jan 1, 1573 - De modis musicis antiquorum

Description:

This scholarly dissertation, which draws on classical writers and also summarizes contemporary music theory, deals both with the tuning and structure of the modes and also with their expressive and ethical effects.

Influenced strongly by Aristotle, Mei discusses the uses of the modes in education, therapy, poetry, and drama. In ancient times, he asserted, poems and plays were always sung--and always to a single melody line, whether by soloists or by the chorus, whether unaccompanied or doubled by instruments.

But he didn't actually have any examples so he didn't really know (except for some late Delphic hymns), but then because there were no examples, nobody could contradict him.

But he did think that there was no counterpoint, because monophony was more powerful and singular in achieving miracles of ethos, or moral influence through music. He looked with some envy at the artistic and ethical power that he believed Greek music possessed and sought in vain to find its contemporary equivalent amid the contrapuntal complexities of the ars perfecta. Mei argued that it would be necessary to go back to monophonic basics for a neoclassical revival.

Mei's beliefs influenced a group of Florentine humanists known as the Camerata.

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