Salinas, Francisco de (EN)

Salinas Francisco, Franciscus, de, *1 March 1513 Burgos, †13 January 1590 Salamanca, Spanish music theorist and organist. As a child, he took singing and organ lessons. Despite losing his sight early, he became fluent in Latin (he described the circumstances surrounding these challenging studies in detail in the preface to De musica libri septem). He also learned Greek, which, alongside philosophy and the liberal arts, he studied (with interruptions) at the University of Salamanca from 1523 to 1548. In 1538, he came to Rome with Cardinal Pedro Gómez Sarmiento de Villandrando, whose service he had entered the previous year. There, he was ordained a priest and began his studies in music theory, maintaining contacts with, among others, Francesco da Milano. Thanks to the Viceroy of Naples, Peter of Toledo, he obtained an appointment as abbot of San Pancracio de Rocca Scalegna. From 1553 to 1558, he served as organist at the court of his successors. From 1559, he served as organist at the cathedral in Sigüenza and from 1563 in León. From 1567 to 1587, he taught musical theory and practice at the University of Salamanca.

Salinas learned most of the surviving sources of Greek music theory in the original thanks to the help of a reader, who was probably his later assistant at the University of Salamanca, Gaspar Stoquerus.

In the rather unusual preface to De musica libri septem – in which he recounts the course of his life and studies – Salinas states that during his stay in Rome he had the opportunity to consult manuscript copies of works by Claudius Ptolemy, Porphyry, Aristoxenus, Nicomachus, Bacchius, Aristides Quintilianus, and Bryennius. In his own writings he also cites treatises by Euclid, Cleonides, and Gaudentius, as well as numerous modern authors (Gaffurius, Glareanus, Zarlino). He was one of the first Western scholars to properly understand ancient Greek music theory. Among other things, his contribution was to distinguish clearly between the Greek tonoi (transposable intervallic systems) and harmoniai (octave species), which until then had generally been treated as equivalent. According to Salinas, the Western modal system – assumed in the form of 12 scales – derives from the 6 harmoniai mentioned, among others, by Plato in Book 3 of the Republic. He identifies them with the 6 possible combinations of tetrachordal and pentachordal genera. Salinas ascribed great social importance to music and regarded it as a science that unites the testimony of reason and the senses. Unlike many early modern theorists (including Franchinus Gaffurius), he held that mathematical calculations in music must be verified by the ear. Sensory evidence is essential, he argued, because it precedes mathematical measurement, which in turn makes it possible to describe an acoustic phenomenon with a degree of precision unattainable by hearing alone. Salinas also carried out research on musical tuning and the temperament of intervals. In his principal work, De musica libri septem, he discusses in order: the definition of music and the mathematical proportions found in music (Book 1); musical intervals (Book 2); the genera – diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic (Book 3); the modi (Book 4); rhythm (Book 5); the meter of classical poetry (Book 6); and the distinctions between meter, rhythm, and verse (Book 7). This treatise, in which Salinas quotes textual-melodic incipits of over fifty songs, is also a valuable source for the study of sixteenth-century Castilian folk music. The work further contains intriguing observations on contemporary performance practice, including, among others, the difference in tuning between organs and viols (Book 3), and the differing styles of singing in various parts of Europe and across monastic orders (Book 4).

Literature: E.E. Lowinsky G. Stoquerus and F. de Salinas, “Journal of the American Musicological Society” XVI, 1963; I. Fernández de la Cuesta General Introduction to the „De musica libri septem” of F. Salinas, and to its First Translation, “The Consort” XXXI, 1975; C.V. Palisca Francisco de Salinas (1513–90) as Humanist, in: España en la música de occidente, ed. E. Casares Rodicio and others, vol. 1, Madrid 1987; P. Otaola González Francisco Salinas y la teoría modal en el siglo XVI, “Revista Aragonesa de Musicología” XI, 1995; P. Otaola González El Humanismo musical en Francisco de Salinas, Pamplona 1997; A. García Pérez Roma como centro de la „musica theorica” en el siglo XVI: Francisco Salinas, in: Musikstadt Rom: Geschichte, Forschung, Perspektiven, ed. M. Engelhardt, «Analecta musicologica» XLV, Kassel 2011; M.S. Royal Tradition and Innovation in Sixteenth-Century Rhythmic Theory: Francisco Salinas’s De musica libri septem, “Journal of the Society for Music Theory” XXXIV, 2, 2012; Francisco de Salinas. Música, teoría y matemática en el Renacimiento, ed. A. García Pérez, P. Otaola González, «Colección VIII Centenario» XII, Salamanca 2018; N. Andlauer Más vigilante que Argos: Francisco de Salinas en su siglo (1513–1590), “Revista de musicología” XLIV, 1, 2021.