The chapel master, composer and music theorist Pietro Pontio (1532–1596), who worked in northern Italy, published two influential textbooks in dialogue form that built on each other, the Ragionamento di musica (1588) and the Dialogo ove si tratta della theorica e prattica di musica (1595). Both publications are key works from the period around 1600 and show how music was taught and learnt in the transition between the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Goals

While a printed facsimile edition of the Ragionamento exists, and an older digital versions of the Dialogo can be found in the Thesaurus Musicarum Italicarum, there is to date no critical edition of both texts. The aim of the “Musico Pratico” project is to provide access to the sources based on contemporary standards of critical music philology and digital music editing, which can thus be used for today's research, music practice and teaching.

Methods

The project is being carried out in cooperation between the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (FHNW; Switzerland) and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU; Germany) with its Centre for Philology and Digitality (ZPD) and is funded by the SNF and the DFG. The complementary expertise of the participating institutions works together productively and provides impetus for digital music research and artistic-pedagogical practice. The project rests on three pillars:

• Digital edition and translations (German/English) of the two treatises based on the TEI and MEI text and music encoding standards, including renderings of encoded musical examples on a customised online infrastructure (open access). Commentaries and a glossary place Pontio in the musical, music-theoretical, aesthetic and cultural context of his time. 
• Pontio's musical examples are analysed using digital methods of corpus research. Two corpora are defined for this purpose: A) Pontio's numerous but only verbally indicated examples of compositions from the 16th century and B) Pontio's own innovative musical examples in comparison to later treatises that show a similar approach. The corpora will be made available for further research.
• A practical aspect of today's reception is the source-based development of innovative didactics for teaching music theory (counterpoint, analysis, improvisation) at conservatoires and universities. Through interactive formats and media dissemination, the potential of Pontio's dialogues is made accessible to a wider circle of users. 

Outcomes

At the end of the project, a digital edition of the two textbooks will be made publicly available. This will provide access to facsimiles, a critical edition, English and German translations, as well as philological and music-theoretical commentaries. Moreover, we will make the music examples cited by Pontio available in score form and with a recording, and provide music education materials derived from Pontio's writings.

References

Pietro Pontio, Ragionamento di musica, Parma 1588.

Pietro Pontio, Dialogo ove si tratta della theorica e prattica di musica, Parma 1595.