(1) The various notational systems which were used for the writing down of early organ music (prior to 1600). They are usually distinguished as Italian, Spanish, etc., organ tablature. However, in Italy, as well as in France and England, organ music was notated in virtually the same way as it is today, except for minor details, such as variations in the number of the staff lines. Only in Germany and in Spain was organ music (more generally, keyboard music) written in systems which deserve the name tablature. See *Tablatures. (2) The manuscripts and printed books of early organ music. As under (1), the name should properly be restricted to the German and the Spanish sources. Practically complete lists of organ tablatures (French, Italian, English, German, and Spanish) are given in WoHN ii, 32ff, 27off, 278. Cf. also the article “Orgeltabulaturbuch” in RiML, where the name is restricted to the sources written in German tablature.
Monthly Archives: February 2017
academy
A scholarly or artistic society. The term first referred to a grove in Athens sacred to the mythological hero Academus, where Plato established a school as early as 385 B.C.E. It gained new currency with the revival of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought in the Renaissance. Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), the central figure in this revival, created around 1470 a loosely structured “Platonic Academy” in Florence, whose members included the most illustrious poets and men of letters of that city. Many of these men were also accomplished musicians, including Ficino himself, Lorenzo de’ Medici (“The Magnificent”), and Baccio Ugolini; and music, whose moral and curative effects played a large part in Ficino’s thought, figured importantly in the meetings of the Academy.