- Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja
Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja [His given name is sometimes spelled "Bartolomeo", hsi surname "Ramis".] ("c".1440–1522) was a Spanish
mathematician ,music theorist , andcomposer . His only surviving work is theLatin treatise "Musica practica". [Available in an English translation by Clement A. Miller (American Institute of Musicology, 1999).]By his own testimony at the end of his "Musica practica", Ramos de Pareja was born in
Baeza , possibly around 1440. Most of the biographical details of his life must be culled from this treatise. He says that he was a student of Juan de Monte and that he obtained the chair of music at theUniversity of Salamanca for his commentaries on the works ofBoëthius ("cum Boetium in musica legeremus"). At Salamanca he had many debates withPedro de Osma concerning his musical theories. In 1482, when he published his "Musica", he revolutionarily proposed a new, five-limit division of themonochord , breaking from thePythagorean system that had dominated the medieval "ars antiqua " through Boëthius andGuido of Arezzo . This system ofmusical tuning yielded consonantperfect fourth s and fifths, but the thirds and sixths were rough. [Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca (2001), "A History of Western Music", 6th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, ISBN 0 393 97527 4), p. 148.] Ramos de Pareja's new division was only slowly accepted. Afterwards he worked inItaly , primarily atBologna , where his theories were engendered serious controversy, even polemics, from conservatives likeFranchino Gaffurio . After a long stay there he moved toRome , where he died shortly after 1521.Ramos de Pareja sought to heal the divide between music in theory and in practice. To this end he sought to render the dissonant thirds and sixths consonant. He proposed the intervals 5/4, 6/5, 5/3, and 8/5 for the division of the monochord, subsequently accepted universally. Less successful was his attempt to replace "extrachordal" notation with a system of eight syllables denoting the eight sounds of a
diatonic scale : "psal-li-tur-per-vo-ces-is-tas".The "Musica practica" also contains interesting commentary on
mensural notation ,chromatic alteration s, examples ofcounterpoint ,musical instruments , and the division of music and its effects. Ramos de Pareja was the first theorist to label the method now known as theGuidonian hand the "manus Guidonis"; prior to him it was called the "manus musicalis". He chose the title "Musica practica" to emphasise the practical rather than the theoretical/mathematical component of music. Throughout Ramos de Pareja alludes to his own compositions, though few survive.Notes
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