Pietro Aron

Pietro Aron, also Pietro Aaron (* around 1480 in Florence; † after 1545 Venice), was an Italian music theorist and composer.

Life

Aron was a priest in 1516 in Imola, in 1520 there itself singer and the town had music lessons. From 1523 he was engaged in the service of Sebastiano Michiel in Venice, to whom he dedicated his treatise Thoscanello de la musica 1523. 1536 Aron became a monk in a Kreuzherrenkloster near Bergamo. 1545 he lived to see the publication of his Lucidario, but probably not that of the undated Compendiolo.

He wrote in the preface of Thoscanello from its simple origin and seems to have been self-taught.

Theoretical work

In his writings he dealt primarily with counterpoint and composition technique, the modal scale system ( particularly the possible application of the older church modes of the contemporary practice ) and the Musica ficta ( the use of sign). He described one of the first theorists Meantone. He published not in Latin, but in Italian, which was new for a music theorist of his time.

Importance

Aron tried the ancient teachings of the church modes, the counterpoint and the Musica ficta applied to contemporary music, as this had already undergone a massive transformation, with its discussions are important as a historical document. The correspondence with his friend Giovanni Spataro show him as a practical man, who was going on sometimes unsystematic. Spataro pointed him to some errors, and went so far that he criticized the Trattato as " senza ordine et verità " in his criticism.

Very important was his precise description of the mean tone, the most common tuning for keyboard instruments was in the following years and was only superseded by Andreas Werckmeister's well-tempered tunings.

Writings

• Libri tres de institutione harmonica, Bologna 1516
• Thoscanello de la musica, Venice, 1523; three reprints as Toscanello in musica 1529, 1539, 1562, occasional emphasis in 1557 it seems to have not given.
• Trattato della natura et di tutti gli cognitione Tuoni di canto figurato, Venice 1525; Partly translated into English in 1950 O. Strunk: Source Readings in Music History, New York
• Lucidario in musica di alcune opinione antiche e modern, Venice 1545
• Compendiolo di molti dubbi, segreti, et al canto sentenze intorno Fermo et figurato, Milan posthumum, after 1545

Compositions

• Io non posso più durare for four voices, in: Frottole libro quinto, Venice 1505
• Credo for six voices, In illo tempore loquente Jesus, Letatus sum, fair for five voices, motet on the cantus firmus " Da pacem ", motets and madrigals. All the latter works listed as missing.