Editing Renaissance music (section)

===Theory and notation===<!-- This section is linked from [[Medieval music]] -->
[[Image:white mensural notation.gif|thumb|250px|Ockeghem, Kyrie "Au travail suis," excerpt, showing white mensural notation.]]
According to [[Margaret Bent]]: "Renaissance [[music notation|notation]] is under-prescriptive by our [modern] standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness".{{sfn|Bent|2000|p=25}} Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and [[bar (music)|barlines]] were not used. [[Note value]]s were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of [[Beat (music)|beat]] was the [[semibreve]], or [[whole note]]. As had been the case since the [[Ars Nova]] (see [[Medieval music]]), there could be either two or three of these for each [[double whole note|breve]] (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve.

These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as [[quarter note]]s) occurred less often. This development of [[white mensural notation]] may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than [[vellum]]), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes.

Accidentals (e.g. added sharps, flats and naturals that change the notes) were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations for guitar-family instruments ([[tablature]]s) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in [[dyadic counterpoint]] and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score correctly, even if the accidentals were not written in. As such, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." (See [[musica ficta]].) A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together, musicians would avoid parallel octaves and parallel fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians.{{sfn|Bent|2000|p=25}} It is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about which accidentals were performed by the original practitioners.

For information on specific theorists, see [[Johannes Tinctoris]], [[Franchinus Gaffurius]], [[Heinrich Glarean]], [[Pietro Aron]], [[Nicola Vicentino]], [[Tomás de Santa María]], [[Gioseffo Zarlino]], [[Vicente Lusitano]], [[Vincenzo Galilei]], [[Giovanni Artusi]], [[Johannes Nucius]], and [[Pietro Cerone]].