- Pietro Aron
Pietro Aron, also known as Pietro Aaron (1489 – after 1545), was an Italian music theorist and
composer . He was born inFlorence and probably died inBergamo (other sources state Florence orVenice ).Biography
Little is documented of Aron's early life, but it is known that he was of
Jewish origin, and was educated in Italy. Musically he seems to have been largely self-taught. He makes the claim in his writings that he was personally familiar with Obrecht, Josquin,Heinrich Isaac , and others while he was inFlorence ; if true, this would have had to have been in the late 1480s to mid 1490s. Between 1515 and 1522 he was cantor at the cathedral ofImola , and in 1516 he became a priest there. By February 1523 he had gone toVenice , was cantor ofRimini Cathedral and worked forSebastiano Michiel , who was Grand Prior of theKnights of St. John of Jerusalem . In 1525 he was "maestro di casa" in a Venetian house. In 1536, after the death of Michiel, he joined a monastery in Bergamo where he remained until the end of his life; at least one publication dates from this time.Aron's significance mainly derives from his treatises on the contrapuntal practice of the period. His earliest treatise, "De institutione harmonica", is on counterpoint, and is written in Italian: most scholarly writings of the time are in
Latin , but Aron preferred the vernacular. In "Thoscanello de la musica" (later "Toscanello in musica") he was the first to observe the change from linear writing to vertical: this was the first period in music history where composers began to become conscious of chords and the flow ofharmony , and Aron includes tables of four-voice chords, the beginning of the trend which was to result infunctional tonality in the early 17th century. He also discussestuning , and the book is the first to describequarter-comma meantone . Other topics covered by Aron include the use of the eight modes, four-voicecadence s, notation of accidentals.Aron was a friend and frequent correspondent of music theorist
Giovanni Spataro . Only Spataro's letters to Aron have survived. Topics discussed by the two include contemporary composers and composition, notation, and especially the use of accidentals.While Aron was known as a composer and frequently refers to his own works in his writings, only one composition of his survives.
Published Works
*"Libri tres de institutione harmonica" (Bologna, 1516 ; this on Vicifons)
*"Thoscanello de la musica" (Venice, 1523; four reprints as "Toscanello in musica" 1525-1562)
*"Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato" (Venice, 1525; partially reproduced and retranslated into English in 1950 in O. Strunk's "Source Readings in Music History", N.Y.)
*"Lucidario in musica di alcune opinione antiche e moderne" (Venice, 1545)
*"Compendiolo di molti dubbi, segreti, et sentenze intorno al canto fermo et figurato" (Milan, posthumous - title page bears the inscription: "In memoria eterna erit Aron")Bibliography
J.W. Link, Jr., "Theory and Tuning: Aaron's Mean Tone Temperament" (Boston, 1963); Peter Berquist, "Mode and Polyphony around 1500; Theory and Practice", "Music Forum, I (1967).
References and further reading
*
Gustave Reese , "Music in the Renaissance". New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
*Bonnie Blackburn: "Pietro Aaron", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed November 12, 2005), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)]
*Slonimsky, Nicolas - "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians", 7th ed. 1984. Schirmer Books, New York, N.Y.ISBN :0-02-870270-0.
* (Vicifons)
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