The limits of music concepton Renaissance according to the Gioseffo Zarlino’s preceptives (1517-1590)

Abstract

This article deals with the preceptive elaborated by Gioseffo Zarlino, a musician and tratadist active in Venice dur-ing the sixteenth century, regarding the extent and limit of the concept of Music diffused in the ‘Harmonic Institutions’ - a treatise published by the author between 1558 and 1589. Describe das Perfetta, as Art and Science, Music represents there more than the exercise of sounds, but a series of knowledge extrinsic to the today’s sense where it isconsidered almost exclusively onthe music performance field. Collecting and translating the most relevant passages related to the subject, we intend to offer an epistemological panorama of the so-called “Divisions of Music”, which are the genetic founda-tions of musical production during the Renaissance.