Ordering Within the Editions

Gardano’s editions exhibit a variety of schemes for ordering their contents. Most are organized either around the ambitus (cleffing) of the pieces or by system (presence or absence of a flat in the signature). Within his ordering plans, mode and final usually function as subgroups of the other two attributes. Occasionally major and minor modes will be grouped separately. Unlike Attaingnant who, beginning in 1536, ordered his chanson collections according to modal pairs—protus, deuterus, tritus, tetrardus ¹ —Gardano showed little interest in mode as an ordering device. When pieces in the same mode or tonal type appear together, the grouping appears to occur as a result of ordering according to other principles, not as the principal ordering device. The few prints in modal order appear most likely to have derived their arrangement from their composer, rather than from the printer. Moreover, even the most clearly organized prints present what appear to us to be anomalies—“stray” pieces in the middle of a group that seem to have no place in that group.