''Musica ficta'' (from Latin, "false", "feigned", or "fictitious" music) was a term used in European music theory from the late 12th century to about 1600 to describe pitches, whether notated or added at the time of performance, that lie outside the system of ''musica recta'' or ''musica vera'' ("correct" or "true" music) as defined by the hexachord system of

Guido of Arezzo Guido of Arezzo ( it, Guido d'Arezzo; – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A Benedictine monk, he is regarded as the inventor—or by some, developer—of the modern staff notation that had a ma ...

Modern use

Today, the term is often loosely applied to all unnotated inflections (whether they are actually ''recta'' or ''ficta'' notes; see below) that must be inferred from the musical context and added either by an editor or by performers themselves. However, some of the words used in modern reference books to represent ''musica ficta'', such as "inflection", "alteration", and "added accidentals" lie outside the way many Medieval and Renaissance theorists described the term.

Historical sense and relation to hexachords

Throughout the period that incorporated ''musica ficta'', singers sight read melodies through a series of interlocked hexachords that formed the backbone of the solmization system—a method that eventually became the modern system of tonic solfa. To sing notes outside the ''recta'' pitches of the

gamut In color reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or color gamut , is a certain ''complete subset'' of colors. The most common usage refers to the subset of colors which can be accurately represented in a given circ ...

(the range generally available to composers and performers, i.e., from G at the bottom of the modern bass clef to E at the top of the treble clef), performers had to invoke "fictive" hexachords to sing pitches such as F or E. Hexachords normally were formed only on C, F, and G, and the interval pattern within each of these hexachords was always tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone, which was sung as ''ut re mi fa sol la''. Hence, if singers needed to sing the pitch F, they had to think of the half step between F and G as the solmization syllables ''mi'' and ''fa'', for ''mi-fa'' always represented the half step within a hexachord. When they did this, they invoked a nominal hexachord starting on the note D, and this hexachord was considered fictive because it contained a false or fictitious F (that is, a pitch that did not belong to the ''recta'' notes of the gamut). Moreover, since the hexachord built on F naturally contained a B, music based on a scale involving the soft or F hexachord had the pitch B as part of the ''recta'' notes of the scale. However, in the 16th century, the signs used to represent these fictive notes (the signs for ''b mollis'' [] and ''b durum'' []) came to acquire their modern meanings of raising or lowering notes by a half step. Adrian Le Roy wrote that "b sharpe doeth holde up the tune halfe a note higher, and b flatte, contrarywise doeth lette it fall halfe a note lower".But as early as 1524, theorists also had this understanding of these signs. Moreover, near the beginning of the 17th century, Michael Praetorius employed the words ''signa chromatica'' (chromatic signs) to refer to sharps and flats. Hence, musicians of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance did not all share a uniform interpretation of this concept.

Practical application

The signs ''b mollis'' and ''b durum'' were not notated with any regularity in vocal sources of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, and although the principles that singers used to supply the missing information were discussed in theoretical treatises, the explanations are far too cursory to enable modern musicians to reconstruct the old practices with any degree of accuracy. Tablatures, however, because they turn implicit solmization practices into explicit pitches, provide a precise view of how musicians, or at least those in the 16th century, added sharps and flats to vocal sources (the first tablatures were published in the early 16th century). Common practices: * Many musicians in earlier times found the linear (melodic) and vertical (harmonic) dissonance caused by clashes between ''mi'' and ''fa'' aurally offensive (especially when it involved

tritone In music theory, the tritone is defined as a musical interval composed of three adjacent whole tones (six semitones). For instance, the interval from F up to the B above it (in short, F–B) is a tritone as it can be decomposed into the three a ...

s and octaves), and they regularly removed the dissonance. Exceptions to this practice were common, however, particularly at cadences; some musicians even found dissonant octaves acceptable at times. * Despite the theoretical prohibition of what Zarlino referred to as occasions when "the parts of a composition do not have a harmonic relation between their voices" ("le parti della cantilena non habbiano tra loro relatione harmonica nelle loro voci"), 16th-century tablatures demonstrate that musicians sometimes removed and at other times retained these clashes. * At cadences and other places where two voice parts proceed to an octave or unison, singers normally approached the perfect interval from the closest imperfect interval; when the closest imperfect interval did not occur naturally in the music, singers created it either by adding a sharp to the voice rising by a whole step or by adding a flat to the voice descending by a whole step. These practices were common throughout Europe, but in Germany musicians followed a distinctive set of practices for their own vernacular music, particularly at cadences, where they regularly avoided approaching perfect intervals from the closest imperfect intervals.For a discussion of the German customs, see ;

Modern editions

Today, editors usually show their recommendations for ''ficta'' in

Medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

and

Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the Tr ...

by placing an accidental sign above the note in question. This indicates that these accidentals were not part of the original source. Editors place any signs found in a period document on the staff directly before the note the sign applies to—as they would an accidental placed by the composer of a modern work, and indeed as it appears in the original document.

References

Sources * * * * * * * * *

. * Arlettaz, Vincent. 2000. "Musica ficta, une histoire des sensibles du XIIIe au XVIe siècle". Liège: Mardaga.
English summary
* Bent, Margaret. 1972. "Musica Recta and Musica Ficta". ''Musica Disciplina'' 26:73–100. * Bent, Margaret. 2002a. "Diatonic Ficta Revisited: Josquin's ''Ave Maria'' in Context". In Margaret Bent, ''Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta'', 199–217. Criticism and Analysis of Early Music 4. New York and London: Routledge. . * Bent, Margaret. 2002b. "Renaissance Counterpoint and Musica Ficta". In Margaret Bent, ''Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta'', 105–114. Criticism and Analysis of Early Music 4. New York and London: Routledge. . * Coussemaker, Charles Edmond Henri de (ed.). 1864–76. ''Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova seriem a Gerbertina alteram''. 4 vols. Paris: A. Durand. Reprinted, Milan: Bollettino bibliografico musicale, 1931. * Durán, Domingo Marcos. 1492. ''Lux Bella''. Seville: Quatro Alemanes Compañeros. * Falconer, Keith. 1996. "Consonance, Mode, and Theories of Musica Ficta". In ''Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries''/ ''Modalität in der Musik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts'', edited by

Ursula Günther Ursula Günther (15 June 1927 – 20 or 21 November 2006) was a German musicologist specializing in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and the music of Giuseppe Verdi. She coined the term , to categorize the rhythmically complex music tha ...

Ludwig Finscher Ludwig Finscher (14 March 193030 June 2020) was a German musicologist. He was a professor of music history at the University of Heidelberg from 1981 to 1995 and editor of the encyclopedia ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart''. He is respecte ...

, and Jeffrey J. Dean, 11–29. Musicological Studies and Documents 49. Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler Verlag. . * Henderson, Robert V. 1969. "Solmization Syllables in Musical Theory, 1100 to 1600." PhD dissertation, Columbia University. * Herlinger, Jan W. 2005. "Nicolaus de Capua, Antonio Zacara da Teramo, and Musica Ficta". In ''Antonio Zacara da Teramo e il suo tempo'', edited by Francesco Zimei, 67–90. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana (LIM). . * Hoppin, Richard H. 1978. ''Medieval Music''. New York: W. W. Norton. . * Johannes de Garlandia. 1972. ''De mensurabili musica'', critical edition with commentary and interpretation by Erich Reimer. 2 vols. Suppleùent to the ''

Archiv für Musikwissenschaft The ''Archiv für Musikwissenschaft'' is a quarterly German-English-speaking trade magazine devoted to music history and historical musicology, which publishes articles by well-known academics and young scholars. It was founded in 1918 as the su ...

'' 10 & 11. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. * Lockwood, Lewis,

Robert Donington Robert Donington (4 May 1907 – 20 January 1990) was a British musicologist and instrumentalist influential in the early music movement and in Wagner studies. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and studied at the University of Oxfor ...

, and Stanley Boorman. 1980. "Musica Ficta". ''

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', edited by

Stanley Sadie Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was publ ...

. 20 vols., 12:802–811. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. . * Randel, Don (ed.). 1986. ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986. . * Tinctoris, Johannes. 1961. ''The Art of Counterpoint (Liber de arte contrapuncti)'', translated by

Albert Seay Albert Seay (9 November 1916 – 7 January 1984) was an American musicologist who specialized in medieval and Renaissance music and theory. His publications included critical editions of works by the composers Jacques Arcadelt and Carpentras, ...

. Musicological Studies and Documents, 5. .p.

. * Toft, Robert. 1983. "Pitch Content and Modal Procedure in Josquin's Absalon, fili mi." ''Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis'' 33:3-27. * Toft, Robert. 1988. "Traditions of Pitch Content in the Sources of Two Sixteenth-Century Motets." ''

Music & Letters ''Music & Letters'' is an academic journal published quarterly by Oxford University Press with a focus on musicology. The journal sponsors the Music & Letters Trust, twice-yearly cash awards of variable amounts to support research in the music fie ...

'' 69:334-344. * Toft, Robert. 2000. "Musica ficta". In ''Reader's Guide to Music: History, Theory, and Criticism'', edited by Murray Steib, 476-477. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn .

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