(It.).
The terms prima pratica (‘first practice’) and seconda pratica arose during the controversy between Claudio Monteverdi and G.M. Artusi in the early years of the 17th century about the new style of composition and, in particular, its dissonance treatment.
The expression seconda pratica first appeared in print in a letter which must have been written in about 1601 signed ‘L'Ottuso Academico’, reproduced by Artusi in Seconda parte dell'Artusi (1603). The term occurs in reference to the practice of rising after a flattened note and descending after a sharpened one, which l'Ottuso defends, saying that all the moderns are doing it, ‘most of all those who have embraced this new second practice’. Artusi had criticized this and other melodic licences as well as the free introduction of dissonances in L'Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica (1600). Only in 1605 did Monteverdi reply briefly to this public attack; in a prefatory letter to his fifth book of madrigals he promised to defend his new practices by considerations based on both the reason and the senses in an essay he would entitle Seconda pratica, overo Perfettione della musica moderna. The second part of the title parodies Artusi's; the phrase seconda pratica, on the other hand, may have originated in the circles around Monteverdi or in Ferrara as a designation of the modern madrigal style.
Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, the composer's brother, attributed the term to Monteverdi in an explication (‘Dichiaratione’ in Scherzi musicali, 1607) of Claudio's brief preface which is a veritable manifesto for the new style. Giulio Cesare stated that in the first practice, for which Gioseffo Zarlino codified the rules, the paramount consideration for the composer was the ‘harmony’ or beauty of the contrapuntal part-writing, whereas in the second practice, for which Claudio hoped to sum up the rules, it is the text that reigns, and this obeys the precept of Plato, who proclaimed that in a song (melos), the harmonia (agreement or relation of sounds) and the rhythmos (time and rhythm) should follow the logos (word or thought) (Republic, 398d). Giulio Cesare interpreted these words to mean that counterpoint and rhythm should be subordinated to the text. Thus, if the text demands certain crudities of harmony and melody or irregularities of rhythm, these departures from the correct usages of the first practice are justified for the sake of expressing the meaning and rhythm of the text.
Giulio Cesare named as masters of the first practice Ockeghem, Josquin, Pierre de La Rue, Jean Mouton, Crecquillon, Clemens non Papa and Gombert, and he considered it to have reached its perfection with Adrian Willaert. According to Giulio Cesare the second practice was ‘revived’ from that of the ancient Greeks by Cipriano de Rore, who then was emulated by Gesualdo, Emilio de' Cavalieri, Fontanelli, a ‘Conte di Camerata’ (possibly Bardi or Girolamo Branciforte), Giovanni del Turco, Tomaso Pecci, Ingegneri, Marenzio, Wert, Luzzaschi, Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini.
Although these terms for the two practices were new, recognition of two diverse approaches to composition was apparently current when the controversy began. Girolamo Diruta (Seconda parte del Transilvano, 1609) distinguished between contrapunto osservato, strict counterpoint, and contrapunto commune, a freer modern style; Adriano Banchieri followed suit in Cartella musicale (1614). Both authors treated the two styles as if they existed side by side. The Monteverdi brothers, on the other hand, implied that the seconda pratica replaced the prima, although in fact a number of Monteverdi's sacred works are written in an idiom adapted from and adhering to the rules of the latter.
Marco Scacchi later pointed out (Breve discorso sopra la musica moderna, 1649) that unlike the composers of musica antica, who had available only one practice and style, modern composers could choose between two practices – the first, ut harmonia sit domina orationis (in which harmony is mistress of the word), and the second, ut oratio sit domina harmoniae (in which the word is mistress of harmony) – and three styles, the church (ecclesiasticus), the chamber (cubicularis) and the stage (scenicus) or theatrical (theatralis). Scacchi's classification was further developed by his pupil Angelo Berardi and by Christoph Bernhard and J.J. Fux. It eventually served Johann Mattheson as the basis for a comprehensive classification of musical styles in Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739).
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A. Tessier: ‘Les deux styles de Monteverde’, ReM, iii/6–8 (1921–2), 223–54
E. Katz: Die musikalischen Stilbegriffe des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1926), 83ff [letter of Marco Scacchi to Christoph Werner]
D. Arnold: ‘“Seconda Pratica”: a Background to Monteverdi's Madrigals’, ML, xxxviii (1957), 341–52
W. Witzenmann: ‘Stile antico e stile nuovo nella musica sacra di Claudio Monteverdi’, RIM, ii (1967), 372–81
G. Massera: ‘Dalle “imperfezioni” alle “perfezioni” della moderna musica’, Claudio Monteverdi e il suo tempo: Venice, Mantua and Cremona 1968, 397–408
C. Palisca: ‘The Artusi–Monteverdi Controversy’, The Monteverdi Companion, ed. D. Arnold and N. Fortune (London, 1968, 2/1985 as The New Monteverdi Companion), 127–58
J. Roche: ‘Monteverdi and the Prima Prattica’, ibid., 159–82
A. Gianuario: ‘Proemio all'“oratione” di Monteverdi’, RIM, iv (1969), 32–47
C.V. Palisca: ‘Marco Scacchi's Defense of Modern Music (1649)’, Words and Music: the Scholar's View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 189–235 [incl. Eng. trans. of Scacchi's Breve discorso]
G. de' Paoli, ed.: Claudio Monteverdi: lettere, dediche e prefazioni (Rome, 1973), 390–407
A. Newcomb: ‘Alfonso Fontanelli and the Ancestry of the seconda pratica Madrigal’, Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel, ed. R.L. Marshall (Kassel and Hackensack, NJ, 1974), 47–70
Z. Szweykowski: Musica moderna w ujeciu Marka Scacchiego (Kraków, 1977)
C.V. Palisca: ‘The Genesis of Mattheson's Style Classification’, New Mattheson Studies, ed. G.J. Buelow and H.J. Marx (Cambridge, 1983), 409–23
G. Tomlinson: Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1987), 21–30
M. Ossi: Claudio Monteverdi's Concertato Technique and its Role in the Development of his Musical Thought (diss., Harvard U., 1989)
T. Carter: ‘Artusi, Monteverdi, and the Poetics of Modern Music’, Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude Palisca, ed. N.K. Baker and B.R. Hanning (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992), 171–94
S.G. Cusick: ‘Gendering Modern Music: Thoughts on the Monteverdi–Artusi Controversy’, JAMS, xlvi (1993), 1–25
J. Haar: ‘Cipriano de Rore and the seconda pratica: some Ferrarese Testimonials’, Glazba, ideje i društvo: svečani zbornik za Ivana Supičića/Music, Ideas and Society: Essays in Honour of Ivan Supičić, ed. S. Tuksar (Zagreb, 1993), 69–87
G. Bonomo: ‘Melodia, overo Seconda pratica musicale: Monteverdi e la prospettiva di una nuova Istitutione’, Musicam in subtilitate scrutando, ed. D. Sabaino, M.T.R. Barezzani and R. Tibaldi (Lucca, 1994), 243–309
C. Palisca: Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford, 1994) [incl. ‘The Artusi–Monteverdi Controversy’, 54–87; ‘Marco Scacchi's Defense of Modern Music’, 88–120, with It. text]
CLAUDE V. PALISCA