Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nucella

(fl 1401–36). Italian composer. A French-influenced three-voice ballata in Ars Subtilior style, De bon parole tal pronto se fa, is ascribed to him in the lost Strasbourg manuscript (F-Sm 222, no.149; ed. in PMFC, x, 1977, p.101), according to Coussemaker's transcription. The ascription refers to a singer and papal scriptor, Nicolaus Savini Mathei alias Ricci de Nucella Campli, first documented in the chapels of the Roman schismatic popes (Boniface IX, Innocent VII, Gregory XII), and, for some time during the same period, a canon and singer at S Pietro in Rome. His toponymic surname derives from the church in the diocese of Teramo of which he was provost; he is referred to by the nickname ‘Nucella’ (or ‘Nocella’) in documents from 1404 to 1413. He was heavily beneficed in the Italian diocese of Teramo, Sora and Gaeta. Later he is to be found in the service of popes Martin V and Eugenius IV (Planchart, reported in Di Bacco and Nádas); altogether he is documented in papal letters from 1401 to 1436. He does not, however, appear in any of the extant chapel lists of singers of the post-schismatic period, by which time he may no longer have been in steady musical employment but was still serving the curia in an administrative capacity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Van den Borren: ‘L'apport italien dans un manuscrit du XVe siècle perdu et partiellement retrouvé’, RMI, xxxi (1924), 527–33

A. Vander Linden: Introduction to Le manuscrit musical M222 C22 de la Bibliothèque de Strasbourg (Brussels, 1977) [facs. of Coussemaker's transcription]

L. Welker: Musik am Oberrhein im späten Mittelalter: die Handschrift Strasbourg, olim Bibliothèque de la Ville, C.22 (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Basle, 1993)

G. Di Bacco and J. Nádas: ‘The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony during the Great Schism’, Papal Musicians in Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. R. Sherr (Oxford, 1998), 44–92

GIULIANO DI BACCO, JOHN NÁDAS

Nuceti, Flaminio.

See Nocetti, Flaminio.

Nuceus.

See Du Gaucquier, Alard.

Nucius [Nux, Nucis], Johannes

(b Görlitz, Lower Silesia, c1556; d Himmelwitz, nr Strehlitz, Upper Silesia [now Strzelce Opolskie, Poland], 25 March 1620). German composer and theorist. His Musices poeticae is a major treatise about compositional practices in the early 17th century.

1. Life.

Nucius was a private pupil in composition of Johannes Winckler, who became Kantor at the Gymnasium at Görlitz in 1573. Even after 40 years he prized Winckler's instruction, the principles of which, as he said in the introduction, were the basis of his Musices poeticae. About 1586 he took his vows as a Cistercian monk at the monastery of Rauden, Upper Silesia, where he probably received the broad humanist education that appears to have influenced his later writing. By 1591 he had become deacon at Rauden and in that year published the first of his two books of motets, which he dedicated to his abbot. Also in 1591 he was made abbot of the small monastery of Himmelwitz. In 1598, in order to devote more time to composition and writing, he delegated many of his administrative tasks to one of the priors. In the last two years or so of his life, however, he was much involved in directing the rebuilding of the monastery and church after a disastrous fire on 22 June 1617, which destroyed more than half of the buildings. His death followed a crippling illness and blindness.

2. Works.

Although he was isolated from the mainstream of musical development, Nucius achieved a degree of fame, which was based primarily on his treatise. For example, as Feldmann (1958) has shown, the Opusculum bipartitum of Joachim Thuringus (1625) is in large part derived from his work, and references to him occur in Praetorius's Syntagma musicum (1618), Mattheson's Critica musica, i (1722–3), and Walther's Musicalisches Lexicon (1732). Musices poeticae is in essence a counterpoint manual. It is divided into nine chapters: 1. ‘De definitione musices poëtice: de differentia sortisationis & compositionis’, 2. ‘De concordantiis ac discordantiis’, 3. ‘De concordantiarum successionibus & aliis cognatis questionibus’, 4. ‘De discordantiarum usa seu collocatione’, 5. ‘Quid es sonis?’, 6. ‘De praxi modo jungendi plures voci’, 7. ‘De regulis quibusdam generalibus, ac appellationibus 4. vocum, earumque proprietatibus, & figuris musicis’, 8. ‘De clausulis formalis, & commutatione vocum inter se’ and 9. ‘De modis musicis’. The substance of the contrapuntal theory derives largely from the treatises of Gaffurius and Glarean. Although Nucius apparently had no contacts with a major centre of musical performance he was familiar with the music of many 16th-century composers: he referred to works by Josquin, Johann Walter, Senfl, Clemens non Papa, Handl, Kerle, Lassus, Vaet, Wert and others. The first chapter, in defining counterpoint, retains the 16th-century distinction between compositio and sortisatio (i.e. between composed and improvised counterpoint sung to a cantus firmus). It explains and illustrates three types of counterpoint: simplex – note-against-note; floridus seu fractus – counterpoint composed to a cantus firmus; and coloratus – counterpoint in the usual sense of linear writing. Chapters 2–4 are routine discourses on consonances and dissonances. Chapter 5 examines various aspects of musical tone. In chapter 6 Nucius took up actual compositional procedures. He suggested in a rather conservative vein that students should learn to write counterpoint by first composing the tenor and discant parts, to which they should then add a bass and alto, and he concluded by discussing various contrapuntal procedures related to specific intervals and the origins of the names for the voice parts. In chapter 8 he discussed cadential formulations and in the final chapter indicated the nature as well as the affective character of the 12 modes.

The most significant chapter of Musices poeticae is the seventh, for its valuable information about the musical devices that will most appropriately underscore the meaning of a text. Nucius was the first theorist after Joachim Burmeister, and the first talented composer, to employ rhetorical terminology to explain certain exceptional compositional procedures. Like Burmeister he called them musical figures; whereas Burmeister assembled 24 such figures in his Musica poetica (1606), Nucius gave only seven, though he commented that he could easily have enlarged them into a catalogue. These are his essential expressive devices: (1) commissura – a passing-note dissonance; (2) fuga – various forms of melodic imitation; (3) repetitio – repeating a melodic or harmonic section; (4) climax – parallel 10ths or 3rds between two parts; (5) complexio – repetition of an initial passage at the end of a section; (6) homioteleuton – insertion of a sudden rest, creating rhetorical emphasis through silence; and (7) syncopatio – syncopation. Further emphasizing the composer’s responsibility to stress the emotional content of a text, Nucius advised him to be guided by (1) affective words, i.e. ‘laeteri’, ‘gaudere’, ‘lacrymari’, ‘timeri’, ‘ridere’ etc.; (2) words of motion and placing, i.e. ‘stare’, ‘currere’, ‘saltare’, ‘quiescere’, ‘salire’ etc; and (3) adverbs of speed and number, i.e. ‘celeriter’, ‘velociter’, ‘cito’, ‘tarde’, ‘bis’, ‘semel’ etc. Finally he suggested that words such as ‘night’, ‘day’, ‘light’ and ‘dark’ could be expressed through white or black notation.

Nucius is all the more valuable as a theorist because he was an excellent composer. His extant music, though not extensive, provides ample opportunity for comparing his provocative theoretical concepts with his own practice (see Feldmann, 1956). It is all contained in his two motet collections, which comprise 102 pieces, 97 to Latin texts, five to German. Though rooted in the music of Lassus and other composers of the second half of the 16th century, his style is not without striking personal characteristics. As one would expect from his concern as a theorist for expressive text-setting, the motets are laden with affective musical devices, both to enhance the general emotional content of the words and to emphasize and illustrate particular words and phrases. Those in the first book are in five and six parts; several of those in the second are in seven and eight parts. In both there is a marked tendency towards homophonic writing, with little use of cantus-firmus technique or canonic writing.

Nucius lived at a time of transition between the Renaissance and Baroque periods: it was in the 17th century that the dramatic and expressive potential of music in relation to texts became paramount in the styles of most composers, and he reflected this development in both his music and his treatise.

WORKS

Editions: Johannes Nucius: Ausgewählte Motetten, ed. J. Kindermann, EDM, 2nd ser., Sonderreihe, v (1968) [incl. 38 motets and complete thematic index]

theoretical works

Musices poeticae, sive De compositione cantus praeceptiones (Neisse, 1613)

sacred vocal

[50] Modulationes sacrae modis musicis, 5, 6vv (Prague, 1591, 2/1609 as Cantionum sacrarum liber primus, with 2p. added to 1 motet)

[52] Cantionum sacrarum diversarum vocum, liber secundus, some 7, 8vv (Legnica, 1609)

Missa super ‘Cara Theodorum’, 5vv; Missa super ‘Vestiva i colli’, 5vv; Fit porta Christi pervia, hymn, 4vv: lost, formerly PL-WRu

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Starke: ‘Johannes Nux (Nucius oder Nucis)’, MMg, xxxvi (1904), 195–209

B. Widmann: ‘Johann Nucius, Abt von Himmelwitz’, Cistercienser Chronik, xxxii (1920), 1–32; pubd separately (Bregenz, 1921)

E. Kirsch: Von der Persönlichkeit und dem Stil des schlesischen Zisterzienser-Komponisten Johannes Nucius (Breslau, 1926)

F. Feldmann: ‘Musiktheoretiker in eigenen Kompositionen’, DJbM, i (1956), 39–65

F. Feldmann: ‘Das “Opusculum bipartitum” des Joachim Thuringus (1625), besonders in seinen Beziehungen zu Joh. Nucius (1613)’, AMw, xv (1958), 123–42

H. Unverricht: ‘Johannes Nucius’, Schlesische Lebensbilder, ed. F. Andreae and others (Sigmaringen, 1968)

D. Bartel: Handbuch der musikalischen Figurenlehre (Laaber, 1985)

GEORGE J. BUELOW