ABSTRACT
The word "mode" is one of the most richly textured and problematic terms of Renaissance discourse about music. The difficulties associated with interpreting modal theory are hardly recent creations: sixteenth-century writers frequently framed their discussion of modal theory with assertions that they intended to clarify a difficult concept that earlier writers had not fully grasped. From a modern perspective, the many changes in modal thought result in tensions that are reflected in sixteenth-century theoretical writing, musical composition, and editorial practice. Sixteenth-century modal theory drew upon and often synthesized diverse theoretical traditions that posited mode in radically different ways. The advent of printed polyphonic music at the beginning of the sixteenth century betokened an irreversible change in the ways in which music treatises were conceived, presented, and exemplified. Magisterial in scope, the Istitutioni stands as one of the best-known treatises of the sixteenth century.
