Venetian composer Gioseffo Zarlino, a writer on…

Venetian composer Gioseffo Zarlino, a writer on music, had taken deacon's orders in 1541 and studied music under Adriaan Willaert at St. Mark's in Venice, where in 1565 he had become music director.

Zarlino's first treatise, Istitutioni harmoniche (1558), had brought him rapid fame.

It gives a shrewd account of musical thinking during the first half of the sixteenth century, and Zarlino's thoughts on tuning, chords, and modes anticipate developments of the seventeenth and eigteenth centuries.

He discusses the tuning of the first four intervals of the scale (tetrachord), espousing a system that will prove reliable in subsequent practice.

He stresses the importance of the major and minor third and discusses the nature of the major and minor triads, anticipating the theories of later writers such as Jean-Philippe Rameau.

He renumbers the medieval modes, placing the Ionian mode (corresponding to the modern major scale) first.

He also gives one of the two earliest accounts of double counterpoint and offers detailed advice on the setting of words to music.

His Dimostrationi harmoniche (1571) consists of five dialogues between Willaert and four friends; it amplifies much of the material he had set forth in the Istitutioni.

He is offered the bishopric of Chioggia, his birthplace, in 1583, but the Venetian senate persuades him to remain in Venice.