ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the origins of eleven-pitch-class tonality in the modally inflected music of the sixteenth century, particularly in the works of the Mannerist composers, beginning with Cipriano de Rore, through to the works of Orlando de Lasso. It discusses the selected madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi, whose music is emblematic of the evolving modal language of the early to middle seventeenth century. The chapter examines three studies published in the 1990s and devoted to the works of Claudio Monteverdi and Heinrich Schutz emphasize the importance of hexachord mutation and transposition as a determinant of form and harmonic organization. It also explains that the present theory differs substantially from that of Chafe's in that the authors specifically define a harmonic area as one containing eleven pitch classes. Owing to the relationship of the hexachordal fifths to each other, harmonic progressions may or may not support a background tonic.
