Between Analysis and Music Theory: Towards a New Understanding of Renaissance Polyphony Tonal Space

In the twentieth century, the approach to polyphonic modality followed three different interpretative paths: Carl Dahl-haus’ teleological approach, Bernhard Meier’s historicist perspective, and Harold Powers’ radically empiricist assess-ment. The latter had the undeniable merit of highlighting the aporias of the other two; however, the idea that the mind of the sixteenth-century composer was, from the modal point of view, a kind of “tabula rasa” seems to contradict the latest findings of cognitive psychology as well as the historical fact that the modes of the Gregorian tradition were still fundamental in the training of musicians of the time. To resolve this aporia, we have long proposed a problematic ap-proach to polyphonic modality based on the observation that each tonal type responds differently to modal assignment by its very nature and independently of personal and stylistic choices. The research we have done so far has provided us with much confirmation of this idea; however, a thorough examination of the musical examples given by sixteenth-century theorists concerning modality is now required. Indeed, these examples often highlight precisely the problem-atic nature of modal attributions. Among these inconsistencies, one of the most significant concerns the role of the tenor voice in the definition of modes—something that is insistently asserted in theory but often disregarded in com-positional practice. The next stage of our research will therefore focus precisely on these examples.