at twelve o'clock on the said Monday they went with already three ... ... Don Alphonso ... Bill ...

PREAMBLE IN WHICH IS DEMONSTRATED

the Author's motive for creating this work: and a Universal

Prologue to the whole of it.

baptized Vngura of Saint George Likely a personal or family record added later to the page.

MANY days ago, I determined to write something regarding the Art of Music, as I began to do in Bergamo (a city in Lombardy, and my homeland) more than fifteen years ago: although what I wrote then was so little that I can say (and with great truth) it was nothing; for that same year I abandoned the enterprise and went to Sardinia to the service of the Cathedral of Oristano, with the determination to later move to Spain; which I fulfilled in the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-two.

The Author came to Spain in the year 1592.

And having traveled through various lands of these blessed Kingdoms, and conversed with many of the profession, I have understood that, although young men desire to know, many remain ignorant: and this, not for lack of natural desire, but either because they are weak of memory, or because they lack Masters; or if they have them, not all wish to teach them the little or much that they know (but it is well to believe that those who have such an intention, using such terms, are not among the best, nor even the mediocre).

Take what is said here with a right hand idiom: take in good faith, and not to a bad end.

Therefore, principally for these reasons, among others, I have now wished to satisfy my will by writing a treatise on Music. And let it be known I set myself to do this, not because I imagined moving forward, nor of reaching with my pen the writings of so many and such excellent writers, ancient and modern; Greeks, Latins, and those writing in the Romance languages; both Theorists and Practitioners; for not only to imagine it, but even to desire it, I would hardly have had the daring. But I set myself to this, besides the aforementioned, for two other causes. The first is to make myself—through the documents of those who have written on Music (not wishing to depart from their counsel)—a Master of myself:

Benefit to the one who writes.

because I noticed that by writing, the understanding becomes much more refined and elevated, and the memory takes on much more firmness and strength than it does by reading alone. The other is because (as Cicero teaches us in his Orator) the first in any kind of faculty does not take the place of the second, nor the second of the third, nor any of these of the fourth, and so on as long as the numbers last; and this becomes clearly expressed every day.

M. T. Cicero.

Because the primacy of Homer in poetry did not occupy the place of his successors, rather it ignited them, filling them with good and sweet envy. For which reason neither the many ancients, nor among the moderns our so celebrated poet Virgil, inflamed by such beautiful light, did not retreat, but rather by making trial of reaching the first mark, has earned such a name that he who once envied him is now envied himself. Who does not know that the divine Boethius the Roman was not frightened by the studies of his predecessors and elders, but rather with the sharpness of his judicious eye (speaking only of the speculative Speculative Music: the mathematical and philosophical study of music, rather than its performance) looked so justly and so high, that in Music among the Latins he holds the first place? But not for that has he taken the place of Guido d'Arezzo, nor of Franchinus Gaffurius, nor of Andreas Ornithoparchus, nor of Heinrich Glareanus, nor of Gioseffo Zarlino, nor even of the others, whether greater or lesser than those mentioned, whom I do not intend to recite in order. And although Morales Cristóbal de Morales, a giant of Spanish Renaissance polyphony further along from the si—

Blas ... day of Saint ... his companion ...

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