YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXTBOOKS ON SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COUNTERPOINT
virtually constitute a handbook in the style of Palestrina, and his detailed analyses
and prescriptions rest entirely on this limited excerpt from the enormous Palestrinian
oeuvre. 21 There is no doubt that the student will gain a very close insight into the compositional
techniques of this particular genre, but indeed it remains an open question
whether and to what extent the textbook prescriptions are actually valid beyond the
magnificats.
Without wandering off into a closer critique of the three works in question, in
short, Fiebach’s ‘Palestrina style’ is seemingly without any foundation at all,
Jeppesen’s is lacking a clear line of demarcation within the Palestrinian oeuvre, and
Hohlfeld’s is based on a fraction of this oeuvre so limited that it could seem obscure
what the student is actually about to learn in his so-called ‘School of musical thought’.
In all three cases, though, the common denominator of the uncertainty can be
narrowed down to the question of the source foundation of the books. For any author
of a textbook at least three different types of sources exist. One can select a musical
corpus and to the best of one’s ability extract and formulate the predominant rules
and characteristics of the music. Another possibility is to examine which rules and
instructions the writers of that time – that is, teachers and theorists, and in some cases
the composer himself – committed to paper. And finally, if the musical corpus is of
some age, you may investigate the writings of later researchers. The contents of a
textbook necessarily depend on which of the three types of sources the analyses and
the different sets of rules are based on.
Regarding the first source type, the book by Christoph Hohlfeld constitutes an
exception, focussing entirely on Palestrina’s magnificats. In none of the other textbooks
mention is made of a larger musical corpus being thoroughly analysed, which
often makes it difficult to assess to what extent the rules are based on the author’s
own analyses. 22 Therefore, it is often the balance between general rules and modelexamples
on the one hand, and actual citations from the polyphonic literature on the
other, that gives the best impression of the actual depth of the documentation. 23 The
21 Cf. Hohlfeld’s statement (CHRISTOPH HOHLFELD and REINHARD BAHR (1994), p. 14), that “wer indes
Authentisches über Anliegen und Verfahren Palestrinas erfahren und … kreativen Nutzen daraus ziehen will,
sollte wohl … den Meister selbst fragen, statt abstrahierten Formeln eines künstlichen Systems zu folgen.
Und wir können ihn fragen: Hat er doch 1591 gegen Ende seines Lebens Chorbücher mit 16 modellhaften
kleinen Magnificats drucken lassen, auf die wir uns … berufen können. Der Glücksfall, damit ein den
Bachschen Studierwerken vergleichbares ‘Handbuch’ im Palestrinastil zu besitzen, enthebt uns der
Peinlichkeit, an sterilen Surrogaten einen Stil zu treffen zu suchen, der in herrlichen Meistersätzen lebendiger
Musik authentisch belegt ist”.
22 Furthermore, it is not uncommon to come across inaccurate methodological statements, i.e. that “the study is
based on music itself, all the rules being deduced from the actual practices of sixteenth-century composers”,
in ARTHUR TILLMAN MERRITT (1939, 1946 3 ), p. xiv.
23 Actual counts of, for example, notevalues, thus providing an insight into the documentary material behind
stylistic prescriptions, are very rare to come across. In Malcolm Boyd’s textbook, though, a few is found supporting
his so-called ‘re-investigation of Palestrina’s music’; see MALCOLM BOYD (1973), p. 2, 11 f., 26
f., 33. Cf. HANSEN, Knud Jeppesens ‘Kontrapunkt’, p. 43.
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