The Fourteen-Mode System of Illuminato Aiguino

Abstract

In his vigorous attack on twelve-mode system, Illuminato Aiguino permitted himself a rare poetic image, in which he had eleventh mode drowning in sea, and the poor little twelfth mode, seeing that it could not get help from its lord [the authentic eleventh mode], in despair threw itself into sea, and its body was grazing ground for whales.' The motivation for this attack lay partly in Aiguino's desire, as a cleric, to prove superiority of traditional eight church modes. In order to do this effectively, however, he had to respond to issues that had given rise to twelve-mode system in first place. His resulting treatise, Il tesoro illuminato di tutti i tuoni di canto figurato (Venice, 1581), has been called by Harold Powers the most elaborate exposition of eightfold system for polyphonic music (1980, p. 405). It contains, among other refinements of eight-mode system, addition of six irregular modes, creating a system containing fourteen modes. A deeply conservative thinker, Aiguino was forced to adopt radical positions to counter equally radical positions expressed by partisans of twelve-mode system. Both systems are consequence of carrying certain principles--those used in defining modes-to extremes. Authors from Guido onward had used conflicting principles side by side, and both twelve-mode system and Aiguino's fourteen-mode system are attempts to resolve these contradictions.