Giovanni Artusi

Giovanni Maria Artusi (c. 154018 August 1613) was an Italian music theorist, composer, and writer. Artusi fiercely condemned the new musical innovations that defined the early Baroque style developing around 1600 in his treatise L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica Artusi, or On the Imperfections of Modern Music . He was also a scholar and cleric at the Congregation Santissimo Salvatore, Bologna, and remained throughout his life devoted to his teacher Gioseffo Zarlino (the principal music theorist of the late sixteenth century). When Vincenzo Galilei first attacked Zarlino in the Dialogo of 1581, it provoked Artusi to defend his teacher and the style he represented. In 1600 and 1603, Artusi attacked the “crudities” and “license” shown in the works of a composer he initially refused to name (it was Claudio Monteverdi). Monteverdi replied in the introduction to his fifth book of madrigals (1605) with his discussion of the division of musical practice into two streams: what he called prima pratica, and seconda pratica: prima pratica being the previous polyphonic ideal of the sixteenth century, with flowing counterpoint, prepared dissonance, and equality of voices;