Aaron or Aron, Pietro
Aaron or Aron, Pietro
Aaron or Aron, Pietro, Italian music theorist and composer; b. Florence, c. 1480; d. probably in Bergamo, c. 1550. He became cantor at Imola Cathedral about 1515. About 1522 he went to Venice and entered the household of Sebastiano Michiel, the Grand Prior of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. In 1525 he became his maestro di casa. In 1536 he took the habit of the Cross Bearers and entered the S. Leonardo monastery in Bergamo. His treatises are highly valuable for their treatment of theory as well as aspects of music history.
Writings
Libri tres de institutione harmonica (Bologna, 1516); Thoscanello de la musica (Venice, 1523; rev. eds. 1529, 1539, and 1562 as Toscanello in musica; Eng. tr., 1970); Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato... (Venice, 1525; Eng. tr., 1950, in O. Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; 2nd ed., rev. 1998, by L. Treitler); Lucidario in musica di alcune oppenioni antiche e moderne (Venice, 1545); Compendiolo di molti dubbi, segreti et sentenze intorno al canto fermo, et figurato...(Milan, n.cL).
Bibliography
J. Link Jr., Theory and Tuning: A.’s Meantone Temperament and Marpurg’s Temperament “I” (Boston, 1963); B. Blackbum, E. Lowinsky, and C. Miller, eds. and trs., A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford, 1991).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire