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Ramis [Ramus] dePareia, Bartolomeus [Bartolomeo; Ramos de Pareja, Bartolomé] Page 1 of 3

Ramis [Ramus] de Pareia,


Bartolomeus [Bartolomeo; Ramos
de Pareja, Bartolomé]
(b Baeza, Andalucía, c1440; d ?Rome, after 1490). Spanish theorist and
composer active in Italy. His life is undocumented; all that is known about him
comes from his own testimony or that of later writers. His first teacher was one
Johannes de Monte. He claimed to have lectured at the University of
Salamanca for a time, though his position (as later in Bologna) may have been
unofficial. While there he wrote a treatise in Spanish (perhaps the one he
elsewhere referred to as Introductorium seu Isagogicon) and a mass, both now
lost. He went to Italy in the 1470s; his extended residence in Bologna is the
best-recorded period of his life. There he lectured publicly on music (though
not under the auspices of the university) and had private pupils, including
Giovanni Spataro. His important Musica practica (ed. J. Wolf, Leipzig, 1901/R;
ed. C. Terni, Madrid, 1983; Eng trans., MSD, xliv, 1993) was published in
Bologna in two nearly identical editions dated 12 May 1482 (the surviving copy
belonged to Spataro and was annotated by Gaffurius) and 5 June 1482
(R1969, 1983). According to Spataro (1491), Ramis had written a much larger
treatise ten years before but had withheld it from publication, finally releasing
about a third of the whole in support of his pursuit of a stipendiary lectureship
(SpataroC); but this was unsuccessful, probably owing to his denunciation of
the standard university texts and his distinctly idiosyncratic method. He
remained in Bologna at least until 1484, when he gave Spataro a holograph
copy of a small treatise, probably the one in Spanish mentioned above; but he
left in disgust at the university’s neglect and settled in Rome, where he
intended to prepare his larger treatise for publication. He was still alive in 1491,
but Spataro said he had adopted a ‘lascivious life-style, which was the cause
of his death’, probably no later than 1500. Both his critic Burzio and his pupil
Spataro described him as short in stature.
Besides the mass composed in Salamanca, Ramis also referred to a
Magnificat and a Requiem, probably the same as the ‘missa … supra
“Requiem eternam”’ mentioned by Spataro; the place and date of composition
of these is unknown. Ramis stated that he had composed his motet Tu lumen
tu splendor Patris in Bologna. It is preserved in fragments: Ramis himself
explained the canonic inscription, while Gaffurius (1520) printed the enigmatic
tenor and Giovanni del Lago cited a passage from the bass (SpataroC). In
1482 the Kyrie and Gloria of a mass by Ramis and a canzonetta were sent to
Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (see Mischiati). What may be his only complete
surviving composition, the perpetual canon Mundus et musica et totus
concentus, is preserved in a chansonnier of Florentine origin (I-Fn B.R.229,
ed. in MRM, vii, 1983). There is no other reason to believe he lived in
Florence.
Ramis’s lack of success with the University of Bologna is easily understood
from the characteristics of his Musica practica. Although the treatise is
organized in an ostentatiously scholastic format and is filled with cogent
citations drawn from numerous authors ancient, medieval and
contemporaneous, Ramis scorned the authority of classic writers like Boethius
and Guido of Arezzo and emphasized an empirical method that was utterly at
odds with the academic norms of his time. He parted company with Boethius
over Pythagorean intonation, offering a division of the monochord that

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produced major and minor 3rds in the ratios 5:4 and 6:5 instead of the
Pythagorean 81:64 and 32:27 (see Just intonation). He stated, and Spataro
later emphasized, that these were the intervals of actual practice, not those of
theory (though Gaffurius refused to accept the distinction). It was left for
Lodovico Fogliano and Zarlino to put the intervals arising from Ramis’s
monochord division on a sound theoretical and historical basis.
Ramis had no patience with the tradition of hexachordal solmization attributed
to Guido. He found that the practice of mutation, especially as extended in
order to deal with accidental sharps and flats, led to confusion among singers
and instability of pitch. In its place he proposed the earliest known octave-
based solmization system, using the syllables psal-li-tur per vo-ces is-tas (‘It is
sung with these syllables’) beginning only on C; the only mutation necessary is
tas–psal when a melody ascends above or descends below C. Ramis
observed that the assonance of final consonants in tur per helped locate the
semitone E–F and that that in ces is tas characterized the variable semitone
between A and B or between B and C, but Hothby justly faulted him for using
the same syllable for B and B . Not even Ramis’s devoted pupil Spataro
adopted this particular innovation, and indeed Ramis himself reverted to
traditional solmization for most of his treatise.
Ramis’s empirical tendencies are further highlighted by his embrace of the
keyboard as a demonstrative aid. For example, he argued that there was no
effective difference between the tritone and the diminished 5th, even though
the intervals function differently both melodically and contrapuntally. His
discussion of keyboard tuning is an early piece of evidence for Mean-tone
temperament. Gaffurius (1496) was evidently referring to Ramis and his friend
Tristão da Silva when he castigated the ‘organists’ who admitted parallel 5ths if
one of them was diminished. In all these respects Ramis opposed himself to
most of his predecessors and contemporaries, casting particular scorn on
Johannes Gallicus and John Hothby as ‘adherents of Guido’ (though
elsewhere he cited Gallicus with approval). He also took issue with
contemporaneous theorists in the matter of the relation between perfect and
imperfect tempus. He upheld the equal length of the breve under either
tempus, while Tinctoris and Gaffurius argued for the invariability of the minim,
leading to a perfect breve under being half again as long as a breve under C.
Ramis also expounded, much more circumstantially than his predecessors, a
pattern of astrological and medical correspondences with the musical modes
that may have derived from Arab traditions (see Haar). He expressed his
negative opinions of other theorists, living or dead, in intemperate language,
which stimulated vigorous assaults against his Musica practica on the part of
Hothby and Burzio. He was defended in equally abusive terms by Spataro,
which led to an ongoing polemic between the latter and Gaffurius. But thanks
to Spataro’s advocacy, Ramis’s empiricism was transmitted to a new
generation of Italian theorists represented by Aaron and Lanfranco and
exerted a conceptual influence on the 16th century that was far greater than
that of any of his particular ideas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SpataroC
J. Hothby: ‘Excitatio quedam musice artis per refutationem’ (MS, I-Fn, after
1482), ed. in Johannis Octobi Tres tractatuli contra Bartholomeum
Ramum, CSM, x (1964)
N. Burzio: Musices opusculum (Bologna, 1487/R; Eng. trans., MSD, xxxvii,
1983)

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Ramis [Ramus] dePareia, Bartolomeus [Bartolomeo; Ramos de Pareja, Bartolomé] Page 3 of 3

G. Spataro: Honesta defensio in Nicolai Burtii parmensis Opusculum


(Bologna, 1491/R)
F. Gaffurius: Practica musice (Milan, 1496/R)
F. Gaffurius: Apologia … adversus Joannem Spatarium et complices musicos
Bononienses (Turin, 1520/R)
G. Spataro: Errori di Franchino Gafurio (Bologna, 1521)
O. Mischiati: ‘Un’inedita testimonianza su Bartolomeo Ramis de Pareia’, FAM,
xiii (1966), 84–6
G. Massera: ‘Istanze e reflessioni metodologiche nella scienza musicale alla
fine del Quattrocento’, Quadrivium, xiv (1973), 159–69
J. Haar: ‘The Frontispiece of Gafori’s Practica musice (1496)’, Renaissance
Quarterly, xxvii (1974), 7–22
M. Lindley: ‘Fifteenth-Century Evidence for Meantone Temperament’, PRMA,
cii (1975–6), 37–51
C. Terni: Commentary, Musica practica de Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja, ii
(Madrid, 1983)
C.V. Palisca: Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven,
CT, 1985)
R. Stevenson: ‘Spanish Musical Impact beyond the Pyrenees (1250–1500)’,
España en la música de occidente: Salamanca 1985, i, 115–64, esp. 125–
35
H. Hüschen: ‘Kritik und Polemik in der Musiktheorie des 15. Jahrhunderts’,
Festschrift Arno Forchert, ed. G. Allroggen and D. Altenburg (Kassel,
1986), 41–7
D. García Fraile: ‘La catédra de música de la Universidad de Salamanca
durante diecisiete años del siglo XV (1464–1481)’, AnM, xlvi (1991), 57–
101
L.E. Fose: The ‘Musica practica’ of Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia: a Critical
Translation and Commentary (diss., U. of North Texas, 1992)
R. Pospelova: ‘Pochemu ne utvyordilas' reforma sol'mizatsii Ramosa de
Paregi? “Ramos protiv Gvido”’ [Why didn’t Ramis de Pareia’s solmization
reforms take hold? ‘Ramis versus Guido’], Metodï uzicheniya starinnoy
muzïki, ed. G. Grigor'eva and T. Dubravskaya (Moscow, 1992), 14–43
E. Torselli: Musica practica di Bartolomeo de Pareja: nuova edizione,
traduzione in italiano, studio e commento (diss., U. of Pavia, 1992)
A.M. Busse Berger: Mensuration and Proportion Signs (Oxford, 1993)
C.A. Miller: Commentary to Bartolomeo Ramis de Pareia: Musica practica,
MSD, xliv (1993)
JEFFREY DEAN

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