TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Zarlino's Senario and the Development of the Major/Minor Keys with particular
Reference to English Music Theory
Peter Hauge
In England, during the seventeenth century some very interesting music-theoretical
discussions took place among the growing number natural philosophers, most
of them connected with the Royal Society of London either as members or
as consultants. Their treatises have received scant attention among present-day
musicologists. When studying these treatises in the context of contemporary
music theory (i.e. from Thomas Morley (1597) to Henry Purcell (1694), for
instance), some very interesting conclusions can be drawn concerning the
development of the recognition of major/minor keys. Thus, reading their
statements on the definition and function of Zarlino's senario principle
(1558), it becomes clear that the often quoted pairing of the major third
and sixth into one group and the minor third and sixth into another does
not oppose the recognition of the invertibility of intervals; rather, the
two groups were interpreted as two distinct scale types. At the end of
the seventeenth century, English theorists such John Birchensha (c.1664)
and William Holder (1694) also added the seventh degree, hence in effect
proposing the major and minor keys. It can be concluded that in England,
at least, it was the diatonic scales, C major and A minor, which from the
beginning were the fundamental keys and functioned as such. It was not
the Ionian and Aeolian modes or the Dorian and Lydian modes, which ultimately
developed into major/minor keys. It therefore seems highly probable that
the major/minor keys developed independently from earlier theories of modes,
and that especially Zarlino's attempt to find a tenable argument for including
the thirds and sixths as consonances was the original impetus.
Last updated on 21 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita