Vincenzo Galilei - encyclopedia article about Vincenzo Galilei.

Vincenzo Galilei (1520 – July 2, 1591) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei. He was a seminal figure in the musical life of the late Renaissance, and contributed significantly to the musical revolution which demarcates the beginning of the Baroque era.

Biography

He was born around 1520 in Santa Maria a Monte (Tuscany), and began studying the lute at an early age. Sometime before 1562 he moved to Pisa, where he married into a noble family. In 1564 Galileo was born, the first of his either six or seven children; another son, Michelagnolo, born in 1575, also turned out to be an accomplished lutenist.

Vincenzo was a skilled player of the lute, and early in life attracted the attention of powerful, well-connected patrons. In 1563 he met Gioseffo Zarlino, the most important music theorist of the sixteenth century, in Venice, and began studying with him. Somewhat later he became interested in the attempts to revive ancient Greek music and drama, by way of his association with the Florentine Camerata (a group of poets, musicians and intellectuals led by Count Giovanni de' Bardi) as well as his contacts with Girolamo Mei, the foremost scholar of the time of ancient Greek music. Sometime in the 1570s his interests in music theory, as well as his composition, began to move in this direction. Some of Galilei's most important theoretical contributions involve the treatment of dissonance: he had a largely modern conception, allowing passing dissonance "if the voices flow smoothly" as well as on-the-beat dissonance, such as suspensions, which he called "essential dissonance." This describes Baroque practice, especially as he defines rules for resolution of suspensions by a preliminary leap away followed by a return to the expected note of resolution.

In addition, he made some substantial discoveries in acoustics, particularly involving the physics of vibrating strings and columns of air. It is possible that in establishing the relation between the tension on a string and its frequency of vibration he was the first to discover a non-linear physical law. But at the time, the expression of what we know call "physical laws" was the key issue. If Vincenzo made this discovery and expressed it using the language of mathematics, this would be an important generalization of the long-understood discovery of the pythagoreans that whole numbers (mathematics) determine harmonic scales. And if all musical relationships and physical measurements in instruments could be mathematically defined, then his son Galileo's insight that all physical relationships of any type can be mathematically defined, follows as a more natural step.

The use of recitative in opera is widely attributed to Galilei, since he was one of the inventors of monody, the musical style closest to recitative.

Galilei composed two books of madrigals, as well as music for lute, and a considerable quantity of music for voice and lute; this latter category is considered to be his most important contribution as it anticipated in many ways the style of the early Baroque. Many scholars credit him with directing the activity of his son away from pure, abstract mathematics and towards experimentation using mathematical quantitative description of the results – a direction which was of utmost importance for the history of science.

References

Article Vincenzo Galilei, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 0-02-872416-X
Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
Claude Palisca: "Vincenzo Galilei", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed March 7, 2007), (subscription access)

Notes

15th century - 16th century - 17th century
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July 2 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

It is the middle day of a non-leap year, because there are 182 days before and 182 days after.
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Anthem
Il Canto degli Italiani
(also known as Fratelli d'Italia)

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Lute can generally refer to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or a specific instrument from the family of European lutes.
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composer is a person who writes music. The term refers particularly to someone who writes music in some type of musical notation, thus allowing others to perform the music. This distinguishes the composer from a musician who improvises or plays a musical instrument.
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Galileo Galilei

Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Giusto Sustermans
Born January 15 1564^[1]
Pisa, Tuscany - Italy
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Renaissance (French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento; Spanish: Renacimiento), was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe.
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Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 and 1750.^[1] This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and was followed by the Classical music era.
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Country Italy
Region Tuscany
Province Province of Pisa (PI)
Mayor

Area km
Population
- Total (as of Dec.
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Regione Toscana

Map highlighting the location of Toscana in Italy

Capital Florence
President Claudio Martini
(DS-Union)
Provinces 10
Comuni 287
Area 22,990 km
- Ranked 5th (7.6 %)
Population (2006 est.
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Country Italy
Region Toscana
Province Pisa (PI)
Mayor Paolo Fontanelli
(since May 25, 2003)

Area km
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- Total (as of December 31, 2005)
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Michelagnolo Galilei (also sometimes spelled Michelangelo) (December 18, 1575 – January 3, 1631) was an Italian composer and lutenist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, active mainly in Bavaria and Poland.
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Gioseffo Zarlino (January 31 or March 22, 1517 – February 4, 1590), was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was possibly the most famous music theorist between Aristoxenus and Rameau, and made a large contribution to the theory of counterpoint as
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As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 through 1600.

See also: 16th century in literature

Events

1500s

1500s: Mississippian culture disappears.

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Country Italy
Region Veneto
Province Venice (VE)
Mayor Massimo Cacciari (since April 18 2005)

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The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama.
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Giovanni de Bardi (February 5, 1534 – September 1612), Count of Vernio, was an Italian literary critic, writer, composer and soldier.

Biography

Giovanni de' Bardi was born in Florence.
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Girolamo Mei (May 27 1519 – July,1594) was an Italian historian and humanist, famous in music history for providing the intellectual impetus to the Florentine Camerata, which attempted to revive ancient Greek music drama. He was born Florence, and died in Rome.
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Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century

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1570 1571 1572 1573 1574
1575 1576 1577 1578 1579

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In music, a consonance (Latin consonare, "sounding together") is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance, which is considered unstable.
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A nonchord tone, nonharmonic tone, or non-harmony note is a note in a piece of music which is not a part of the chord that is formed by the other notes sounding at the time.
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Acoustics is the branch of physics concerned with the study of sound (mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids). A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician. The application of acoustics in technology is called acoustical engineering.
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vibrating string produces a sound whose frequency in most cases is constant. Therefore, since frequency characterizes the pitch, the sound produced is a constant note. Vibrating strings are the basis of any string instrument like guitar, cello, or piano.
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Pythagoreanism is a term used for the esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were much influenced by mathematics and probably a main inspirational source for Plato and platonism.
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Recitative /rɛsɪtə'ti:v/ (also known by its Italian name "recitativo" (/retʃita'ti:vo/) is a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech.
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Opera is a form of musical and dramatic work in which singers convey the drama.^[1] Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition.^[2] An opera performance incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and
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monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death. (In the context of ancient Greek literature, monody, μονῳδία
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