral for four months in 1460, it has been speculated that he studied with Du Fay, who spent the last part of his life there; certainly Tinctoris must at least have known the elder Burgundian there. Tinctoris went to Naples about 1472 and spent most of the rest of his life in Italy.
Tinctoris was also known as a cleric, a poet, a mathematician, and a lawyer; there is even one reference to him as an accomplished painter.
Sign in to keep reading
3 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Tinctoris' eight rules of composition
From his third book on counterpoint.
Rule #1 Begin and finish with perfect consonance. It is, however, not wrong if the singer is improvising a counterpoint and ends with imperfect consonance, but in that case, the movement should be many-voiced. Sixth or octave doubling of the bass is not allowed.
Rule #2 Follow together with tenor up and down in imperfect and perfect consonances of the same kind. (Parallels at the third and sixth are recommended, fifth and octave parallels are forbidden.)
Rule #3 If ténor remains on the same note, you can add both perfect and imperfect consonances.
Rule #4 The counterpointed part should have a melodic closed form even if ténor makes big leaps.
Rule #5 Do not put cadence on a pitch which would confuse the mode.
Rule #6 It is forbidden to repeat the same melodic turn above a cantus firmus, especially if the cantus firmus contains that same repetition.
Rule #7 Avoid two or more consecutive cadences of the same pitch even if cantus firmus allows it.
Rule #8 In all counterpoint, try to achieve manifoldness and variety by altering measure, tempo, and cadences and varying the use syncopes, imitations, canons, and pauses; sometimes with, sometimes without. But remember that an ordinary chanson uses fewer different styles than a motet and a motet uses fewer different styles than a mass.
Musical Compositions
Sacred music
Masses:
- Missa sine nomine #1 (3 v)
- Missa sine nomine #2
- Missa sine nomine #3 (missing Kyrie and Agnus Dei)
- Missa L'homme armé
Motets:
- O Virgo miserere mei
- Virgo Dei throno digna
- Alleluya
- Fecit potentiam
- Lamentatio Jeremiae
Secular music
- Helas
- Vostre regart
- O invida fortuna
- Le souvenir (4v)
- Le souvenir (2v)
- Tout a par moy
- De tous biens playne
- D'ung aultre amer
- Comme femme
Notable writings
- the first dictionary of musical terms (Diffinitorum musices, c. 1475)
- an introduction to the elements of musical pitch and rhythmic notation (Expositio manus and Proportionale musices); examples show how rhythmically elaborate extemporization may have been practiced
- a thorough exposition of the modal system (Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum)
- Liber de arte contrapuncti – his main exposition of intervals, consonance and dissonance, and their usage. He devised strict rules for introducing dissonances, limiting them to unstressed beats and syncopations (suspensions) and at cadences.
- a broad survey of the origins and evolution of music, its theological and metaphysical roots and ramifications, and vocal and instrumentation practice (De inventione et usu musice).
Writings
- Tinctoris, Johannes, Liber de arte contrapuncti, tr. Oliver Strunk, in Source Readings in Music History. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1950.
- Tinctoris, Johannes, Opus musices. Naples, c. 1483. Digitized codex at Somni
- Tinctoris, Johanni, Opera Omnia, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 18, ed. William Melan, American Institute of Musicology, 1976