Between Theory and Practice. Introducing a research project on Nicola Vicentino’s «L’antica musica» (Rome 1555)

Nicola Vicentino’s voluminous treatise «L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica» (Rome 1555) is one of the pivotal texts on music, performance practice and music theory of the 16th century, which, however, has been underestimated and only partially evaluated so far. The author is notorious for his uncompromising implementation of the ancient Greek genera (diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic) into a modern musical practice, for which he also developed keyboard instruments with 31 or 36 keys per octave (the so-called ‘Archicembalo’ and ‘Arciorgano’). These instruments not only enabled the conscious inclusion of smallest tonal steps and thus a new tonal language, but according to self-advertising Vicentino also the playing of music from «tutte le nationi del mondo». That in 1551 with his purist views he caused a famous dispute on the question of accidentals and the definition of the chromatic genus in contemporary music, which he lost, did much to marginalise him.