❦ Table ❧

Catalog of the books contained in the present volume, and what each one of them treats.

IN the first book, the praises of Music are treated with great skill and depth; it contains twenty chapters, which are also beneficial for the cultivation of the will.

IN the second book, I have placed introductions and the first principles of Music for those who are beginning to sing and play; it contains thirty-six chapters.

IN the third book, I treat great depths and secrets both in plainchant original: "canto llano"; the traditional unison singing of the Church and in polyphony original: "canto de organo"; measured music for multiple voices or instruments, regarding the understanding and singing of music; I speak of theory in such a way that I do not forget practice, and it contains fifty chapters.

THE fourth book contains the true understanding of the organ, of every kind of vihuela a plucked string instrument shaped like a guitar, popular in Renaissance Spain, and of the harp, as well as the method of tablature original: "cifrar"; a system of notation using numbers or letters and playing on these instruments, with great observations on antiquities and novelties; it has ninety-three chapters.

YOU will find in the fifth book a most profound and copious art of composing plainchant, of performing counterpoint the art of adding a melodic line against a given melody, and composing polyphony; the excellencies that singers have achieved are practiced here, their causes established, and their artifice declared through examples, so that anyone who wishes to use them may know how to imitate them with great certainty; it contains thirty-three chapters.

IN the sixth book, I compiled several errors of Music made by those who wrote on this faculty in our mother tongue, and I sufficiently refuted them and taught the truth; I divided it into treatises, of which there are four. At the end of these, I provide two others: in one, I speak of the genres of Music, and in the other, I set down the method for tuning my instruments; there are new things in all six treatises, especially regarding the tuning of instruments.