Nicola Vicentino
Nicola Vicentino ( Vicenza * 1511, † 1572 in Rome) was an Italian composer and music theorist.
Vicentino studied with Adrian Willaert in Venice and later worked in Ferrara, Rome and Vicenza as Kapellmeister. He was a representative of the musical Renaissance and attempted a revival of the chromatic and enharmonic Tongeschlechts antiquity. He transferred the idea in a free, non- historically faithful manner to the polyphonic music and composed five-part madrigals in a chromatically enriched style, which later took up his classmates at Cyprian de Rore and Willaert Carlo Gesualdo. The ancient enharmonic, which made use of smaller intervals than the semitone, inspired him to design an archi harpsichord with 31 tones per octave, which extended the then Meantone transponierfähig.
Main work
- Vicentino Nicola L ' antica musica moderna ridotta all prattica, Rome 1555