Analisi modale, polifonia e teoria musicale tardo-medievale: un approccio storico-critico

Abstract

The difficulty in applying modal theories to mensural polyphony of the 14th-16th centuries is often imputed to the dearth of theoretical sources specifically devoted to the discussion of the working of the modes within polyphony. This scarcity seems, however, to be more apparent than real and very few theorists actually offer an explicit anti-modal reading of polyphony; on the contrary we encounter several and significant passages where, at least starting from Marchetto da Padova, the authors assume or take for granted that the eight modes or the four maneriæ are equally applicable to chant and mensural music. Also the use of irregular finals is by and large admitted or at least acknowledged by most theorists. In Marchetto, Ugolino and Tinctoris, for instance, the discourse on irregular finals is intimately linked to modal transposition, whereby the identity of a mode is guaranteed not so much by the position of its final and repercussion within the gamut, but rather by the intervallic structure of its fourth and fifth species. Undoubtedly the preference for tetra- and pentachordal species as modal determinants over the final facilitates a modal reading of polyphonic pieces, since the interplay of fourths and fifths and the commixture of their different typologies (i.e., the species) potentially affords the composer the greatest variety in colour palette and could even provide a stylistic-authorial perspective. In order to illustrate this, the essay analyses a couple of chansons by Du Fay and Binchois, where the different use of modality in terms of fourth and fifth species points out and tries to explain the often mentioned, but seldom consistently exemplified, stylistic contrast between the two composers.