Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony

Author(s): Harold S. Powers

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society , Autumn, 1981, Vol. 34, No. 3
(Autumn, 1981), pp. 428-470
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological
Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/831189

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 Tonal Types and Modal Categories in
Renaissance Polyphony
By HAROLD S. POWERS

T O UNDERSTAND TONAL RELATIONSHIPS in Renaissance mu

understand the ground from which our own sense o
relationships originally sprang. The primary tonal elements of
sance music are pitch-classes and triads, to all intents and p
acoustically the same as those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-
music, and there is much in the detail of tonal relation
Renaissance polyphony that is comfortably familiar. The so
face is sometimes faintly exotic, often charmingly vague and u
ed to our ears, but hardly alien.
At the same time, the tonal properties of Renaissance mu
Renaissance theorizing about those properties are of interest
own right, for music was a central ingredient in Renaissance cu
Musicological theory today regards something called "moda
the Renaissance equivalent of the "tonality" we attribute to B
Classical/Romantic music. That is, just as any music from th
system" period belongs in one or another of the twenty-four t
or keys, so also received doctrine has it that formerly ther
"modal system," and that every piece of Renaissance pol
music belongs to some mode or other.
The modal system that is supposed to have governed medieva
Renaissance polyphony originated as a doctrine borrowed by
and ninth-century Carolingian monks from medieval Greek Chr
ity and applied to the classification of single-line melodies used
Western Catholic liturgy. It was stabilized by the end of the ele
century, and thereafter the basic structure of the system r
intact for many centuries. Eight modal categories were divid
four classes in each of which the first member (authentic) was
sense higher in pitch than the second (plagal). The four clas
characterized as pertaining to four diatonic scale degrees labelle
F, and G. A chant melody was deemed to belong to one of th
of modal classes according to the scale degree with which i
(finalis), and was assigned to the higher-lying (authentic) or
lying (plagal) mode of the pair according to whether its course

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 429

processus, ambitus) lay higher or lower with respect to tha

The background system (of Hellenistic origin via Boeth
two varieties of its ninth degree, eventually to be called b
was regarded as "essential" and b b "accidental," exc
melodies ending on F the bb was of equal or higher st
Besides D, E, F, and G, three other degrees-a, b ?
accepted as finals "transposed" from D, E, and F, t
rarely used as a final. If b1 replaced b ? as an "essential" (
"accidental") degree in the background system, then G, a,
become finals of modes "transformed" from what the
been had b ? not lost its "essential" status to b b.1
In due course the theory connected with the tonal s
single-line melodies in the Latin liturgy was borrowed an
theorizing about the tonal structure of multi-line Rena
But it was a long time coming. Polyphonic theory was
entirely preoccupied with problems of ensemble control,
durational relationships and vertical sonorities in multi
where each line had its own sequencing of pitches-cu
Whatever may be our interest in the theory of large
organization in polyphony, there was no such interest
the polyphonic-music culture of late medieval Euro
available organized body of theory for large-scale tona
was the system of eight church modes, and there is only

See Harold S. Powers, "Mode," The New Grove Dictionary (Lond

384-97, for discussion of the development and structure of medieva
On b b as an essential degree for F-modes, see pp. 380-81. On "tra
opposed to "transposition," see p. 392. In medieval theory a G-mode
b b was regarded as a "transformation" of a "regular" tetrardus mode wi
not as the "transposition" of a protus mode by an upward fourth th
considered in the sixteenth century. "Transposition" could only be t
the set of four "regular" finals, D, E, F, and G. For example, "transp
its final at a; if an A-mode had b b as an "essential" degree, it would be
been "transformed," from (transposed) protus to deuterus. "Transf
serious logical problem for medieval modal theory: if the combination o
ambitus uniquely defined a mode as one of the only eight possible m
modes with the same final and same ambitus that were not related a
plagal-such as authentic "G-Dorian" and authentic "G-Mixolydian
contradiction in terms. For first signs of uneasiness over "transf
Guido's Micrologus, Chap. 8 (Guidonis Aretini Micrologus, ed. Jo
Waesberghe, Corpus scriptorum de musica, IV [Rome, 1955], pp
matter of "transposition" and "transformation" is discussed in full in th
i ith-century treatises: the anonymous commentary on the Microlog
Vivell [Vienna, 1917], p. 25; ed. Joseph Smits van Waesberghe [Am
p. 120); the Questiones in musica (ed. Rudolf Steglich [Leipzig, I91 I],
the Tractatus anonymous de musica et de transformatione specialiter (ed
Quellen zur Transformation der Antiphonen [Kassel, 193 5], pp. 154-60

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430 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

piece of evidence in medieval musico-technical literature that poly-

phonic music was ever imagined as possibly subject to the church
modes, and some good indications to the contrary.2 Even after modal
theory had been fully accepted as the way to account for tonal
relationships in polyphony, its essential separateness continued to be
reflected in the design of music-theoretical treatises. The rules for the
structure and the succession of simultaneities would be dealt with in a
section called "counterpoint" or the like, and the modal system would
be described in its own separate section. Zarlino's Istitutioni harmoniche
is a case in point, and the diversities in his approach to tonal properties
between Books III (counterpoint) and IV (the modes) are illustrative.
In any case, the chief stimulus to the introduction of modal theory
into the world of polyphonic musical composition in a fully systematic
way was not originally a desire for analytic understanding of long-
range tonal relations. It was rather more cultural than technical, and
had at first to do with the expressive function of music rather more
than with its tonal structure.
The Platonic doctrine that ethos and pathos could be affected and
effected by the "modes" of music was of course familiar in the Middle
Ages: for instance, an ancient story often retold concerned a youth
from Taormina who was incited to attempted rape on hearing the
Phrygian mode and was calmed when the mode was changed to
Hypophrygian. The doctrine of modal ethos, however, was not
applied to specific single-line melodies of Catholic liturgical music; I
know of only one late attempt, and it clearly illustrates the impossibil-
ity of doing so.3 And since counterpoint and modal theory were
always treated separately in the treatises, modal ethos naturally does
not turn up in medieval discussions of polyphony. With the advent of
humanism in the fifteenth century, however, peripheral medieval
recollections of the traditional power of music to express affections of
the human spirit in specific ways were powerfully reinforced, not
only by the renewed interest in the secular human world celebrated in
classical texts, but also by the rediscovery of many more instances of

2 See Oliver Ellsworth, "The Berkeley Manuscript (olim Phillips 4450): A

Compendium of Fourteenth-Century Music Theory" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Califor-
nia at Berkeley, 1969), I, 16-25, 95-101, and II, 39-61, for a late 14th-century claim
that modes might be applicable to polyphony. For both earlier and later opinions to
the contrary, see Ernst Rohloff, Die Quellenhandschriften zum Musiktraktat des]ohannes de
Grocbeo (Leipzig, 1967), pp. 152-54, and Johannes Legrense, De ritu canendi, in
Edmond de Coussemaker, ed., Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series (hereafter CS)
(Paris, 1864-76), IV, 369-71.
3See Chap. 8 of the anonymous Carthusian treatise, De natura et distinctione
tonorum, CS, II, 448.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 431I
the effects of music in those texts. And the musical modes were said to
be able to induce those effects.
For the visual and literary arts the humanists had direct models in
the remnants of ancient artifacts and texts. For music they had only
names and descriptions. And since music in the ancient world had not
been polyphonic, there were not many humanists interested in
polyphony in any case; polyphony was part of the Northern Gothic
world that most humanists self-consciously rejected.4 Before the
sixteenth century only a few desired to reconcile the beauties of
polyphony as they knew it first hand with the reported effects of
ancient music. And however much they might know of the doctrine of
ethos and of the names of the modes said to produce the effects, the
only actual modes they knew were the church modes. Of course,
these church modes did in fact bear a set of Classical names-Dorian,
Hypodorian, Phrygian ... Hypomixolydian-and the humanists
interested in polyphony had no way of knowing that these names had
been grafted onto a Latinized Byzantine scheme in the ninth century.
Faute de mieux, they supposed at first that the theoretical-musical
entities whose Greek modal names they knew were somehow equiva-
lent to or at least descended from the modes with the same names that
they read about in ancient texts.
An early instance of the new feeling may be seen in the fifth
chapter "How to compose chansons [cantilenae]" of the essentially still
medieval counterpoint treatise of Nicola Burzio (1487).5 Several prior
conditions of general musical experience are given as necessary to a
composer of polyphony; the last is a knowledge of the modes. There
follows then a list of the eight modes, with a set of affects of medieval
origin; then come instructions as to the order in which the voice parts
of the chanson should be composed-the highest voice is to be
composed first if all the voices are newly composed-and admonitions
to take care that the harmonies work properly. The implication is
inescapable that the highest voice is a freely invented melody to be
composed with not only a modal structure but also a modal affect in
mind. Burzio's triple injunction to the polyphonic composer stipulat-
ing a knowledge of the modes, specifying their affects, and saying how
the voice parts ought to be arranged, foreshadows a pattern of didactic

4 See Nino Pirrotta, "Music and Cultural Tendencies in 15th-Century Italy," this
JOURNAL, XIX (1966), I34-38, and also his "Novelty and Renewal in Italy: I300-
I6oo," in Studien zur Tradition in der Musik: Kurt von Fischer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed.
Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht and Max Liitolf (Munich, 1973), PP. 49-63-
1 Nicola Burzio, Musices opusculum (Bologna, 1487). This has been reprinted as
Florum libellus, ed. Giuseppe Massera (Florence, 1975); see pp. 123-25.

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432 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

thought that came to full fruition only three-quarters of a century

later, in treatises by Hermann Finck (1556), Gallus Dressler (156 1 and
1563/64), and others.6
But modal doctrine and polyphonic theory on the whole continued
to be slow in coming together, and most of the junctures that do occur
in the technical literature of music before 1525 are more suggestive
than systematic.7 Tinctoris's famous fifth rule for counterpoint (1477)
is characteristic: "A perfect consonance [perfectio] should never be put
with any note [in the pre-composed part to which the new counter-
point is sung] such that a departure from the mode of the chant [cantus
distonatio] could ensue."8 One observes that it is the mode of the
given chant that is in question, not any putative mode for the
polyphonic complex; the instruction is to avoid contradicting what is
already there. In his treatise on the modes (1476), to be sure, Tinctoris
claimed that "we use them not only in Gregorian music, which is
simple and unmeasured, but in all other music, polyphonic and
mensural."9 The treatise itself, however, is simply an elaborate
exposition of Marchetto's systematic theory of single-line modality
that goes back at least to the beginning of the fourteenth century.o10
The examples Tinctoris actually supplied are single-line phrases
constructed to illustrate each of the myriad modal categories and
subcategories described. Only once is there a discussion of how mode
should be applied to polyphony, in terms of a particular chanson, and
the best Tinctoris could do was to assign a mode to each single-line
voice-part individually, and say that the mode of the whole would be
the mode of the voice-part most important compositionally, which he
asserted without further qualification to be the tenor.1" (Note that

6 Hermann Finck, Practica musica (Wittenberg, I556), Book IV, "De tonis."
Polyphony is discussed from cue Rr' to the end of Book IV. Gallus Dressier, Practica
modorum (Jena, 1561), and Praecepta musicaepoeticae (MS from 1563/64), ed. Bernhard
Engelke, Geschichts-Blatter fir Stadt und Land Magdeburg, XLIX/L (1914/15), 213-50.
7 The adoption of modal theory in discussions of polyphonic texture as a way of
accounting for tonal consistency is outlined, and the various ways of using it
analyzed, in Powers, "Mode," pp. 397-418, esp. pp. 399-406.
8Johannes Tinctoris, Liber de arte contrapuncti (MS from 1477), in Johannes
Tinctoris, Opera teoretica, ed. Albert Seay, 2 vols., Corpus scriptorum de musica, XXII
(n.p., I975), II, I50.
9 Johannes Tinctoris, Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum (MS from 1476), ed.
Seay, Opera teoretica, I, 70.
10 See Klaus Wolfgang Niem6ller, "Zur Tonus-Lehre der italienischen Musikthe-
orie des ausgehenden Mittelalters," Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, XL (1956), 23-32,
and Ed Peter Bergquist, "The Theoretical Writings of Pietro Aaron" (Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia Univ., I964), pp. 226-42.
" Tinctoris, Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum, ed. Seay, Opera teoretica, I, 86.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 433

Burzio gave compositional primacy to the tenor only when it

pre-existing line to which the other voice-parts had to be fitted.)
In the compositional practice of Renaissance polyphony too,
demonstrable linking of then current notions of mode with indiv
works was at first sporadic rather than systematic, except for
identification of psalm-tones in connection with polyphonic Magn
cats, where liturgical usage required strict conformity to the Gre
an formulae; but psalm-tones are not modes in the theoretical
Every now and then the names-or rather numbers-of modes
up in the titles of works that are not Magnificats. When they do,
seem to be calling attention to a special feature of that particular w
not just casually mentioning a technical specification familiarly kn
to be applicable to all works of the genre or style; they ar
comparable to the "F major" of Beethoven's 6th Symphony or t
minor" of his 9th.
In short, the question of whether polyphony in the late fifteen
and early sixteenth centuries was or ought to be conceived as regu
being "in" modes of the only modal system then known is moo
complex. What is certain is that by 1525 that question had be
vital. In that year, the first work both to claim modality as a uni
for polyphony and to exemplify the claim by citing a large numb
actual polyphonic pieces appeared: Pietro Aaron's Trattato della nat
et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato.12 This work belongs to
same doctrinal tradition as Tinctoris's treatise on the modes. Unlike
the Tinctoris work, however, Aaron's work allows itself to be tested:
his instances are real pieces, not invented illustrative phrases. Yet a
reading of his treatise without presuppositions makes it clear that, like
Tinctoris, Aaron was by no means merely reporting how things were
generally understood to be, how music was being composed "in"
modes. Rather, he was trying to reconcile a given repertory (to be
found in prints published by Ottaviano Petrucci and Andrea Antico
between 15oo and 1522) with a given system (the eight church modes
of Gregorian chant theory). He was not telling his readers that such-
and-such a piece had been composed in such-and-such a precomposi-
tionally selected mode. Rather, he was telling them that such-and-
such a piece should be assigned to-should be classified under-such-
and-such a mode, in each case carefully adducing his reasons for the
choice of modal category. His claim that modality is a universal

12 Pietro Aaron, Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato,
trans. in part and annotated in Oliver Strunk, ed., Source Readings in Music History
(New York, 1950), pp. 205-18. See also Bergquist, "The Theoretical Writings,"
Chap. 4 (PP. 224-314).

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434 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

property in polyphony is merely a claim, not a well-known fact, and

he knew he had to be able to make and justify a modal assignment for
every piece, no matter how far-fetched in some instances, or the
whole proposition would fail.
But to show that the eightfold system can be made to constitute a
set of categories to one of which any composition can be assigned a
posteriori, as Aaron most ingeniously did, is by no means to show that
a "mode" is an a priori pre-compositional property of every piece of
Renaissance polyphony, as a "tonality" certainly is a pre-composition-
al property in every eighteenth-century piece. The distinction is
crucial. There are very few eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
compositions about whose tonality any question could arise, then or
now, while Renaissance musical theory is rife with discussions and
controversy about modality. From Mattheson to Schoenberg there is
never any question about how many tonalities there are, or what they
are, while in the second half of the sixteenth century there were two
competing general schools of thought on polyphonic modes, with two
or more doctrinal subvarieties in each. Many writers who dealt with
polyphonic modality adhered in one way or another to the traditional
eight modes of Gregorian chant; others followed the general approach
that had originated with the publication of Glarean's Dodecachordon in
1547. Glarean developed his new system from a curious mixture of
the medieval church modes, Hellenistic musical theory, and passages
on music in Classical texts. It comprised twelve modes, the eight of
the church with finals on D, E, F, and G, plus two more pairs with
finals on a and c, similarly divided into "authentic" and "plagal." The
Greek modal names Dorian . . . Hypomixolydian were retained, and
for the two new authentic-plagal pairs the new names Aeolian and
lastian (or Ionian) were devised, after ancient textual references.13
Such a fluid state of affairs in musical doctrine does not inspire
much confidence in the theoretical status of "modality" as a precom-
positional universal for sixteenth-century polyphony. Of course, it
might be supposed that the writers were somehow fumbling their way
toward a system of modalities that was already inherent in the musical
repertory, if not fully and consciously recognized as such. This was
Glarean's belief for the twelve modes of his system; eight-mode
theorists did not need to be explicit since their fundamental theory
was not a new construction. But the development of the polyphonic
repertory itself during the course of the sixteenth century does not

"1 Heinrich Glarean, Dodecachordon (Basel, 1547). See the translation by Clement
Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents, VI (n.p., 1965), pp. 113-17, 125-28.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 435

support this view. To the contrary, it is only during the very

when modal theory was first beginning self-consciously to be
lated to polyphony-say from Aaron (i525) to Gallus Dressl
and later)--that the repertory itself begins to provide hard ev
a systematic interest on the part of composers and editor
question of "modality," an interest as self-conscious as th
theorists. And this evidence, too, tends to indicate that "mode
originally thought of more as a posteriori categories for groupi
in a repertory than a priori pre-compositional choices or assum
A good place from which to begin the argument is the fact
the second half of the century, cyclic sets of works began
that explicitly are claimed to have been composed according to
in these cases there is no secret about it to be discovered, no s
absolutely no doubt about the pre-compositional intention.
point, one for each basic doctrine, are the Seven Penitential Ps
Laudate Dominum of Lasso "[8] modis musicis redditi" (see
Table 3), published in 1584 although first composed over tw
earlier; and the Seven Penitential Psalms plus Five Prayers f
Prophets "ad Dodecachordi modos duodecim" of Alexander U
published in 1570.
Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century anthologies an
ordered according to one of the twelve-mode systems generally
in the title, as in the Utendal Penitential Psalms. Conversely, i
for anthologies or cycles ordered according to the tradition
mode scheme, such as the Lasso Penitential Psalms, so exp
refer to modality. Some do, however, and one of them is of en
historical and theoretical importance for the question o
categories, simply because it is explicit, as well as very extensi
five-voice volumes from the fifteen-volume series of Latin
entitled Liber ... ecclesiasticarum cantionum that was publish
1553 onward by the Antwerp printer and occasional co
Tylman Susato (see Table i5). Some of the volumes are
contain pieces (omnes) de uno tono, "(all) in one mode" (Books V
X, XI, XII, XIV); the first two are said to be (omnes)primi toni
mode I" (Books V and VI); Book IX is said to be (omnes) (quas
tono, "(all) (as though) in one mode." These volumes follow
that is unmistakably intended to match the sequence of eight
the octenary theoretical tradition.
There is a vitally important distinction to be made b
Susato's modally ordered anthology, however, and such a co
as the modally ordered Penitential Psalms of Lasso. Th
collection illustrates editorial judgments, not composition

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436 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

tions. What those intentions may have been, or even whether there
were any modal intentions, we assuredly cannot know from the kind
of evidence Susato's anthology offers, while we just as assuredly can
know that Lasso's intention in the Penitential Psalm settings was
precisely to represent, to embody, to illustrate, the traditional eight-
mode system. The epistemological status of the Susato anthology, in
short, is not that of the Lasso cycle but rather that of the Aaron
treatise, except that we are not told Susato's reasons for the assign-
ment of the various pieces to their respective modes.
Other eight-mode collections are known from indirect testimony
to have been modally ordered, which is confirmed upon examination
of the collections themselves; Lasso's first Munich anthology of
motets, published in i562 (see Table 8-A) is such a collection. In
many collections the arrangement of pieces alone reveals them to have
been modally ordered, even in the absence of verbal confirmation,
from Rore's five-voice madrigals published in 1542 (see Table i) to
Lasso's madrigal cycle, the Lagrime di San Pietro, published in i593
(see Table 4). But most collections, whether by one composer or more
than one, were not modally ordered.
The general trend in sixteenth-century printed collections was
from less tonal ordering to more, and the organization of both
anthologies and cyclic sets according to modal schemes became more
common as the century wore on. Collections early in the century,
such as Petrucci's printed anthologies of chansons and motets from
which Aaron chose most of the examples he cited, have no discernible
musical basis for their arrangement. Later in the century printers and
editors came more and more to group compositions in collections
according to two simple and practical musical criteria: (I) whether the
composition was set in the "b-natural system" with no signature
(called cantus durus) or the "b-flat system" with a b-flat signature
(called cantus mollis); and (2) whether the voice parts as a group used a
relatively higher or lower segment of the whole background gamut, as
denoted by the choice of one or the other of two ever more
standardized combinations of clefs, the so-called "chiavette" and the
"standard" clefs. (I shall refer to the chiavette as "high clefs" and the
standard SATB combination as "low clefs" in order to emphasize the
contrast.) The set of three volumes of new Lasso motets published by
Berg in Munich in 1582 (see Table I3) is an instance of grouping by
these two criteria.

In some collections an additional criterion is used in the grouping,

namely, (3), the pitch-class of the lowest note in the last sonority, or in
modern terms, the root of the final triad. Those collections in which

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 437

the final sonority was also a factor in the ordering almost alw
into an obviously intended eight-mode or twelve-mode pattern
clear distinction between authentic and plagal modes. The c
the high-clef combination as opposed to the low-clef com
with "system" and "final" held constant, represents in prin
contrasting of authentic to plagal in a given odd-even, authent
pair of the traditional theoretical system.14 There were, h
several other ways of making the contrast in modally
polyphonic collections; it is the contrast itself that is essen
contrast between authentic mode 5 (Lydian) and plagal
(Hypolydian), for example, is normally indicated by the use
clefs in one group of pieces and low clefs in another, the piece
groups otherwise using the b-flat system and concluding w
major triad." The contrast of high versus low clefs repre
authentic versus plagal ambitus feature of the traditional
scheme, while the traditional common final of the pair is repr
by the lowest sound, the bass, the "root" of the final cho
individual modes can be otherwise represented polyphonica
just as they can in the monophonic Gregorian chant. The t
eightfold scheme, for instance, allows for a transposition
medieval sense) of mode 6 by a fifth upwards, so that the fin
rather than f, with ambitus higher to correspond. In pol
collections too, mode 6 may occur in a parallel form transpose
higher, so that it is represented in the b-natural rather than
system, with high clefs denoting its higher ambitus, and
represented in a concluding "C-major triad." If such a tra
plagal is contrasted with normal polyphonic representation
5, as it often is in modally organized polyphonic collections, t
authentic-plagal distinction is no longer a matter of constant
constant system with contrasting ambitus, but rather of

14 The connection of cleffing contrast with authentic-plagal contrast w

brated over half a century ago by Richard Ehrmann, "Die Schliissel-kom
im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert," Denkmiler der Tonkunst in Osterreich, Beiheft
66-70 (see esp. the table on p. 69). Ehrmann did not pursue the moda
however. Not only was he apparently content with the simplistic dode
construct, with its six hexachordal finals and their transposition upward b
but also he was trying to cope with the chimera of cleffing as a transposition
is simpler to regard the whole Guidonian diatonic, with its subsystems and
as itself a "transposing instrument"). A link between cleffing and m
documented by Bernhard Meier in his "Bemerkungen zu Lechners 'Mote
von 1575," Archiv fir Musikwissenschaft, XIV (1957), 85. Caroline Brown
provided a very useful independent discussion of cleffing and modes in "C
New Approach" (M.A. thesis, Univ. of California at Berkeley, 1960), pp

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438 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

ambitus--represented by high clefs in both cases-with contrast

embodied rather in the systems and finals, as below:

mode 5 mode 6
authentic plagal
Lydian Hypolydian
system: b-flat = b-flat
ambitus: high clefs vs. low clefs
final: F triad = F triad

system: b-flat vs. b-natural

ambitus: high clefs = high clefs
final: F triad vs. C triad

In order to diagram these relations

and b as shorthand symbols for the
mollis systems, with "b-natural" (n
signature) respectively. We can abbre
tons and their variants by citing jus
which are the most consistent in t
so-called "chiavette," use the g-clef o
part, written "g2"; the soprano pa
"normal" clefs, uses the c-clef on th
of the final triad can be written w
name. Final triads on C, D, F, G, o
final Bb triad can occur in the system
triad can occur only in the system
polyphonic representations of mo
thus be symbolized as follows:

mode 5 mode 6
authentic plagal
Lydian Hypolydian
system ambitus final system ambitus final
9
9 g2
g2 F
F versus
versus ,g2
cl C
F
If one considers all the p
objective markers-minim
standard cleffings, with six
polyphonic "modes" but r
minimally distinguished
classes, general compass, a

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 439

a substantial corpus of repertory is represented by even

twelve of these, let alone eight.
That which all members of a class of polyphonic pieces m
characterized by some particular combination of system, cleff
final sonority have in common should be terminologically
guished. It should be distinguished from "tonality," which
mistaken as the equivalent of "key" in music of the "tonal p
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and it should be
guished from "mode," since a "mode" is a music-theoretical con
an inherited category in a fixed set of categories. I shall design
class of polyphonic compositions minimally characterized by a
ular combination of system signature, cleffing, and final sono
the aforementioned term "tonal type." I shall argue that
instances a tonal type may be intended to represent a mo
categorical scheme; that is not to say, though, that the ton
question is that mode. The distinction is what an anthropo
music might call a distinction between "etic" and "emic." A ton
is minimally identifiable by its three markers and thus ob
observable completely apart from its musical or cultural conte
"scientific," it is "etic." "Mode" conversely is all boun
sixteenth-century musical culture, not only as a living doctrin
music of the church and a heritage from the Middle Ages but
musical construct being experimented with by member
culture, from both humanistic and traditional points of vi
thoroughly "emic" and requires study on its own terms, as
relation to any music with which it may be connected. The tas
music historian is to sort out the ways in which the many ton
objectively found in Renaissance polyphonic compositions w
related with modal categories in the traditional schemes,
with the traditional eightfold structure, because that is the st
reflected in all the modally ordered collections of the major si
century composers.
Both my term "tonal type" and the concept it represents ar
from the seminal etic study of sixteenth-century tonalities, S
Hermelink's Dispositiones modorum. Hermelink classified Pa
compositions objectively according to their various combin
system, cleffing, and final, and only then did he subjectively
and illustrate each type with respect to its musical properti

From intensive and continued association with the masterpiec

epoch there appears impressively and clearly a quite stable nu
highly differentiated, precisely defined tonal types [Tonartentyp

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440 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

unmistakable characters, which in their totality form a complete and

independent system that emerges from the compositional particularities
of the music, and in spite of an ultimate grounding in a traditional
complex of notions-ambitus, modal scale structure, and so on-is
determined by the simultaneous sounding of the several parts. In our
investigation these are to be set against the traditional tonal doctrine."5

The systemic result of Hermelink's "intensive and continued

association" with the works of Palestrina (and Lasso as well) was a set
of twenty tonal types. His rejection of traditional modal doctrine was
based on the discrepancy between the multiplicity of objectively
discernible tonal types and the paucity of traditional categories.

Pieces with the following notational patterns are designated as

Hypodorian:

Signature Cleffing finals

Sg2 c2 3 F3 dd d d D
Scl c3 C4 F4 gG G GG
But what is the aim of this twofold possibility for notating?
is it, if not to notate different kinds of pieces? The tradition
gives no answer.'6

I would argue of course that Hermelink was quite rig

pieces set in these two tonal types will indeed have two qu
characters. And in that case, if each is supposed to "be"
and "Hypodorian" in turn is supposed to be a single real en
particular character of its own, then Hermelink's rejec
tional modal theory as an explanatory theory of musical p
fully justified. If one accepts the notion that a tonal type
a mode, but should rather be thought of as having be
"represent" a mode, to stand as the embodiment of a
category, then there is no difficulty in accepting t
traditional modal theory was able to assign these two v
tonal types both to the same "Hypodorian" mode 2. The fi
... /dd .. .) was regarded as an upward transposition b
while the second (b/cl . . / . . .) was an upward transp
fourth. 17

1S Siegfried Hermelink, Dispositiones modorum (Tutzing, 196o), pp. 13-14. The

tonal types are summarized on pp. oo-10o2 and 142 and described individually in
Chap. 5 (PP. 100-43).
'6 Ibid., p. I 2.
17 See Harold S. Powers, "The Modality of 'Vestiva i colli'," Studies in Renaissance
and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel, ed. Robert L. Marshall (Kassel/

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 441

Bernhard Meier, in Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyp

distinguished between these two "Hypodorian" types, citi
ous theorists and compositions. As he put it,

mode 2 transposed to d' [tenor] and d" [cantus] comes forth as a

that shows certain special properties, as compared with the usua
which mode 2 appears (final g-re); nonetheless it keeps the c
the plagal mode through its melodic line, to be discussed late
ii], and through the lower fourth relationship of its seconda
[A] to its primary cadence [D].'8

If Hermelink's fundamental methodology is etic, Bernha

more than any other modern scholar has shown the way to a
genuinely emic understanding of sixteenth-century attitu
and treatments of modality, both theoretical and composi
Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie was the sum
culmination of a quarter-century of fundamental researc
theory and practice of sixteenth-century modality, and
show no signs of abatement. 19 The crucial point in Meier's w
incontrovertible demonstration (accumulated over many
one is obliged to "distinguish the authentic from the plagal m

Hackensack, 1974), PP. 34-36 for references to Zacconi and Banchieri

transposed up an octave; note that Banchieri regarded the high reg
transposition as effecting a change from plagal to authentic.
18 Bernhard Meier, Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie (Utr
p. 138. See also pp. 123-25, 132-34, and 200-209.
19 The paradigmatic and most revealing study in Meier's oeuvre is his
gen zu Lechners 'Motectae sacrae' von 1575." Meier's assumptions and app
conveniently set forth in English in the prefaces to the various volumes
of Cipriano de Rore, Opera omnia, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, XIV
77). Carl Dahlhaus's review of and response to Meier's Die Tonarten that
Die Musikforschung, XXIX (1976), 300-303 and 354-56, continue an
between himself and Meier begun in his own Untersuchungen uber die En
harmonischen Tonalitat (Kassel, 1968), Part III, "Modus und System" (p
Among Meier's important modal studies since 1974 are "Die Modi de
Claudio Merulos (Rom 1598 und 16oo)," Archivfiir Musikwissenschaft, X
18o-98; "Zur Modalitat der 'ad aequales' disponirten Werke klassischer
phonie," Festschrift Georg von Dadelson (Neuhausen/Stuttgart, 1978
"Tonartliche Ordnungen der sogenannten klassischen Vokalpolyphoni
in the Congress Report of the International Musicological Society, Berkeley,
An important study based on Meier's principles is Ellen Beebe, "Mode
and Text Expression in the Motets ofJacobus Clemens non Papa: A Study
Sacred Music" (Ph.D. diss., Yale Univ., 1976). My first acquaintan
continuing interest in Tylman Susato's modally organized series of motet
from 1553 (see Table 15) come directly out of Meier's paper on "
Ordnungen," which he prepared for the panel I chaired at the Berk
Congress.

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442 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

this distinction, supported not only by countless theoretical treatises,

but also by the cyclical plan discernible in many composition
remains valid at least until 16oo, or thereabouts." Meier's criteria f
making the distinction, however, have been internal and in part
subjective: "Distinctive features of the imitative fragments, together
with characteristic cadential progressions, determine the 'tonality' of
each work.'"20 Even though it was he who called attention to Valer
Bona's explicit description in 1595 of the connection between cleffing
and modal ordering,21 Meier has preferred not to rely on th
extraordinary consistency with which the patterns of cleffing objec-
tively mark the "cyclical plan discernible in many compositions,
though they demonstrate over and over again his claim for th
universality of the authentic-plagal distinction in sixteenth-centur
conceptions of modality. He has preferred instead to try to substanti-
ate his claim emically, by appeals to the old theoretical doctrine of th
compositional primacy of the tenor voice, as well as to newer, mi
sixteenth-century doctrines regarding important cadential degree
But these criteria in themselves are not consistent enough in the mus
to support the hypothesis, as Carl Dahlhaus has rightly shown.22
Dahlhaus on the other hand, has refused to accept any part of Meier's
authentic-plagal distinction merely on the grounds that Meier's ow
range-countings and the like do not really prove the case. That doe
not invalidate the distinction, however, but only Meier's preferre
way of justifying it.
If there is a logical difficulty with Meier's approach, it is rathe
that he regards the church modes in polyphony not only as emic tona
categories for the culture, where he is certainly absolutely right, but
also as pre-compositional entities to be composed out, where he ma
be only sometimes right. Meier has not distinguished between mod
as musical property and mode as category, with the result th
"modality" becomes a sort of universal. That is, if in a particular genr
a given tonal type can be shown in any instance to be correlated with
given modal category, then all instances of that tonal type in tha
genre are said to be instances of the mode in question. One conse
quence of this kind of reasoning is that while Meier has found th
"cyclical plan discernible in many compositions" and collections
has missed or mistaken some others. At the same time, like Aaron he
often has to argue for a modal attribution where there is no evidence

20 Cipriano de Rore, Opera omnia, II, iii.

21 Meier, "Bemerkungen," p. 85.
22 Carl Dahlhaus, review and response to Die Tonarten, Die Musikforschung, XXIX
(1976), 300-302, 354-55.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 443

that any should be inferred even a posteriori, let alone that th

any pre-compositional a priori modal intent.
But for dozens of modal collections and hundreds of com
Meier's pioneering researches and analyses have made it p
study the correlation of tonal types in Renaissance pol
compositions with modal categories in the traditional schem
modally ordered collection with which Meier worked, and the
unmistakably intended as modal that I know, is Cipriano
first book of five-voice madrigals of i542.23 Table I shows
plan of the collection in outline form, according to the distrib
tonal types as they are contrasted by the markers. The od
authentic-plagal pieces are throughout contrasted by ambit
finals and system remaining constant. Modes I and 2 are "
posed," and the last three madrigals stand outside the cycl
The modal assignments suggested in the last column of the
identical with Meier's, though taken solely from the patte
system, cleffing, and final. The only implicit internal require
that the assignment of a piece to a mode should not be bl
incompatible with theoretical descriptions of the mode. Tha

could not suppose that the tonal type ,-g2-G could ever r
mode 6, or that tonal type ? -c1-G could ever represent mode
on.

Table 2 shows the tonal plan of the anthology of two-

voice chansons published by the Antwerp printer-comp
Susato in I544.24 The tonal question here is much more
These pieces are essentially for only two voices, the bas
entirely optional; but more than that, as Lawrence Ber
shown, they are all reductions of chansons by various co
originally for more voices.25 Susato's grouping by tonal ty
a posteriori at double remove. Ute Meissner had divided the
into four groups, using Glarean's terms Dorian (Nos. 1
(Nos. 10-20), Ionian (Nos. 21-28), and Mixolydian (No
Her terms are of course anachronistic, since Glarean's n
and Ionian were not yet publicly known in 1544, and M
obviously using them descriptively, that is, etically. Th

23 Cipriano de Rore, Opera omnia, II, -o103.

24 Tylman Susato, Le Premier livre des chansons a' deux au trois par
1544), ed. Aime Agnel (Paris, 1970-71).
25 Lawrence F. Bernstein, "The Cantus-Firmus Chansons of Tyl
this JOURNAL, XXII (1969), 201-207.
26 Ute Meissner, Der antwerpener Notendrucker Tylman Susato (Ber
127-28, 134-35.

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444 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
TABLE I

Tonal plan of Rore's first book of five-voice madrigals (Venice, i542)

madrigal no. system' ambitus2 final(s)3 mode

I g2
2 g2 GD,
3 ,g2 D, G
D,G
4 cl A,G 1
5 1 cl D,G J
6 4 cl E
7 8 cl G, E 3
8 4 cl A, E
9 t C2 A,E 4
10 g2 C, F 1
I b g2 C, F J
12 b Cl C, F 16
13 ' cl F, F
14 9 g2 D, G 1
'5 9 g2 G, G 7

16 4 cl G, G 1 8
17 4 cl D, G J
I8 9 g2 D (I)
19 [ cl A, G (2)
20 4 cl E (3)
' = cantus mollis (signatu
2 The ambitus in polypho
each individual voice, as b
higher in each pair repres
for the highest voice is s
g2 = g22 C2 cC3 F3;
SCapital letters = degree
denote the finals of a mad

distribution of clef
quite clearly to in
involved, and that
was intended here
the tonal type t-g2
other between the
otherwise repres
egregious than som
I553-Ecclesiasticar
are unmistakably m

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 445

TABLE 2

Tonal plan of the Premier livre des chansons d 3 parties

published by Tylman Susato (Antwerp, I544)

chanson no. system' ambitus final2 mode

I c2 c4 F4 d DD
2 c c4 F4 d DD
3 tC l c4 F4 d DD
4 c c4l F4 d DD
5 g2 c2 F4 g GG
6 g2 c2 F3G
7 t c2 4 F4 DD

8
9 b/b,
4bbb clcl
c3c3
F3F3
g GG1
g GG 2
10 t g2 c3 F3 aa a A)
II t g2 C2 F3 aa a A
12 g2 C2 c4 aa a A

13 l g2 c2 c4 dd d D
14 t cl C3 F3 aa a A
15 cl c3 F3 aa a A
16 cl c3 F3 a a A
17 t c2 c3 F3 a a A 4
18 c C2 C4 c# e A
19 c1 c2 c4 e e A
20 c1 c2 4 e e A

21 c c3 F3 f F F
22 c C3 F3 f F F
23 C c3 c3 F3 fFF 5
24 , cl c3 F3 f F F
25 , c3 c3 F3 f F F
26 C C3 C4 CC CC
27 C C3 C4 ccc C C 6
28 ClC c3 F3 ccc C
29 g2 c2 C4 dd d D

30 c c3 F3 g GG 8
31 c c3 F3 g G 8
Signatures are the same for all three
2 Clefs and final pitches for all three

can. It would seem that Sus

collection, too. He had noth
quite know what to do with
series, where he eventually g
following the lost volume [

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446 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

That these two early modally ordered collections should comprise

madrigals and chansons, that is, secular works rather than church
music, is a nice (if probably fortuitous) reflection of the original
Renaissance impetus toward self-conscious modalism. There are early
modal collections of motets, too (Rore's first book, of 1545, for
instance), but as with Aaron's classification attempts in the 1520S, so
also in the collections of the 540os the church modes seem to be
receiving attention not because they are "church" but because they are
"modes." This is of course partly on purely technical grounds: for
dealing with tonal categories in the large, the traditional modal theory
was the only theory available. But the desire to consider the tonal
properties of polyphonic pieces systematically in terms of modes may
also reflect the humanist's interest in the pathic and ethic effects of
music, which in original classical sources and their medieval echoes
alike were attributed to the musical modes.
Later in the sixteenth century the church modes sometimes came
to be used in another way, with the emphasis perhaps now more on
"church." Certain modally ordered works of Lasso and Palestrina
seem clearly to reflect the lay piety that came to be encouraged in
Counter-Reformation practice. Lasso's settings of the seven Peniten-
tial Psalms plus Psalm 148 (composed ca. I560, published I584), his
Lagrime di San Pietro cycle (1595), Palestrina's setting of eight of
Petrarch's Vergine madrigals (1581), the first thirty-two compositions
of his Offertory cycle (1593), and his other set of spiritual madrigals
( 594) are all ordered according to the church modes. One cannot help
but wonder if to order the musical setting of a cycle of pious texts
according to the prescribed musical system of the church was not an
affirmation of faith every bit as compelling as the choice of a pious
cycle of texts to set in the first place.
Table 3 shows the tonal plan of Lasso's settings of the Seven
Penitential Psalms. Both the psalms and the modes succeed one
another with each set in its own traditional numerical order-to
provide a text for the eighth mode Lasso added Psalm 148, Laudate
dominum-so it is obvious that at least for the first seven pieces no
expression of the texts through modal affect could possibly have been
intended. The modal message is rather in the orderly structure itself;
it is not unlike some of the rhymed offices composed for saints in the
late Middle Ages where the setting of the Responsories of Matins are
also in modal order.
One sees in the Penitential Psalms that the finals for modes 3
through 8 are the "regular" finals E, F, and G, and that the authentic-
plagal ambitus contrast in the last two pairs is represented by the

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 447

TABLE 3

Tonal plan of Lasso's cycle of Penitential Psalm settings

Psalmi Davidis poenitentialis, modis musicis redditi . .. his accessit psalmus Laudate
Dominum de Coelis ... (composed before 1560, published Munich, 1584)

system ambitus final Psalm

I. cl C3 C4 C4 F4 D 6: Domine ne i
2. c1 c3 C4 C4 F4 G 31: Beati quorum remissae sunt

3. C cl c3 C4 C4 F4 E 37: Domine ne in furore . .. qu

4. 4 c2 c3 c4 F3 F5 E 50: Miserere mei Deus

5. g c2 C3 C3 F3 F IoI: Domine exaudi . . . et clamor

6. c c3 c3 4 c4 F4 F 129: De profundis clamavi
7. 4 g2 C2 C3 C3 F3 G 142: Domine exaudi . . . auribus
8. Cl C3 C4 C4 F4 G I48: Laudate Dominum de coelis

opposition of standard high cleffing (chiavette) to standard low cleffin

("normal" clefs). For modes 3 and 4, slightly lower-pitched in t
conceptual background system, the "normal" clefs are used for t
authentic mode 3, while still lower clefs are used for three outer voi
in the setting representing plagal mode 4. This contrasted pair
cleffings is the same as that found in the representations of modes 3
and 4 in Rore's madrigals of 1542 (see Table i). The first and lowe
authentic-plagal pair, however, is differently represented in the t
collections. In the Penitential Psalms mode I is represented by t
tonal type -cl-D, which most nearly corresponds with church mod
since it is in the "natural" system and has the "regular" final D. But
place the plagal mode 2 with its final at D would have pushed the bas
part of the polyphonic complex effectively off the bottom of
conceptual scale and in general would require very low clefs
around, which were customarily symbolically reserved for pieces
especial gloom or profundity. Hence, mode 2 is rarely represen
"untransposed." In both the Lasso Penitential Psalms and the Ro
madrigals of 1542 mode 2 is represented as though transposed up
fourth, that is, in the b-flat system, with its final on G rather than
in short, by the tonal type b-cl-G. In the Rore madrigal collect
transposed mode 2 is contrasted with transposed mode i, so tha
system and final are constant while the ambitus are in contrast: tona

types ,-g2-G versus b-cl-G. But in the Lasso Penitential Psalms

opposition of regular mode I to transposed mode 2 causes t
authentic-plagal contrast to show up, as it were, in reverse. T
ambitus, as represented by the cleffing, is held constant and it

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448 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

system and final that are in contrast: tonal types -cl-D for mode I
versus '-cl-G for mode 2.
Lasso's last modal collection, his settings of Luigi Tansillo's
spiritual madrigal cycle Lagrime di San Pietro plus a Latin envoi,
expresses the contrast of mode I and mode 2 in the same way (see
Table 4). The first four madrigals form a closed subcycle set in the
tonal type -c1-D representing mode I, while the next four are
similarly in b-cl-G representing mode 2; in both cases the third part of
the subgroup closes with a final a fifth higher than the principal final.

TABLE 4

Tonal plan of Lasso's Lagrime di San Pietro (Munich, I595) a 7 (Tansillo)

madrigal no. system ambitus' final mode

I t cl D
2 4 cl D .
3 4 cl A
4 4 cl D

5
6 ,
6 cl
cl G
G

8
7 ,
, cl
cl
D
G
9 cl A
IO cl E 3/4
1 cl A
12 cI E
13
14 2, g2
g2 F
C
15 2 g F
16 c F 6
17 c cl C
18 6 cl F

19 g2 D 7
20 g2 G J
212 g2 A ?
Cl1 = Cl Cl C3 C3 C
g2 = g2 g2 c2 c2 c
2 In Latin: vide hom

There is no au
pieces in the
and mode 4 to
the first and
plagal contra
collections; it

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 449

very nearly the same in practice. Glarean, for instance, hav

pointed out that many mode 4 chant pieces fall short at the bottom a
have the compass C-c while a number of mode 3 pieces fall short at
top and have the compass D-d, observed that "it is true what s
musicians say, that indeed no two modes are more closely joined tha
the Hypophrygian and the Phrygian."27
The two sets of three pieces embodying authentic mode 5 an
plagal mode 6 are contrasted by ambitus in the usual way and h
their "regular" final: tonal types I-g2-F versus I-cl-F. Mode 7 is
represented in the usual way, with a subgroup of two pieces set in t
tonal type ?-g2-G. Mode 8 is conspicuously missing, however; i
expected place is occupied by a single composition setting the ad
Latin envoi, a composition using the tonal type ? -g2-A. This is a ton
type Lassus used frequently, but only twice in modal collections,
both times anomalously (see also Table 14). By no conceivab
rationalization could it be construed here as a compositional represen
tation of mode 8. I am tempted to link the change from Italian to L
text with the ever diminishing number of pieces in each modal c
gory and the final breaking off of the modal order, and I wonder if h
too, mode may be being used as a religious symbol. The cycle w
Lasso's last work-the dedication to Pope Clement VIII Aldobran
was signed three weeks before his death-and the words of the Sa
set in the Latin envoi "Behold, o man, what things I have suffered f
you" are as removed from Tansillo's Italian cycle-it is now at la
Christ Himself who speaks from the cross-as the tonal type ? -g2-A
removed from the modal cycle. The abandonment of both may
read as symbolizing Lasso's expectation of his own imminent aba
donment of this world, including Christ's Church on earth, and
hope, through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, of a better world
come.

The tonal type -g2-A also plays a role in a spiritual m

of Palestrina's, a cycle where the traditional eightfo
church likewise seems to have been used as an expre
piety, a symbol of faith rather than an expression o
summarizes the tonal types of the first eight composi
na's spiritual madrigals of s581.28 That this was set up
as a conscious embodiment of the eightfold modal stru
not only from the predictable distribution of tonal ty

27 Glarean, Dodecachordon, p. 266; trans. Clement Miller, p. 25

28 See Powers, " 'Vestiva i colli'," pp. 39-45-

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450 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

TABLE 5

Tonal plan of Palestrina's Vergine cycle: Madrigali (spirituali) 5

(Rome, 1581), Nos. i-8 (Petrarch)

madrigal no. system ambitus final mode

I g2 C2C3C3 c4 A I
2 g2 C2C3C3 c4 D 2
3 c C3C4C4 F3 E 3
4 C2 C3C4C4 F4 E 4

5 g2 C2C3C3 F3 F 5
6 cl c3c4c4F4 F 6
7 g2 C2C3C3 C4 G 7
8 cl c3c4c4 F4 G 8

to 8 but also from the f

Petrarch's famous and o
were used. As with the Lasso Penitential Psalms so with the Palestrina
Vergine madrigals, it is the number eight, the eight modes in their
proper order, that is important, not any hypothetical appropriateness
of inherent general modal affect to the mood of a text. And like them
also the restriction of contrasted ambitus only to outer voices in Nos. 3
and 4 represents the traditionally reduced contrast in practice between
authentic mode 3 and plagal mode 4. The representation of the
authentic-plagal contrast in modes I and 2, however, is quite special.
Mode 2, as usual, is represented as transposed, but here as though
up an octave, by using the tonal type ?-g2-D. Mode I, however, is
represented by the tonal type ? -g2-A. This representation for mode I is
found only in Palestrina's works, so far as I know. And though -g2-A
is a tonal type Palestrina used often, he used it only one other time as a
modal representative, in the Offertoria of 1593.
Palestrina's other collection of spiritual madrigals, the ottava rima
"Figlio immortal" cycle of 1594, also follows the order of the modal
system of the church; its tonal plan is summarized in Table 6. The
modal representation is rather more conventional than that of the
Vergine cycle, both in the use of b-g2-G versus b-cl-G for the authentic
and plagal of the protus modes (modes i and 2), and in the absence of
any authentic-plagal distinction in the deuterus (modes 3/4).

Three aspects of the relationships between tonal types and modal

categories seem to me to lend particular support to the idea that one
should make a distinction between them. First, there are one-to-many

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 451

TABLE 6

Tonal plan of Palestrina's Madrigali spirituali a 5 (Rome, 594

madrigal nos. system ambitus' final mode

I-5 2b g G I
6-io b cl G 2
11x-6 c E 3/4

17-20 b g2 F 5
21-23 b Cl F 6
24-27 4 g2 G 7
28-30 4 cl G 8

'g2 = g2 C3 c3 F3/c4 Q
C = C C3 C F4 Q
The fifth voice (Q) is always an inner voice. The bass is c4 in Nos. 24-28, representing mode
7, F3 in Nos. 1-5 (mode i) and 17-20 (mode 5).

correspondences going both ways: most of the modal categories can be

represented by more than one tonal type, and occasionally a single
tonal type can be found representing more than one modal category.
Second, even at the height of their conscious application in the latter
part of the sixteenth century, polyphonic modes were not always
recognized as such. Third, different tonal types have quite different
patterns of use in modal collections as opposed to non-modal collec-
tions.
We have now seen three different ways in which the contrast of
authentic-plagal modes I and 2 has been represented in polyphonic
cycles. Yet a fourth may be seen in Lasso's celebrated duos of i577
(see Table 7). The first twelve pieces, those with text, represent the
eight modes in order. The first six of these duos are for the two high
voices and the last six for the two low voices; the appropriate pairs of
clefs from the high set of four chiavette or the low set of four "normal"
clefs are assigned to the voice pairs involved. Duos I and 2 represent
mode I as though in its "regular" position, with tonal type -cl-D.
Duos 3 and 4 are then set in ? -g2-D, representing mode 2 as though
transposed up an octave, like the mode 2 representative in Palestrina's
Vergine cycle. The fact that the registral contrast is the reverse of the
norm-the plagal representative in the modal pair with the same final
lies higher than the authentic, not lower-is of no consequence.
Lasso's intentions are perfectly clear from the ordering alone.
The following diagram summarizes these four ways of represent-
ing the authentic-plagal contrast in the protus modes with polyphonic
tonal types:

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452 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

mode i mode 2 contrast

authentic plagal represented by
Dorian Hypodorian
Rore, Madrigals (1542) '-g2-G '-ci-G ambitus
Lasso, Penitential Psalms ?-cl-D 6-cl-G system and final
Lasso, Duos (1577) ?-cl-D -g2-D ambitus in reverse
Palestrina, Vergine cycle -g2-A ?-g2-D final alone

One easily sees here how a given mode can be represented by more
than one tonal type; for example, mode I has three representatives.
But more than that, one of these, -g2-A, has already been seen
apparently assigned to mode 3, in Nos. 10-12 of Tylman Susato's
chansons of 1544 for two and three voices (see Table 3). Thus a single
tonal type is found representing one mode in Italy in the 1580s and
another in the Low Countries in the I540s.
Susato's assignment of -g2-A chansons to a mode 3 position,
where they are contrasted with several pieces in tonal type -cl-A
occupying the expected position of mode 4, is rare in modal collec-

TABLE 7

Tonal plans of Lasso's . . ad duas voces cantiones (Munich, i577)*

duo no. system ambitus finals mode

I2 cl c3- d'/d' 1
cl c3 - - d"/d'
S3 ~92 g2 2-- d"/d' 2
4 g92 c2 - - d"/d' 2
5 2 gC2 - - a'/a 3
6 b c c3 -- a'/a 4
7 - - c3 F3 f/f 5
8 -- C4F4 f/F 6
9 F4 f/F

Io - c3F3 g/ 7
S1 -- C4 F4
S2 --C4F 4 g4g
g8
13 g2 C3 g'/g
14 6 g2 C3 g'/g 1
5 g2 C3 - g/g
16 C C4 - g/g
17 cl C4- gI/g 2
I8 C C 4-
19 - c4F4 4
20 - -c3
(21 cF4 f/F
C4 g'/g 6
22 - c3C4 g 7
F23
24 - 4 --
F4 F4
g/G 8
*Duos Nos. 1-12 are with text,

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 453

tions. The only other instance I know of is found in

Ballard's modal reordering of two Lasso motet collect
I582f and 1585a in RISM I587a. The type ?-g2-A is rare
representative in any case; ?-c1-A on the other hand is th
tonal type, occupying the mode 3/4 position, in Volu
Tylman Susato's five-voice motet series of 1553 (see Tab
single instance of type -g2-A in the five-voice volumes is th
Vaet Miserere, printed in both Volumes IX and XIV.
The types ?-g2-A and ?-cl-A seldom appear together ev
modal collections. Unlike other pairs of tonal types wit
final, they have very little in common. Palestrina's tonally u
four-voice motets of 1563 is one of the few collections in w
are well represented, there being three of each out of thirty-
in all. Example I shows the initial points (the exordia
rhetoric) of all six. The three incipits in -g2-A are all orient
the modal fifth, re-la, at the two positions a'-e" and d'-a', and
a functions as re in the one case and la in the other, while t
the littera e is usually la. In the incipits of motets in ?-cl-A,
the littera e is almost always mi, and the emphasis is on
fourth, mi-la, at the position e'-a'; it is answered twice with
and once with mi-la (b-e'). The cadential distributions are
contrasted. In ? -g2-A, a and d are the only cadential degrees
exception of one cadence to e (in No. 34) and one to c (in
S-c1-A, e is the most frequent cadential degree after a, whil
used at all cadentially. The same general pattern of caden
is found in the two groups in the Susato chansons 'a 2/
Chansons in both groups cadence frequently to a, but N
have no cadences to e, while Nos. 4-20o frequently caden
19 in fact is an E-tonality piece in its original four-voi
Josquin's "Milles regretz," and the bass on a at the end is
final "Phrygian" cadence to e. No. 20, the "reponce" to N
similarly disposed.
The association of a with d in ? -g2-A and of a with e in ?
consequence of system structure as well as of compositional
The dual modal affinity of a was recognized explicitly throu
Middle Ages and Renaissance, as far back as Chapter 8 o
Micrologus, and on to and including Aaron.29

29 See Strunk, ed., Source Readings, pp. 208, 2 3, 25, and the composi
See also Bergquist, "The Theoretical Writings," pp. 276-79 with Table
91 with Table 14. Aaron's contrasted protus A-modes and deuterus A-
spond closely with the contrast of tonal types ?-g2-A and ?-cl-A, as one
from the built-in systemic contrast of d-a (re-la) versus a-e (la-mi).

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454 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Example i
Characteristic figures for ?-g2-A vs. ?-cl-A
Incipits from Palestrina's Motecta festorum totius anni (1563, repr. of 1590)
15-. >o

g2 all
la fa sol la re la re

C2

la fa sol la re la

g2

C2

re

31.

g2

la re fa sol la /fa /la sol fa mi re

la re fa sol la

g2

C2

/fa mi/ la sol fa mi

34.
g2

la la fa la

C2

la la /fal la re

g2

. I I
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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 455

Example i, continued

I7"

mi sol la mi /fa mi/ la sol fa mi re

re fa sol re /fa/ la sol

la sol fa/ la sol fa mi re

fa mi re mi fa mi re

S 25.

mi

mi la fa mi re ut fa mi

C4 09,O -Df -[
mi la sol /fa. mi/ la sol

ci . *

la sol /fa mi/ la sol fa mi

la

C4

I ifa mi la

36.

mi la soll /fa mi/la s

C3rw l fA /f I I I
re sol fa /fa mi re/ fa mi re
*entrance of other voices not shown

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456 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Another instance of one tonal type representing more than one

mode, this time very curiously in the same context, appears as
Example 2, which shows the incipits of both parts of two motets by
Christian Hollander that were published in Susato's motet series from
1553 (see Table i5). Congratulamini was printed in Book XI, which
includes a number of other motets of the same tonal type -g2-C, as
well as a number belonging to the tonal type 6-cl-F, both representing
mode 6. Beatus athleta and one other belonging to the tonal type -g2-C
appear in Book XII, which otherwise only contains pieces in ?-g2-G,
the tonal type ubiquitously used in collections to represent mode 7.
It looks as though the assignments of these two Hollander motets
must have been made solely on the basis of the opening melodies,
without regard to finals or to other parts of the pieces. The word
"Congratulamini" in both opening voices is set to a conventional and
characteristic mode 6 figure, ut-fa-sol-la (g-c-d-e in the hard hexachord,
c-f-g-a in the natural hexachord). The setting of "Beatus athleta," with
its ut-sol opening and emphasis on sol (in both hexachords), is just as
characteristic for mode 7, and probably is responsible for the inclusion
of the piece in the mode 7 volume even though both parts of the motet
end with a "C-major triad." The incipits of the second parts of
Congratulamini and Beatus athleta both contradict the modal assign-
ment of the motet: the words "tulerunt dominum," from the motet
published in the mode 6 volume, are set to the characteristic ut-sol of
mode 7, in both voices; the words "tu concede mihi," from the motet
published in the mode 7 volume, are set to the characteristic mode 6
figure fa-ut-fa-sol-la, again in both voices.
It may be that the inclusion of two ?-g2-C motets in Susato's Book
XII should be written off as an editorial blunder; certainly the Franco-
Flemish tradition of using ? -g2-C to represent mode 6 was very strong,
and I know of no other instances of ~ -g2-C being used for mode 7 in an
actual modal collection. There is, however, an Italian theoretical
tradition for claiming this type for mode 7. It began with Aaron, and
may be illustrated most clearly in his assignment of Josquin's chanson
"Comment peut avoir joye," whose type is ? -g2-C, to mode 7.30 The
tenor compass is g-g', the "perfect" modal octave for mode 7 (the

30 See the passage in translation in Strunk, ed., Source Readings, pp. 217-18. The
chanson is transcribed in Ottaviano Petrucci, Canti B, ed. Helen Hewitt, Monuments
of Renaissance Music, II (Chicago, 1967), pp. 148-49, and as "O Jesu fili David" in
Glarean, Dodecachordon, trans. Miller, II, 434-36. Glarean of course calls it Hypo-
ionian (his mode 12).

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Example 2 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES
?-g2-C as mode 6 and mode 7

(a) Tylman Susato, Liber ecclesiasticarum cantionum, XI, No. 2 Christian Hollander

g2

Con- gra- tu - la- mi-ni mi - - - - - hi

C2

Con - gra - tu - la - - mi-

g2

om - - - - - - - - - nes

cO
ni mi-hi om - nes

Secunda pars

Tu - le - runt Do -mi - num me-um

C4

Tu - le - runt Do - - mi -

C3

num me - um

(b) Tylman Susato

92

Be - a - tus. ath-le - ta Chri - sto - fo -rus

C2 Py
Be - a tus ath - le -ta

g2 s ' f , #
C2r i - - o
Chri - sto fo rus

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458 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Secunda pars *

g2 I: - *. *
Tu con - ce - de mi - - - hi

C2 i
Tu con - ce - de mi - - hi
,
g2

C2 ? ,j j j ,
*entrance of other voices not shown

cantus with the identical melody is an octave higher); the "final" c' was
regarded by Aaron as legitimate for mode 7 because c' is a di'ferentia in
psalm-tone 7; the ut-sol species of fifth that characterizes mode 7 is
worked over and over in the composition, though it lies between c'
and g' rather than in its "regular" g-d' position. Aaron's enthusiastic
disciple Illuminato Aiguino followed his "irrefragibile Maestro" in
many matters, including the use of psalm-tone differences as pseudo-
finals. 31 Example 3 shows Josquin's real and Aiguino's invented tenors

Example 3
Tenors ending on c' as mode 7
(a) Josquin, "Comment peut avoir joye," cited by Aaron for mode 7
R >o
C3 OP

t) I" "i - 1r U I

c~r r r r' , " OP

00
" cr . - ..
-. "
31 See Illuminato Aiguino, Il tesoro illuminato di
(Venice, I581), fol. 72r.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 459

(b) Aiguino, Il tesoro illuminato di tutti i tuoni di canto figurato, 72r, illustrati
with "extraordinary" final
>.

C3
, " 'Iffl ' I. . .' ' 1 0Jke
that are used to illustrate mode 7 with ter
tradition.
The existence of even a few many-to-one
tonal type and modal category would seem to
two as merely equivalent. The great differe
between the two "Hypodorian" (mode 2) tona
cannot be explained away as a mere matter o
noted that not only modern scholars like
quoted earlier, have found ? -g2-D a little d
traditional modal theory on a one-to-one basis
so far as to regard ? -g2-D as authentic rather
Susato gave it a separate volume in his octen
(see Table 15, Volume XIV). Just as strik
between ?-g2-A and b-g2-G, both of which we
represent mode i in modally organized
summarizes the musical characteristics of thes
Hermelink's "constituent tone" analytic for
Palestrina's modal use of these tonal typ
madrigal cycles.

Example 4

The "constituent tones" of four tonal types used by Palestrina (after Hermelink,
Dispositiones modorum, p. 142), and their use as representatives of the authentic and plagal
protus modes in Palestrina's spiritual madrigal cycles. Cantus parts, H = "Grundton"

- < mode >-

T T
Madrigali spirituali 5 (i594) Vergine madrigals (1581)

I
*- mode 2 - kR' OR

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460 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
A second line of argument in favor of investigating the structure of
tonal types and their use as modal representatives separately turns on
the variability in how modality/tonality was understood. Even where
modal representation was clearly intended it was not always recog-
nized. A case in point is Lasso's first Munich motet collection,
published in July I562 (see Table 8). It is modally ordered; we have
the testimony of Lasso's disciple Leonhard Lechner,32 if the structure
alone were not enough (Table 8-A). In November of the same year the
same collection was brought out in Venice by Antonio Gardano
(Table 8-B). The pieces are grouped musically, according to system-
clef combinations, and except for Nos. 15-2 (Munich Nos. 19-25),
TABLE 8

Tonal plans of Lasso's Sacrae Cantiones of 1562 in the earliest editions,

each reprinted many times

A. Original edition (Munich, July 1562)

motet nos. system ambitus* final mode

1-4
5-10
1 g2
c
G
G
1
2
11-14 c E 3/4
15-18 1 g2 F 5
19-20o g2 C 6
21-23 g G 7
24-25 C G 8

*g2 = g2 C2 C3 F3 Q
The fifth voice (Q)
second g2.

B. Gardano's "Liber primus" (Venice, November 1562)

motet nos. system ambitus* final no. in Munich original

1-4 9 g2 G 1, 2, 3, 4
5-8 c E 12, Ii, 13, 14

9-14 , c, G 5, 6, 7, 1o, 9, 8
15 g2 C 19
16 g2 G 21
17 g2 C 20
18 g2 G 22
19-20 c1 G 24, 25
21 g2 G 23
22-25 g2 F 17, 18, 15, 16
*The cleffing is the same as in the Munich

32 Published by Georg Reichert, in "M

um 1590," Archiv fir Musikwissenschaft

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 461I
by final also. Yet the modal ordering so clearly reflected in the
Munich disposition of the collection is completely destroyed in
Gardano's arrangement. It seems clear that Gardano, though he was
himself a composer, was not aware that the motets he printed could be
arranged in cyclic order of the church modes, and grouped them as
best he could by tonal type. Gardano printed many collections of
Lasso motets, grouped in various ways, but none of them in modal
order. The closest to such an ordering is his 1566 "liber quartus" of six-
voice motets (the last two are for eight voices), the only one of
Gardano's Lasso collections that contains all new pieces. The tonal
plan is shown in Table 9. It is not merely a grouping by system-clef
combination--the finals are clearly a crucial criterion--yet it is hardly
modal either. If it were, the order is strangely skewed, representing
modes 2, 8, 5, 6, I, 3, 4, and I for the six-voice motets, and it would
be curiously both incomplete, since there is no mode 7, and over-
complete as well, since modes 3 and 4 would be separately represent-
ed. It seems more likely that Gardano's primary groupings are by
final, subdivided then by systems of cleffing. All the "g pieces" are
together, in subgroups of cantus mollis vs. cantus durus; all the 'f pieces"
are together, in subgroups of chiavette vs. "standard" clefs; last is a
group of cantus durus pieces with finals on d and e.

TABLE 9
Tonal plan of Lasso's Sacrae cantiones a 6, a 8
(Gardano's "Liber quartus," Venice, 1566)

motet nos. system ambitus* final

1-3
4-5 , cl
cl G
G
6 b g2 F
7-8
9
,
l
cl
D
F
IO C E
II C2 E
12 l D
(A 8)
13 c E
14 ' cl F

A third k
essentially
with "mode
do with th
modal col
illustrated

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462 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

1582. Tables io through 12 refer to a large, modally ordered reprint

collection published by the Widow Gerlach in Niirnberg, designated
by the RISM siglum I582c. Table 13 shows the nature and distribu-
tion of tonal types in the three collections of new Lasso motets
published by Berg in Munich in the same year, which are organized
only by system and cleffing.
I582c is ordered first according to the number of voices. Within
each of those divisions the motets are arranged in order of the eight
church modes, with the exception of Nos. 7-15, four-voice settings of
the nine Lessons from Job for the Office of the Dead. I582c was
compiled "with the consent of the author" from the six earlier
collections whose RISM sigla are given in the left column of Table I o.

TABLE IO

Lasso I582c: A composite edition of modal sets . . . praestantissimifasciculi . . . antea

seperatim excusi nunc vero auctoris consensu in unum redacti (Niirnberg, Gerlach)

a4 a5* a6 a8

1562a (25)
I 65e 7-15 Lessons from Job, not in modal order
I569a (I3) 8i
570oc 73-80 84-85
I57xa (19)
157 3d -6 83 "four-language album" Latin motets
82 prior source not known
1582c 1-15 *16-72 73-81 82-85

*See Table 12 for interleaved arrangement of the five-voice motets, the bulk
collection.

All except i565e and I573d had originally been in modal order also.
The four-voice Lessons from Job retained their original liturgical
order when they were reprinted as Nos. 7-15 of I582c, but the six
four-voice Latin motets from I573d were rearranged from their
original ordering by system and cleffing, shown in Table I I-A, into a
modal order, as shown in Table I I-B. The five-voice motets in I582c
comprise the contents of three earlier modally ordered five-voice
collections, interleaved in chronological order of the three source
collections, with corrections in two positions where the sources
erroneously had got the pieces out of modal order, as shown in
Table 12.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 463
TABLE II

Four-voice motets from Lasso I582c*: tonal types rearranged

to represent modal categories

A. Lasso, 1573d, Nos. i-6

no. system cleffing final
I g2 G
2 9 g2 F

3 , cl G
4 , cl G
5 cl D
6 cl E
B. Lasso, I582c,
no. system ambitus final mode no. in 1573d
I g2 G I I
2 ) cl D I 5

3 , cl G 2 3
4 , cl G 2 4
5 4 cl E 3/4 6
6 9 g2 F 5 2
*Nos. 7-15, the nine
modal order in 1582c

Conspicuously a
that went into
frequently used
two independen
Table I3. That a
frequency of use
represented. In
to the contrary,
anomalously, an
single Latin envo
discussed earlier
modal context is as Nos. 21-22 of Lasso's last motet collection,
published in 1594 (see Table '4). These two pieces occur in an
unmistakably modally ordered set, between groups clearly represent-
ing modes 6 and 8, yet no rationalization I have been able to devise
allows me to consider them as reasonable representations of mode 7.
They cannot, for instance, be taken as embodiments of psalm-tone 7,

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464 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
TABLE 12

Five-voice motets from Lasso i582c

1582 system ambitus final earlier source mode

i6-19 b g2 G 1562 : 1-4
20 cl D 1569 : I
21 9 g2 G 1569 : 2
22--25 b2 G 1571 : 1-4
26-31 ' cl G 1562 : 5-10
32 g2 D 1569 : 3 2
33-35 , cl G 1571 : 8, 5-6J
36 1 cl A *1571 : 7
37-40 4 cl E 1562 : 11-14
41-44 4 ct E 1569 :4-7
45-47 4 cl E 1571: 9-I

48-51
52-53, g2
g2 F
F I571
1562 :: I5--I8
2-3J
54-55 g C 1562 : 19-20
56 g2 C 1569 : 8
57-60 , clFF 1571
61 , ci 1569 : :10o-13
14 6
62 cl F 1571 : 15
63-65 g2 G 1562 : 21-23
66 g2 G *1569: 9 7
67-68 g2 G 1571 : 16-171
69-70 cl G 1562 : 24-251
71-72 c G 1571 : 18-9 8
*Out of modal order in the earlier source, put in co

for they show no trace of any of its me

are out of order is no help; the otherw
will lack mode 7 no matter where the
Palestrina also used the -g2-A type v
reckons it as used for nine percent of Pa
it the fourth most frequently used out of
p. ioi). Yet Palestrina used it only twice a
No. I of the Vergine madrigals of 1581 an
1593.
If -g2-A is to be considered a mode, i
ambiguous. For Palestrina it was somet
as the musical evidence goes, its mo
student Leonhard Lechner proposed that

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 465
TABLE 13

Lasso I582d-f: a set of non-modal collections . . . piae cantiones/sacrae

cantiones/motetta ... (Munich, Berg)

system clefs finals 1582f(A 4)* 1582d (A 5) 1582e (A 6)

C G 10 1-2 1-2, 4-5, 7
ct F 11-12 3-6 3, 6
F 7-8 8
g2 G 9-11 -
A 9

D 16 - o10
Cl E 13, I2-I3, i6 ii
G 14-15, 17, 19 14-15 12

r D - 14
A - 17, 19 13, 15, 19-20
g2 G 18, 20-2 16
C 20 18 17-18,

* Nos. I-9 constitute another se

TABLE 14

Lasso's Cantiones sacrae 6 vocem (Graz, I594)

nos. system ambitus finals mode

1-3 g92 I
4-6 cl D i
7-I Cl G 2

12-15 c1 E 3/4

16-17 b g2 F 5
18 g2 C 6
19-20 c F 6

21-22 g2 A [?]
23-26 c G 8

27 cl E (4)
28 g2 G (7)
29
30
,cl
cl F
D
(6)
(I)

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466 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

system, which is in effect ? -g2-A, was equivalent to the traditional

tonus peregrinus of the chant psalm-tones.33 If this had been Lasso's
view, then the Latin envoi concluding the Lagrime di San Pietro would
be in modal order, though one would still want to explain why mode 8
was not used. The placement of -g2-A in the Graz series of 1594,
however, would remain a puzzle; there is no warrant for the tonus
peregrinus to appear between modes 6 and 8 in place of mode 7.
Another illustrative case is that of the tonal type -g2-C. In the
Franco-Flemish tradition this type is very frequently used to repre-
sent mode 6, as though transposed in the medieval sense, as in Book
XI of Susato's motet series from 1553 (see Table 15), Lasso I562a,
1569a, I57Ia (see Table 12), I594a (see Table 14), and others. The
tonal type ? -g2-C was also a favorite of Palestrina's (it is the type of the
Pope Marcellus Mass), yet not once did he ever use it in a modal
collection. There is no justification for believing he thought of it as
"Ionian," since he published several differently ordered modal collec-
tions all of which are octenary. He never used it in the Franco-
Flemish way to represent mode 6. Nor is there any reason to suppose
he would have thought of ~ -g2-C as mode 7, in the manner of Aaron
and Aiguino, though since that is at least an Italian tradition mode 7
would be the most likely candidate. In short, no plausible modal
category of any kind can be claimed for the tonal type ? -g2-C in
Palestrina's oeuvre.
The implication of all these imbalances and anomalies in the
relationship of tonal types and modal categories is clear. Where the
musical characteristics of a tonal type fit the traditional features of a
modal category well, the tonal type was easily and often used to
represent it. Where the tonal type fits less well, as with the A-
tonalities and C-tonalities, it was less frequently used by composers as
a modal representative, or used ambiguously, or even not at all,
though it might be widely used in the repertory as a whole. In short, a
mode is always a tonal type, but a tonal type is not always a mode.
To summarize, then, contrasting patterns in system, in cleffing
representing ambitus, and in final sonority can be seen as objective
criteria minimally marking off one from another a certain number of
tonal types, each with its own distinctive musical profile. Though
these tonal types were frequently used to represent church modes it
leads only to confusion to treat them as though they somehow were
church modes. The anthropologist's distinction of "etic" from "emic"
is useful here, and the church modes might better be regarded as

33 See Reichert, "Martin Crusius," p. 210.

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 TONAL TYPES AND MODAL CATEGORIES 467

culture-contextual "emic" musical concepts while the tonal types are

objectively marked "etic" musical entities.
The unwitting confusion of "emic" with "etic" approaches seems
to be one principal epistemological obstacle to an understanding of the
tonal structure of Renaissance polyphony. Another obstacle is the
basically evolutionist stance of the important modern theories on
"modality" and "tonality." In one form Renaissance "modality" is
supposed gradually to change into modern "tonality," with in-
between stages, and the development is seen mostly as a result of
changes in compositional technique. This is the line followed in
Dahlhaus's Untersuchungen iiber die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonali-
tat. In another form "modality" is supposed not so much gradually to
have changed into "tonality" as gradually to have been replaced by it,
and the development is seen as an ever enlarging sphere of influence of
secular genres, already incipiently "tonal," over churchly genres with
their more conservative "modal" orientation. This view was put forth
in Edward Lowinsky's Tonality and Atonality in Sixteenth-Century Music
(Berkeley, 1961).
Any evolutionist model of a historical succession from modality to
tonality, however, fails on two cardinal historical points. First, as the
sixteenth century wore on interest in and evidence for modality of any
kind in the polyphonic repertory increased rather than lessened.
Second, the major composers of the second half of the century,
notably Palestrina and Lasso, followed the old system of eight church
modes when they followed any modal scheme at all, and did not even
go so far as to make use of Glarean's (and soon Zarlino's) more up-to-
date and systematic scheme of twelve modes.
All these problems are much eased by the notion of modal
representation, whereby etic tonal types and emic modal categories
are examined separately in their own terms-music-analytically and
music-theoretically, respectively-and correlated where the evidence
warrants. Any question as to how or whether "modality" evolved into
"tonality" is therefore really a non-question, since they are of different
orders. This is not to say that a particular sixteenth-century "tonal
type" did not evolve into a particular seventeenth-century and then
eighteenth-century "tonality." To the contrary, I am sure that
sixteenth-century ways of composing in the tonal types '-g2-G and
'-cl-G are directly ancestral to ways of composing in eighteenth-
century G minor, and that the very different tonal types b-g2-A and
4-cl-A are among the progenitors of A minor. I am just as sure that the
well-recognized if ill-defined differences between eighteenth-century
G minor and eighteenth-century A minor turn much more on musical

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 TABLE 15

The tonal plan of Books V-XIV (a 5) of Tylman Susato, ed., Liber [I-XV] ecclesiasticarum c

Book items system2 ambitus' final4 quantity e

V i-8, io-i6 9 g2 (D)G 15
9 cl A/D I Canis Dom

VI i-2,
3 cl 4-16
A/D ,
I g2 (D)G 15
Cobrise An

VII i-io, 13-i6 ,I cl

II c1 D/D/D (D)G 14
Crequillon
12 1, , cl G/G I Appenzeller
VIII 2-6, 8-20 , cl (D)G 18 (No. 4, c2
, 7 1 c1 (D)D 2 Clemens ler

IX 4-5, 9, 12 c (A)A 10Louvys 7,

14-17, 19-20 \Rogier i
I c c A/E I Manchicour
6 cl E/E I Cabbiliau A
8 cl E I Crespel Vox
II c3 ... F5 G I [Anon.] Carm
7 4 g2 A/A I Vaet Misere
I3 4 g2 A/D I Crespel D
2 ,bg2
18 g2 D/A I Crequillon
D/D I Clemens
3 , D/G I Louvys Ego
io ,, , cl G/G I Clemens lob

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 X 1-I6 g2 (C)F I6
17 4 cl C/C I Castileti D
XI 1-5, II, g2 (C)C lo [incls. Hollande
13-14, I6-17
6-io, i2, 5 5 cl (F)F 8
18 , c2... F4 A/F
XII 1-7, 10-12, 14-17 4 g2 (G)G 14
13 g2 C/C 2 Barbion Gi
9,2 C/C Hollander Bea
8 c2 ... F3 C I Hauricus Gau
XIII LOST

XIV 1-12, 15 4 g2 (D)D 13

13 l g2 A/A I Vaet Miser
14, I6, 17 c2 . F4 (G)G 3 Ruffus D

18 1, ,1, , cl G Clemens Qu
For individual titles see Ute Meissner, Der antwerpener Note
independently; Book XV ("ex omnibus tonis") ' 5/' 6 is a repri
represented in the five-voice volumes are modes I (V-VI), 2 (
representations of mode 8. Volume XIV contains pieces in the t
2 The symbol l designates cantus durus, as opposed to 6 for cant
or three flats--except VII, I (Manchicourt Pater peccavi), where
SAuthentic versus plagal ambitus are represented by cleffing. Ex
cleffing cl c3 c4 F4, indicated by the symbols g2 and cl, respect
4 The modalfinalis is represented by the pitch class of the lowes
parts in multi-part motets. An earlier part can always cadence w
part is shown in parentheses it means that in some of the piece

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470 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

aspects surviving from their pasts than on putative difference in

tunings. But in this evolution, from etic sixteenth-century tonal type
to etic eighteenth-century tonality, emic Renaissance modality can
play no direct part, however indispensable our proper understanding
of it may be to our proper understanding of polyphonic music in the
Renaissance itself.

Princeton University

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