Lusitano, Vicente [Lusitanus, Vincentius]

(b ?Olivença [now Olivenza, Spain]; d after 1561). Portuguese composer and theorist. His family name is unknown: the surname ‘Lusitano’ simply means ‘Portuguese’. Much of the received knowledge of his life is based on the 18th-century biography of Barbosa Machado: Vicente was born in Olivença, became a priest of the order of St Peter, and taught with great success in Padua and Viterbo. He published a treatise, Introduttione felicissima, in Venice in 1561, which was translated into Portuguese by Bernardo da Fonseca and published in Lisbon in 1603. One of Barbosa Machado's sources calls him a mestizo. Except for the fact of his priesthood and the printing of his Italian treatise, none of these statements has yet been verified. More can be deduced from his writings and the documentation concerning his dispute with Nicola Vicentino in Rome in 1551.

Lusitano's book of motets, Liber primus epigramatum, was dedicated to the young Dinis de Lencastre, son of Dom Afonso de Lencastre, Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See, 1551–7. Lusitano praised Dinis's musical knowledge and implies patronage of some sort; the book bears his coat of arms. The theorist Giovan Tomaso Cimello provided a prefatory epigram, flattering Lusitano as another Orpheus. Cimello at some point was in the service of Marc'Antonio Colonna, to whom Lusitano dedicated his Italian treatise of 1553, calling him ‘mio Signore’, but not clarifying the relationship.

By 1561 Lusitano had converted to Protestantism and sought a post at the court of Christoph, Duke of Württemberg, at Stuttgart, supported by Pietro Paolo Vergerio, ex-bishop and the duke's counsellor. Though he was paid for the compositions he sent (which probably included the Beati omnes in D-Sl), Lusitano was not hired. All trace of him is lost after this point.

Lusitano is remembered chiefly for the debate with Nicola Vicentino, which gave rise to the latter's L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (1555) and is reported on there at the end of Book IV, and also to the unpublished treatise of Ghiselin Danckerts, one of the judges. It originated in an argument about a Regina caeli performed in the home of Bernardo Acciaioli in Rome: according to Vicentino, Lusitano claimed that the music was purely diatonic; Vicentino maintained that in all contemporary music the chromatic and enharmonic genera were mixed with the diatonic. The debate took place in June 1551 in various stages. Danckerts having been absent at the time of the final encounter, both parties presented their positions in writing, which Vicentino included in his treatise. Vicentino lost. Danckerts, however, claimed that Vicentino had falsified the report, and that the debate turned on whether composers knew in which genus they were composing, Vicentino denying, Lusitano affirming. (They were arguing at cross-purposes, since Vicentino claimed that the interval of a minor third belonged only to the chromatic genus, that of a major third only to the enharmonic, whereas Lusitano equated the chromatic genus with successive semitones and the enharmonic with quartertones.)

Apart from the last section of the Introduttione, Lusitano's treatise is ‘very easy and useful’, treating very briefly the Guidonian hand, hexachords (including transpositions to A, B, D and E), intervals, psalm intonations, and notation, with longer sections on proportions and counterpoint. A major section is devoted to ‘General rules for making imitations on a cantus firmus in two, three, and four voices’, followed by advice on composition. At several points Lusitano mentioned a longer ‘trattato di musica pratica’. Robert Stevenson plausibly suggested that this was the anonymous Spanish Tratado de canto de organo in F-Pn. Like the Introduttione, it lays particular emphasis on improvised counterpoint.

As a composer Lusitano wrote imitative counterpoint in the manner of Gombert, but with even fewer rests. He followed his own advice to cadence occasionally in other modes, but not to mix mollis and durus (G Dorian motets have notated A flats, as does a Regina caeli that may be the one that sparked the debate). His Iberian heritage is reflected in his use of G sharp. The eight-voice Inviolata and Praeter rerum are modelled on Josquin's motets; the former uses the same canon (but with different rests between phrases), the latter the same melody and mensuration. The works in the Granada manuscripts attributed to ‘Lusitano’ (two have a double attribution, Avilés/Lusitano, unless this should be read as Avilés Lusitano) are possibly not his.

WORKS

MSS in E-GRcr are given parenthetical nos. following López-Calo

motets

madrigal

WRITINGS

Introduttione facilissima, et novissima, di canto fermo, figurato, contraponto semplice, et in concerto, con regole generali per far fughe differenti sopra il canto fermo, a 2, 3, et 4 voci, et compositioni, proportioni, generi. s. diatonico, cromatico, enarmonico (Rome, 1553/R1989, 3/1561)

Tratado de canto de organo, F-Pn esp.219, ed. H. Collet: Un tratado de canto de órgano (siglo XVI) (Madrid, 1913); anon. in MS, attrib. Lusitano in Stevenson

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Barbosa Machado: Bibliotheca lusitana, iii (Lisbon, 1752/R), 779

C. Dahlhaus: ‘Die Formen improvisierter Mehrstimmigkeit im 16. Jahrhundert’, Musica, xiii (1959), 163–7

E.E. Lowinsky: Afterword to facs. of Nicola Vicentino: L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, DM, 1st ser., Druckschriften-Faksimiles, xvii (1959)

R. Stevenson: ‘Vicente Lusitano: New Light on his Career’, JAMS, xv (1962), 72–7 [should be read in the light of Alves Barbosa]

J. López-Calo: ‘El Archivo de música de la Capilla Real de Granada’, AnM, xiii (1958), 103–28

H.W. Kaufmann: The Life and Works of Nicola Vicentino (1511–c.1576), MSD, xi (1966), esp. 22–32

M.A. Alves Barbosa: Vicentius Lusitanus: ein portugiesischer Komponist und Musiktheoretiker des 16. Jahrhunderts (Lisbon, 1977)

G. Gialdroni: Introduction to facs. of Vincenzo Lusitano: Introduttione facilissima (Lucca, 1989)

BONNIE J. BLACKBURN