Musica Ficta

Singers added unmarked sharps and flats, so chromaticism entered polyphony before keyboards did.

Related

RenaissanceMedievalAccidental

The page shows no sharps and no flats, yet the singing often carried semitones. Medieval singers supplied them from unwritten rules, and theorists called the invisible change feigned music.

Time and place

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, in the churches and courts of Paris, Florence and Rome. No single year marks a beginning. Theorists discussed musica ficta from the thirteenth century, and the practice ran to the edge of the Baroque. The chronology is still argued, so only centuries can be given.

What happened

Polyphony needed a semitone rising into a cadence, had to avoid the tritone, and had to adjust the place of mi and fa within the hexachord. Most of these changes were never written down; singers decided them on the spot by rule. The usual moves were to raise the note before a cadence, or to choose a flat on B or F so that mi would not collide with fa. The rules were not one code. Customs differed by region and by choir, so the same music might be sung with different semitones in different churches. One mnemonic told singers that a note above la should be sung as fa, which meant choosing B flat.

What changed

Chromaticism entered music before keyboards were common, hidden inside performance habit. Singers had to know theory, or they could not decide what to raise and what to lower, and so singing and theory became entangled. Notation then absorbed more and more accidentals, and by the late sixteenth century composers began marking them, shrinking the performer's discretion. Editors still argue about the unwritten notes, and anyone recording Renaissance polyphony must first choose an edition.

Listen for the turn

Begin with Josquin's Mille regretz, where the semitone pushing into each cadence was probably supplied by singers and is absent from the page. Then Ockeghem's Fors seulement, in which one melody passes between voices and every cadence demands a fresh decision; the recording here is a piano arrangement, so the player makes the semitones. Finally Palestrina's Aestimatus sum, more restrained in chromaticism, its cadences tightened by a small rise. Most of the semitones you hear come from modern editions, not from the original ink.

Related

This turn spans Medieval and Renaissance; see Accidental.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry Musica ficta — rules and chronology checked, not quoted
• Margaret Bent, Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta (Routledge) — editorial debate checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.