View source for Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja

'''Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja'''<ref>His given name is sometimes spelled ''Bartolomeo'', his surname ''Ramis''.</ref> (ca. 1440 &ndash; 1522) was a [[Spanish people|Spanish]] [[mathematician]], [[music theorist]], and [[composer]]. His only surviving work is the [[Latin]] treatise ''Musica practica''.<ref>Available in an English translation by Clement A. Miller ([[American Institute of Musicology]], 1993).</ref>
By his own testimony at the end of his ''Musica practica'', Ramos de Pareja was born in [[Baeza, Spain|Baeza]], possibly around 1440. Most of the biographical details of his life must be culled from this treatise. He says that he was a student of [[Juan de Monte]] and that he obtained the chair of music at the [[University of Salamanca]] for his commentaries on the works of [[Boethius]] (''cum Boetium in musica legeremus''). At Salamanca he had many debates with [[Pedro de Osma]] concerning his musical theories. In 1482, when he published his ''Musica'', he revolutionarily proposed a new, five-limit division of the [[monochord]], breaking from the [[Pythagorean tuning|Pythagorean system]] that had dominated the medieval ''[[ars antiqua]]'' through Boethius and [[Guido of Arezzo]]. This system of [[musical tuning]] yielded [[consonance and dissonance|consonant]] [[perfect fourth]]s and [[Perfect fifth|fifths]], but the [[Major third|thirds]] and [[Major sixth|sixths]] were rough.<ref>Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca (2001), ''A History of Western Music'', 6th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, {{ISBN|0-393-97527-4}}), p. 148.</ref> Ramos de Pareja's new division was only slowly accepted. Afterwards he worked in [[Italy]], primarily at [[Bologna]], where his theories engendered serious controversy, even polemics, from conservatives such as [[Franchino Gaffurio]]. After a long stay there he moved to [[Rome]], where he died shortly after 1521.
Ramos de Pareja sought to heal the divide between music in theory and in practice. To this end he sought to render the dissonant thirds and sixths consonant. He proposed the intervals 5/4, 6/5, 5/3, and 8/5 for the division of the monochord, subsequently accepted universally. Less successful was his attempt to replace hexachordal notation with a system of eight syllables denoting the eight sounds of a [[diatonic scale]]: ''psal-li-tur-per-vo-ces-is-tas''.
The ''Musica practica'' also contains interesting commentary on [[mensural notation]], [[chromatic alteration]]s, examples of [[counterpoint]], [[musical instruments]], and the division of music and its effects. Ramos de Pareja was the first theorist to label the method now known as the [[Guidonian hand]] the ''manus Guidonis''; prior to him it was called the ''manus musicalis''. He chose the title ''Musica practica'' to emphasise the practical rather than the theoretical/mathematical component of music. Throughout Ramos de Pareja alludes to his own compositions, though few survive.
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[[Category:1440s births]]
[[Category:1522 deaths]]
[[Category:Spanish music theorists]]
[[Category:Spanish composers]]
[[Category:15th-century Spanish mathematicians]]
[[Category:University of Salamanca alumni]]
[[Category:Academic staff of the University of Salamanca]]