Declaration of Musical Instruments

To the reader

Only to those who do not study it will it be obscure. I know well that everything is not for everyone, because there are things only for the curious and for friends of the measure The "measure" (compas) refers both to the musical beat and the mathematical proportions that governed Renaissance music theory., and these I write for only the one who is meant to understand them. I know that no one will go away hungry if they read my books with attention, because there is instruction for everyone. Due to the difficulty of printing citations in the margin, they were not included in this edition as the original had them, and as they were printed in the first book. Let the reader understand that if I cite some doctor In this context, "doctor" refers to a learned authority or scholar of the past. and do not say where he says it, he was cited and extracted with all faithfulness, and no falsehood will be found in this case. In everything I write regarding music, I follow the order of nature, proceeding from the imperfect to the perfect; first I state what is currently done, and if there is anything to be perfected or innovated, it is placed in the second position. Thus, speaking in common language, I treat what practical musicians do, brought into art and perfection as far as possible for me; and for the curious, I sometimes move further ahead. Thus I treat the vihuela A Spanish Renaissance string instrument similar to a guitar but tuned like a lute. and organs, and I provide many precepts in the fourth book; and at the end of the said book, and in the final treatise of the sixth book, I write to the contrary. Considering the time, and for whom I write, and the mechanics of the instruments, there is no contradiction in my doctrine: because first I set down what is used in the old instruments and craftsmanship for whoever wishes to use it, and afterward I move forward for the studious and the curious. I use some words at the beginning for beginners which, in the end, I reject for perfect musicians. I speak, then, with many, but in the end, I feel with few. I tell the truth: I did not write on some things as I would have liked and could have. If at some time these books of mine are translated into Latin or some other foreign language, when the wise musicians of other nations see me advising on certain small matters and rebuking things that no musician among them would fall into, let them understand that the warnings are given for beginners in Music. The errors I point out are not of the musicians currently in Spain—who are many and excellent, and any one of them, if he wished, is powerful enough to refute said errors—but of the barbarians who existed in the time of the wars, from whom some singers took certain bad habits. Sometimes the particular signs for the b-quadrado The "square B," the ancestor of the modern natural and sharp signs, used to indicate "hard" hexachords. could not be placed on the exact note where they belong, but rather below, above, or to the side of the note for which they are placed. Let whoever finds them thus understand that they are placed for the note that comes after them. When in my books you read some matter concerning canto llano Plainchant or Gregorian chant. or the organ, and wish to see greater things regarding it, look at the first four treatises of the sixth book, where I write against fourteen "arts of song" Probably referring to common, simplified textbooks of the era.; and that which I left unsaid in my books, moved and occasioned by what the said "arts" say, I have treated copiously. Lest anyone mark me with pride—saying that there are great known musicians in Spain, especially of the keyboard, vihuela, and every genre of composition, and such men have not written on the craft, while I, hidden and raised since the age of fifteen in the observance of the Franciscan religion Refers to the Order of Friars Minor, the Franciscans. where there is no exercise of Music, and Music not being my profession, had the audacity to write so extensively of it—I say that I hold myself as the least of the musicians of Spain (if the title of musician...