Scientist of the Day - Franchino Gaffurio

Cosmic monochord, woodcut frontispiece, Practica musicae, by Franchino Gaffurio, 1496, sold by Pandolfini auction house, Dec. 16-17, 2019 (pandolfini.it/uk)

Franchino Gaffurio, an Italian composer and music theorist, died June 25, 1522, at the age of 71. Gaffurio was the Maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Milan for many years, and it is often said that he was a good friend of another notable Milanese resident, Leonardo da Vinci, although there is little evidence to support this. It is also often said that Leonardo's Portrait of a Musician (1490; second image) depicts Gaffurio, again with no documentary evidence, but it could be true.  But Gaffurio was famous in his day, and he wrote three very influential treatises on music. The second of these, called Practica musicae, the Practice of Music, was published in 1496. The book begins with a frontispiece that is probably better known than Gaffurio himself, because it captures so well the place of music in the Renaissance world.  We do not own this book, but fortunately a copy was auctioned off not long ago, and the auction house posted a good image of the frontispiece on its website (first image), from which we were able to make several details (fourth-sixth images)

Leonado da Vinci, Portrait of a Musician, possibly Franchino Gaffurio, ca 1490, Pinacoca Ambosiana, Milan (Wikimedia commons)

We see what appears to be a cosmic lyre or monochord, with the earth at the bottom, the seven planets rising up in order, and the starry sphere above (and with Cerberus as a fretboard). This idea of a cosmic tuning has its origin ultimately in Plato, but more directly in Boethius, an early 6th-century Platonist who distinguished between musica mundana, the music of the spheres; musica humana, the music that excites the passions of the human soul, and musica instrumentalis, the tuning and playing of instruments. In the woodcut, the planets are spaced like a musical scale, and you can see the words “tone” or “semitone” denoting the intervals that make up the planetary tuning, the musica mundana. None of this is particularly new.

First page with woodcut border, Practica musicae, by Franchino Gaffurio, 1496, sold by Pandolfini auction house, Dec. 16-17, 2019 (pandolfini.it/uk)

What is novel in the Gaffurio woodcut is that each planet is also assigned a mode, so you see the term Dorian next to the Sun, and Phrygian alongside Mars. We have two modes in modern Western music, major and minor, but the Greeks had a much richer modal repertoire, seven in all, with wonderful names like Lydian and Mixolydian, and the number grew to eight in medieval church music. Each mode corresponds to the scale you get if you start on a particular piano key and just play the white notes; go from D to d and you get the Dorian mode, start on F and you get the Lydian. Each mode was associated by the Greeks with a particular human passion, so that a Phrygian tune was considered warlike, and a Dorian scale denoted benevolence and calm. By assigning each planet a mode, as Gaffurio did, you allow musica mundana to interact with musica humana, revealing how human passions are affected by the planets.

Bottom third of the cosmic monochord, detail of woodcut frontispiece, Practica musicae, by Franchino Gaffurio, 1496, sold by Pandolfini auction house, Dec. 16-17, 2019 (pandolfini.it/uk)

The interaction becomes even richer when we notice that each planet and mode is also associated with one of the nine Muses at the far left, so that Erato, the Muse of Lyric and Erotic Poetry, has an affinity with Mars, and Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance, is aligned with Venus. And there is much more – we haven’t even mentioned the Three Graces at the top and the notes of the Greek scale – but we have to cut further discussion short in order to make a point.

Middle third of the cosmic monochord, detail of woodcut frontispiece, Practica musicae, by Franchino Gaffurio, 1496, sold by Pandolfini auction house, Dec. 16-17, 2019 (pandolfini.it/uk)

In the 15th and 16th centuries, everyone knew that events in the macrocosm – the greater world – affect the microcosm – the human realm. But it was difficult to know what to do about it. Suppose you were a late 15th century philosopher, like Marsilio Ficino, and you felt lousy. Something in the macrocosm was obviously screwing things up, probably Saturn, the melancholy planet. Ficino, well aware of the connections between musica mundana and musica humana, and quite conversant with the muses, knew what to do, and he gave us a recipe for coming out of the doldrums. You simply need to discard the influence of Saturn and attract the influence of a more benign planet, such as the Sun, and you do that by putting on a golden robe that is the color of the Sun, picking up your lute and playing an ode in praise of the Sun, being sure to use the Dorian mode and invoking the muse Melpomene in the process (and, Ficino adds surreptitiously, it helps if you drink wine while you are doing all this). Before you know it, your disposition brightens, the blues are gone, and you feel benevolent and happy, a sure sign that you are now safely under the solar cloak. You are now in proper tune with the world.

Top third of the cosmic monochord, detail of woodcut frontispiece, Practica musicae, by Franchino Gaffurio, 1496, sold by Pandolfini auction house, Dec. 16-17, 2019 (pandolfini.it/uk)

It was a wonderful realm, the Renaissance cosmos, full of mysterious forces and influences, tunings and temperaments, all of them at the beck and call of the magus. It’s a shame, in a way, that the mechanical philosophy of the 17th century, with its denial of magical forces, swept it all away, even if it turned out to be a good thing, in the long run

Pythagoras discovering the numerical basis of musical harmony, woodcut, Theorica musicae, by Franchino Gaffurio, 1492, from a xerox of copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Wikimedia commons)

The three treatises by Gaffurio are not especially scarce, but none are available online, without a xerox intermediary. One could make the case that our library should seek to acquire one or more of Gaffuio’s books.  After all, in the Renaissance university curriculum, music was one of the four mathematical arts, along with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. If you want to learn about Renaissance attitudes toward Pythagoras, Philolaus, Plato, or Boethius, Gaffurio would be a great resource to have. The Theorica musicae (1492) has a famous woodcut as well, showing, in its four panes, Pythagoras discovering the harmonies of bells, weights, glasses, hammers, and strings under tension (the monochord), which we see here in a low-quality reproduction (seventh image). It would be nice to own this book and make high-quality images available to all.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.