Nicola Vicentino

Nicola Vicentino (1511 – 1575 or 1576) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most visionary musicians of the age, inventing, among other things, a microtonal keyboard.

Little is known of his early life. Born in Vicenza, he may have studied with Adrian Willaert in Venice, which was close by, and he acquired an early interest in the contemporary humanistic revival, including the study of ancient Greek music theory and performance practice (about which little was known, but was then being uncovered, through the work of scholars such as Girolamo Mei and Giangiorgio Trissino).

At some time in the 1530s or early 1540s he went to Ferrara, which was to become the center for experimental secular music in Italy from the middle to the end of the 16th century. Apparently he served as a music tutor to the Duke of Este as well as some of his family members, and some of Vicentino's music was sung at the court of Ferrara.

During the late 1540s his reputation as a music theorist grew. He established his reputation as a composer with his publication of a book of madrigals in Venice in 1546, and in 1551 he took part in one of the most famous events in 16th century music theory, the debate between Vicente Lusitano and himself in Rome in 1551. The topic of the debate was the relationship of the ancient Greek genera to contemporary music practice, in particular whether contemporary music could be explained in terms of the diatonic genus alone (as Lusitano claimed) or (as Vicentino claimed) was best described as a combination of the diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic genera, the last of which contained a microtone. The debate was rather unlike those among contemporary musicologists, being more like a refereed prize fight, with a panel of judges; they awarded the prize to Lusitano. Unbowed, Vicentino continued his experiments, and went on to build the archicembalo which could play the music he described in his publications. Only one keyboard instrument using his 31-note-to-the-octave system survives from the Renaissance: the ‘Clavemusicum Omnitonum Modulis Diatonicis Cromaticis et Enearmonicis', built by Vito Trasuntino of Venice in 1606 to play the diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic. It is on display at the International museum and library of music in Bologna.

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