Pedro Cerone (1566-1625): Impostor or Defender of the Faith 1 Cerone's Vilifiers: Eximeno y Pujades to Pedrell Born at Valencia September 26, 1729, Eximeno 11 Cerone Vindicated against his defamers 111 Ce­ had already long before returning home at age 69 rone's biography: 1566-1592 IV Cerone at Madrid: (aftcr a 32-year Italian cxile) madc an international 1593-1608; at Naples: 1608- 1625 V Cerone in in­ ternational dictionaries VI Cerone's resonance in •¡':<.V !'¡::n,....,,,~Vt'Oll~~lil-"!t>4ff>;\1 philharmonic literature before 1800 VII Twentieth­ ~ <.2 VID VLT R /'\ <W AH. .1 S 1 ~¡. ,..____ ___,..0- '~_;_.,_..._ .,,a.b ~~'"'~"9"·"4'íl)''f..v ----. century allcgiances VIII The Future of Cerone c , rJfdl( /)c,.ttrnO t•ntfcwrn nOUU'111btntp/11Jlit-;;;¡;;;;;,fir•1JOht. P(&L. t•· research EL-MELOP E, Ü' 1 CERONE'S VJLIFIERS: Y f\11 A E S T K O· T R ACTADO DE MVSICA THEORICA Y PRATICA: EXIMENO Y PUJADES TO PEDRELL en que fe pone por cxtcnfo,lo que vnopua hazcríc pcrfcllo Mu· lico ha mcncllcr fabcr: y por mayor facilidad, comodidad , In his satirical novel \\ ritten at Valencia and Rome y claridad del L•élor, clb repartido ca :n:• •.Libros. bet"een 1798 anu 1802, Don lazarillo Vizcardi. Sus investigaciones músicas con ocasión del concurso á un magisterio de capilla vacante,• Antonio Eximeno y Pujades led the procession of Spaniards who therc­ after spewed contempt on Pedro Cerone's El Me­ L; lopea y Maestro. Tractado de música theórica y :! prática: en que se pone por extenso, lo que uno para ;:- hazerse perfecto Músico ha menester saber: y por " mayor facilidad, comodidad, y claridad del Lector, está repartido en xx11 Libros (Naples: luan Bautista Gargano y Lucrecio Nucci, M.oc.xm). 2 Published with a Preliminar al page~ v- lxi by Francisco Asenjo Barb1en dated at Madrid July 25, 1872, as number 10 .•. in the Sociedad de Bibliófilos fapañoles \ene~ (Madrid, 1872; 300 copies). 2 Concerning the copy reproduced in !Y.O volume~ with an l:tl tHdº O l.l :., COt' LI<. F. Nl"I A Uf l f>S 5VPE1\10!\ f \ mtroduction by F. Alberto Gallo, sc:e below, notes 15 and 50. Por I•an B1uliR1G"' "'º' y t..cmio Nuccl, f•prrlíorcs. Concerning lhe Seconda parte de/l'Artusi (Venice: Giacomo /\o.J dr1•JM ta \ 1t.urn,11\t4rM DC... );JU. Vincenti, 1603) containing the documenta1ion di~proving F.-J. Fé1h ·~ plag1ari\m charge, we noie 45. 2 INTER-AMERICAN MUSIC REVIEW namc with his prospectus (Rome, 1771) in which he genera-with the notion of deriving harmonies from var­ promiscd to annihilatc thc opinions of Picrrc-Jcan ious tonics, are vain, imaginary, and cven ridiculous Burcttc (1665- 1747), Ramcau, Giuseppc Tartini gestures. The only musical genera that Naturc inspires (1692- 1770), Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), and ali can be reduced to rnajor and minor modes; both major other theorists of Pythagorean persuasion3-a pro­ and rninor acknowledge three chords founded on first, spectus that was followed by Dell'origine e del/e fourth, and fifth degrees. regole della musica, colla sroria del suo progresso, What 1 wish to show is that Pythagoras and his fol­ lowers crred in supposing that musical intervals can be decadenza, e rinovazione (Rome: Michcl Angelo 4 (mathematically) calculated. Just and true ternperarnent Babicllini, 1774). In the three-year interim between is achieved in singing and playing-one interval sound­ prospcctus and publication of his 486-pagc book, ing strongcr, another weaker. The intervals callcd perfect Eximeno's cgoism had becn ridiculed by a castrato and t~rnpered that are so callcd for numcrical reasons, are who quipped: "Spaniards may teach Africans music, in practice discordant. but not ltalians. "S The musical trcatiscs of the Greeks contain no practi­ Himself a professor of mathematics and direc1or ca! rules, but instcad a tedious and fastidious philology of studies at the Real Academia del Cuerpo de Ar­ burdened \\ith nurnbers, reasons, and proportions. tillería in Segovia from May 1764 to the expulsion Euler's first error in his Tenramen novae Theoricae of the Jesuits three years later, Eximeno thc mathe­ Musicae (St. Petersburg, 1739) consisted in attributing matician spurned ali attempts from Greek antiquity whal we hcar as swcetncs'> to string divisions .... (His) di fferent lcvels of sweet ness are absolutcly imaginary. onward, to enroll music as a mathematical science. Pleasurc given by music derives from the contrast of sirn­ His more extreme apothcgms collccted by Felipe plicity with variety, a pleasure not determined by num­ Pedrell in P. Antonio Eximeno Glosurio de la grun bers but by naturalness. Mathematics always errs when remoción de ideas que para mejoramiento de la téc­ thc lengths of strings are made 10 determine degrees of nica y estética del arte músico ejerció el insigne sweetncss. Euler's trcatise is purc fallacy. jesuita valenciano (Madrid: Unión Musical Espa­ Counterpoint, an extravagant invention designcd to ñola, 1920) included the following pithy remarks unite many voices, each pursuing its separate way, o ne (none of them, however, credited to a specific Exi­ descending while the othcr ascends, onc scurrying, the meno opus-thus making it nccessary for the reader other going slower ... is vcry appropriate for stirring the to take ali of thcm on faith):6 ovcrheated fantasies of Goths; and amongst thern origi­ natcd the scct of contrapuntists who class as theatrical The distinctions of genera callcd diatonic, chromatic, and evcrything that thcy do not understand, and who praise cnharrnonic, of tones and semitoncs (as major or minor) only ligatures, preparations, and resolutions, replicas and are in practice complctely imaginary, bascd mostly on thc replies, contrary motion and othcr similar artificcs. fallacious nurnerical division of intervals. Wc must constantly bcar in mind that ali attempts to E xi meno himsclf conf cssed having not begun sys­ force classification of plainchant and figura! music wi!hin tematically studying music until 1768, thc year after the so-called diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic, and mixed his arrival at Rome, 7 where according to Luigi An­ tonio Sabbatini he studied with Felicc Masi (who J Barbicri's Preliminar, p. xxv. Unless othcrwise crcdited, all cnded his carecr as maestro di cappella at the Church further data in the present article that conccrn Eximeno's career 8 and publications derive from Barbicri's 56-page Preliminar. of the Holy Apostles, dying April 5, 1772). An­ 4 Translation: Del origen y reglas de la múska... by francisco noyed by the ineonsistencies that he ran into while Gutiérrez, chapelmaster of Encarnación convent (Madrid: Im­ prenta Real, 1796; 3 volumes). Abbreviatcd version republished ' Barbieri, Preliminar, p. xxii, quoting Eximeno, who antic· in the Biblioteca de la literatura y pensamiento hispánicos, no. ipatcd quickly mastering the \Cience of music, becausc of its alli­ 36 (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1978, 312 pp.), Francisco Otero, ance \\ith mathematics: editor. Pedrell, P. Antonio Eximeno, p. 28, \\arned against Gutiérrez's translation, which contains "muy notables modifi­ que de:,ía ~crle tamo más fácil, cuanto que~ encontraba ~ulicientemente caciones." provi~to de lo; principios de matemática\, de lo' cuales se supone derivarse la música. ~"A los africanos y no á los italianos, pueden ir lo\ españoles á enseriar la mú~ica" (Barbieri, p. xxvi). To answer this quip, 8 Annc Schnocbclcn, Padre Martim 's Coffection of Lel/ers in Eximeno conceived thc idea of the \atirical novel (modeled after the Cívico Museo 81bliograjico Musicale in Bologna. An Anno· Don Q111xore) that much later he wrote between 1798 and 1802. tated lndex(New York: Pendragon Press, 1979), p. 547, item 6 Pcdrell, pp. 8 16. Thc Eximeno entry in his aborted Dic­ 4642. In hi\ lctter datcd Novcmber 29, 1775, at Rome, Sabbatini cionario biográfico y bibliográfico (1897), 619- 633, resounds advises Martini not to "wastc time with this madman, who had \\ ith a similar gaggle of unlocated citations. studied with Masi." In his letter of December 6, 1775, Sabbatini Pedro Cerone (1566-1625): Impostor or Defender of the Faith 3 studying \\ ith Masi-whom he himself never iden­ celino MenéndcL. y Pclayo (1856- 1912) added his tificd by name-he dcsisted f rom any music studies adverse judgm cnt to the nineteenth-century chorus for a year. However, one day ''hile visiting St. of disapproval. 12 Pedrell, the most influent ial Iber­ Peter's basílica he heard Nicoló Jommelli's Pente­ ian music scholar of his generation, 13 arrived at age cost sequcnce, Veni, Sancte Spiritus. 9 Greatly 79 as eager as a youthful David to slay the giant moved, Eximeno <lccidcd to return to his music Goliath. Not onc projectile but 27 chapccrs in his studies, and in 1771 published the previously mcn­ cited last book, P. Antonio Eximeno, are taken up tioned prospectus foretelling Del/ 'origine that with denunciations of the monstruo fiero. He cntitles appeared three years later with the name as author, his climactic chapter 50, "Cero ne, Impostor." not Exímeno, but rather that of Aristosseno Mega­ But how imperfectly Pedrcll himself comprc­ reo (Aristoxenus being the sote Greek thcorist whom hended Cerone manifests itself in his chapter 43, he respected and Aristosseno Megareo being the "Estocada al maestro Nicasio Zorita," in which he name chosen by him when clected to the An:adian attributcs to Cerone an attack on Zorita. Samuel Academy). 'º Dedicatcd to Maria Amonia Wald­ Rubio rescucd Zorita from what Pedrell conceivcd burg, "idow of the Elector of Saxony, Dell'origine was Cerone's accusation by showing that El Melo­ fore!>hado\\ li Eximeno's revulsion against counter­ pea contains no such imputations against Zorita as point, a bias that became even more pronounced Pedrell falsely pretended.'~ in his attack on Padre Manini, publishcd at Rome in 1775, Dubbio di D.