ZARLINO, GIOSEFFO Italian musical the orist, surnamed from his birthplace ZARLINUS CLODIENSIS, was born at Chioggia, Venetia, in 1517 (not 1540, as Burney and Haw kins say). Studying in his youth for the Church, he was admitted to the minor orders in 1539 and ordained deacon in 1541 at Venice; but he soon devoted himself entirely to the study of music under the guidance of Adrian Willaert, then choirmaster at St. Mark's. Willaert, dying in 1562, was succeeded by Cipriano di Rore, on whose removal to Parma in 1565 Zarlino was elected choirmaster. Though now remembered chiefly as the earliest advocate of a system of equal temperament for fretted and keyed instruments and for his invaluable contributions to the theory of music, he was both a practical musician and a composer. His printed works consisted of a volume entitled Modulationes Sex V ocum (Venice, 1566) and a few motets and madrigals scattered through the collections of Scotto and other contemporary pub lishers, but he also produced and superintended the public per formance of some important pieces in the service of the republic. The only example we possess of his compositions on a grand scale is a ms. mass for four voices, in the library of the Philharmonic Lyceum at Bologna. He died at Venice on Feb. 14, or, according to some Feb. 4, 1590.
Zarlino's first theoretical work was the Istitutioni Armoniche (Venice, 1558; reprinted 1562 and 1573). This was followed by the Dirnostrationi Armoniche (Venice, 1571; reprinted 1573) and by the Sopplimenti Musicali (Venice, 1588). Finally, in a com plete edition of his works published shortly before his death Zar lino reprinted these three treatises, accompanied by a Tract on Patience, a Discourse on the True date of the Crucifixion of Our Lord, an essay on The Origin of the Capuchins, and the Resolu tion of Some Doubts Concerning the Correction of the Julian Calendar (Venice, 1589).
The Istitutioni and Dimostrationi Armoniche deal, like most other theoretical works of the period, with the whole science of music as it was understood in the i6th century. The earlier chap
ters, treating chiefly of the arithmetical foundations of the science, differ but little in their line of argument from the principles laid down by Pietro Aron, Zacconi, and other early writers of the Boeotian school; but in bk. ii. of the Istitutioni Zarlino boldly attacks the false system of tonality to which the proportions of the Pythagorean tetrachord, if strictly carried out in practice, must inevitably lead.
Again, Zarlino was in advance of his age in his classification of the ecclesiastical modes. These scales were not wholly abol ished in favour of our modern tonality in the 17th century. Eight of them, it is true, fell into disuse ; but the mediaeval Ionian and Hypo-ionian modes are absolutely identical with the modern natural scale of C; and the Aeolian and Hypo-aeolian modes differ from our minor scale, not in constitution, but in treatment only. Mediaeval composers, however, regarded the Ionian mode as the least perfect of the series and placed it last in order. Zarlino thought differently and made it the first mode, changing all the others to accord with it. His numerical table, therefore, differs from all others made before or since, prophetically assign ing the place of honour to the one ancient scale now recognized as the foundation of the modern tonal system.
These innovations were violently opposed by the apostles of the monodic school. Vincenzo Galilei led the attack in a tract entitled. Discorso Intorno alle Opere di Messer Gioseffe Zarlino, and fol lowed it up in his famous Dialogo, defending the Pythagorean system in very unmeasured language. It was in answer to these strictures that Zarlino published his Sopplementi.