25 | December | 2015 | Micheline's Blog

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Ave Maria, Count Bardi, equal temperament, Florentine Camerata, Giulio Caccini, Sumi Jo, Vincenzo Galilei

Annonce aux bergers (Announcement to the Shepherds)
Livre d’images de Madame Marie Hainaut, vers 1285-1290.
Paris BnF Naf 16251

A few years ago, I published a post on Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo Galilei‘s father. Vincenzo was a member of Count Giovanni de’ Bardi‘s Florentine Camerata.

I spoke of Giulio Caccini who published an important treatise on music, Le Nuevo Musiche. The difficulty at the time was “temperament.” For instance, using a string instrument not restricted by a keyboard, one could produce more sounds.

Vincenzo Galilei suggested “equal temperament.” A chromatic scale would contain twelve keys: the five black keys and seven white keys of a piano keyboard. It was not perfection, but instruments could play together harmoniously and it has not been replaced.

In my earlier post, I featured Giulio Caccini’s “Ave Maria.” Russian composer Vladimir Vavilov wrote an “Ave Maria” from an anonymous source. The source was Caccini.

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