YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXTBOOKS ON SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COUNTERPOINT
rhythm (in connection with the other preliminary paragraphs on notation, the ecclesiastical
modes, melody and harmony), 27 is remedied by Andrews (1958), 28 Daniel
(1997) 29 and others. For example, they provide more detailed rules concerning triple
mensuration, an aspect only superficially dealt with by Jeppesen.
Regarding the contrapuntal rules, already during the 1950s corrections and supplementations
were made, among others by Jeppesen’s Danish colleague, Povl
Hamburger, who in 1966 published an actual supplement to Jeppesen’s textbook,
Supplerende bemærkninger til den vokale kontrapunktlære, indicating a number of
passages and examples in Jeppesen’s work that in Hamburger’s opinion ought to be
replaced. Several of the rules formulated by Jeppesen are corrected, and Hamburger
provides supplementary rules on the ascending leap from the unaccented crotchet, on
isolated pairs of crotchets when they occur in place of the unaccented minim, and so
on. 30
On at least two occasions Jeppesen commented on the studies of Hamburger,
acknowledging a number of his findings, and provided his own set of supplementary
rules regarding the treatment of rests in the sixteenth century. 31 Neither Hamburger’s
nor Jeppesen’s corrections and additions to the Palestrina style are included in the
Jeppesen textbook. The only revised edition was published in Danish in 1946, and
no significant alterations were made in the subsequent editions in Danish, German
and English. 32 We can only guess as to the reason why Jeppesen did not publish a
further revised edition of the book, taking into account his own as well as other researchers’
findings. But it is a fact that already around 1950 the work was ripe for revision
on a number of points. Then in 1966 Hamburger published his supplement, presumably
recognizing that no revised edition would come from Jeppesen’s pen.
The accounts of mode and modality constitute another aspect of updating in the
textbooks. Jeppesen devotes a lengthy chapter to an explanation of the ecclesiastical
modes – an issue totally absent in his dissertation – concluding that “the polyphony
27 KNUD JEPPESEN (1930), in the English translation (1939), chapter 2, pp. 54–103.
28 HERBERT KENNEDY ANDREWS (1958), pp. 27–60.
29 THOMAS DANIEL (1997), pp. 47–90.
30 P. HAMBURGER, Supplerende bemærkninger til den vokale kontrapunktlære [Supplementary Remarks on
Vocal Counterpoint Instruction], Kolding, 1966, pp. 6, 7–9. Prior to this work, Hamburger had published
three studies on vocal polyphony, in which his analyses of the works of Palestrina and other composers are
carried out as systematically and thoroughly as Jeppesen’s, enabling Hamburger to document and substantiate
his changes of the rules on the basis of actual counts within an extensive musical corpus; see P. HAM-
BURGER, The Ornamentations in the Works of Palestrina, in Acta Musicologica, 22 (1950), pp. 128–147;
P. HAMBURGER, Studien zur Vokalpolyphonie, Copenhagen – Wiesbaden, 1956; P. HAMBURGER, Studien
zur Vokalpolyphonie II, in Dansk Årbog for Musikforskning, 4 (1964/1965), pp. 63–89.
31 K. JEPPESEN, Some Remarks to ‘The Ornamentations in the Works of Palestrina’ by Povl Hamburger, in
Acta Musicologica, 22 (1950), pp. 148–152; K. JEPPESEN, Et par notationstekniske problemer i det 16.
århundredes musik og nogle dertil knyttede iagttagelser [A Couple of Notational Problems in 16th-Century
Music and Some Related Observations], in Svensk Tidskrift för Musikforskning, 43 (1961), pp. 171–193.
32 Cf. footnote 6, and HANSEN, Knud Jeppesens ‘Kontrapunkt’, pp. 48-49.
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