Ghiselin Danckerts

A few works of Danckerts have survived, but no complete publications. One motet which survives in manuscript is an eight-voice setting of Laetamini in domino; two other motets, for six and five voices, Suscipe verbum and Tu es vas electionis, were destroyed in the Allied bombing of Treviso on April 7, 1944, during World War II. Other surviving works include several madrigals and puzzle canons, two of which are included in Pietro Cerone's El Melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613). An autograph manuscript source containing sacred music, like as a Salve Regina, a Magnificat, a Mass (Missa de Beata Virgine), some hymns and motets, probably composed by Danckerts, has recently come to light. While relatively little of Danckerts' music has survived, his contemporary reputation as a composer and theorist was strong enough for him to be selected as one of the judges at the renowned Vicentino-Lusitano debate, and it is for his participation in this, and his subsequent writings on it and related topics, that he is best known. The judges, including Danckerts, ruled Lusitano the winner. As a result of the debate, Vicentino published his famous treatise L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (1555), and Danckerts replied with his treatise Sopra una differentia musica sententiata, which however remained unpublished. The treatise by Danckerts exists in three versions. The first was probably written in 1551, and Danckerts seems to have revised it twice: once around 1555 and once around 1559 or 1560. Its importance to music history is as a document by a performing musician, with strong conservative views, who documented contemporary practice in some areas – for example in interpretation of accidentals – where documentation is relatively scanty. One of the chapters in his treatise contains an account of a dispute between two singers in the papal choir over the correct application of accidentals to polyphonic parts which, as was normal at the time, contained none. Danckerts also wrote on the use of chromaticism, generally derisively, and opposed attempts to add modes to the current eight-mode system, for example as described by Glareanus in his 1547 publication, the Dodecachordon, which proposed the twelve modes, including the major and minor scales familiar in the present day. Artusi used portions of Danckerts' treatise in his reactionary 1600 publication Imperfettioni della musica moderna, which he wrote as an attack on Monteverdi.