Editing Vicentino’s «L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica» (Rome 1555): Critical and Bibliographical Perspectives

The present research project intends to investigate the historical, intellectual and musical context in which Nicola Vicentino (1510–1577) conceived his complex vision of music theory and musical praxis, transmitted in the treatise L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, published in Rome in 1555. The work in preparing the critical edition of this fundamental text for the Renaissance music theory, conceived according to the latest methods in the field of analytical bibliography and textual criticism and offered in an innovative digital format, will be structured in several stages.Aim of the first phase is a systematic investigation of the transmission Vicentino’s treatise through an extensive survey of all known copies of the print. According to Fredson Bowers, the textual bibliography deals with the content of a book ‘not […] as symbols instantaneously to be resolved into meaningful concepts in the mind’, but ‘as simple inked shapes, imprinted on paper from pieces of metal systematically selected and arranged by some human…