Vincenzo Galilei

Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520 in Santa Maria a Monte, † July 2, 1591 in Florence ) was an Italian lutenist, composer and music theorist. He is the father of the great scientist Galileo Galilei and of the composer Michelangelo Galilei.

Vincenzo Galilei was a student of the music theorist Zarlino Gioseffo and Girolamo Mei. Later he worked for some time as a sound teacher in Pisa, before he finally moved to Florence. In Florence he was a member of the Florentine Camerata of Giovanni de ' Bardi, a group that had the revival of classical models the goal.

In his de ' Bardi dedicated work Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna of 1581, he was a first representative of a Aristoxenos Renaissance because he took the view that the sounds must be tuned equally- tempered; he gave the string proportion 18:17 to be a very good approximation of equally-tempered semitone. In the same paper, he also strove for a revival of the ancient monody (unanimity) and turned against the traditional polyphony. This he did but in a modified manner, such that he propagated the solo voice with instrumental accompaniment. His work was seminal for the development of the recitative. He himself composed the first monodic works with lute accompaniment, but these are not preserved. Are obtaining from him but some polyphonic madrigals and lute pieces.

In his polemic Discorso intorno all'opere di knife Gioseffo Zarlino ( "Treatise on the Lord's works Gioseffo Zarlino " ) he refuted 1589 inter alia, the adoption of his teacher Zarlino that the tradition of the legend of Pythagoras is physically correct in the forge, as the pitch of a string is obviously not proportional to the tensile stress. The quantitative description of the physical conditions on vibrating strings were then discovered in the 17th century by Galileo's son Galileo Galilei and Marin Mersenne.

Publications, editions of texts and translations

  • Vincenzo Galileo: Discorso intorno all'opere di knife Gioseffo Zarlino ( 1589 )
  • Vincenzo Galileo: Dialogo della musica antica et moderna, ed. Fabio Fano, Reale Accademia d' Italia, Rome 1934 ( after the issuance Florence 1581)
  • Vincenzo Galileo: Dialogue on ancient and modern music, ed. Claude V. Palisca, Yale University Press, New Haven 2003, ISBN 0-300-09045-5 (English translation with introduction)
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