The Renaissance and Zarlino — Triads and Counterpoint

A Gaze Toward the “Vertical” Emerges

The medieval notation revolution (Article 2) let polyphony flower. In the Renaissance, interest grew in the sonority multiple voices sound simultaneously (the vertical chord). Even so, it had not yet reached the idea that “chords progress” (Rameau, Article 4). The center of this era’s theory remained counterpoint — the technique of beautifully weaving multiple melodic lines (horizontal).

The one who brought it to its culmination was Zarlino.

Zarlino — the Summit of Renaissance Theory

Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590) was a theorist and composer who served as choirmaster at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. His main work, Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558), is regarded as the pinnacle of Renaissance music theory.

Theorizing Just Intonation

Pythagorean tuning (Article 1) was based on the fifth (3:2), but had the weakness that the third sounded impure. Zarlino theorized just intonation so that the major third could be treated as 5:4 and the minor third as 6:5 — simple ratios. Now chords containing thirds and sixths sound “purely.” — But just intonation is weak at modulation (toward the temperament problem of Article 5).

Distinguishing Major and Minor Triads

Zarlino clearly distinguished the major triad (bright) from the minor triad (dark) theoretically. “Even with the same three stacked notes, the emotional color differs by whether the third is major or minor” — this grasp is the distant starting point of the later major/minor dualism (Articles 4-6). Giving a qualitative meaning, “brightness/darkness,” to numerical ratios (harmonia) was what was new.

The Systematization of Counterpoint

Zarlino systematized the rules of counterpoint. Counterpoint is the technique of sounding multiple independent melodic lines simultaneously, following rules of consonance and dissonance:

• proceed fundamentally in consonant intervals (thirds, fifths, sixths, octaves)
• allow dissonant intervals (seconds, sevenths, augmented/diminished) only in limited forms such as “passing tones” and “suspensions”
• forbid voices moving in parallel fifths or parallel octaves (to preserve independence)

Through his pupils, these rules became the foundation of the Palestrina style (the limpid polyphony idealized in 16th-century church music). Later, counterpoint was compiled as a pedagogy into “species counterpoint” (Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum, 1725), by which Mozart and Beethoven would learn. The rules of counterpoint became the backbone of composition teaching for centuries.

The Limit and Richness of a “Horizontal” Theory

Renaissance theory is centered on the melodic line (horizontal):

• music is grasped as “a fabric of interwoven voices”
• each moment’s vertical sonority is a “result” of the crossing of horizontal lines, not itself the subject of progression

This view lasted until the Baroque’s Rameau (Article 4) reversed it with “the chord is the subject of progression.” But “horizontal theory” was by no means inferior — the refinement of counterpoint, culminating in Bach’s fugues, is a peak of an aesthetic distinct from harmonic theory, and it remains one of the two pillars of composition teaching alongside harmony today.

From This Article to the Next

We have traced the Renaissance — Zarlino’s just intonation, the distinction of triads, and the systematization of counterpoint. Music still took the “horizontal line” as its subject. The next article turns to the Baroque’s Rameau, who in 1722 wrote the Treatise on Harmony and first theorized the vertical logic that “chords have a fundamental bass and progress” — the greatest turning point in music theory’s history.