MELODY AND MATHEMATICS IN THOMAS CAMPION’S COMPOSITIONAL STYLE: ‘TWO BOOKS OF AYRES’
MELODY AND MATHEMATICS IN THOMAS CAMPION’S COMPOSITIONAL STYLE: ‘TWO BOOKS OF AYRES’

Summary/Abstract: As a poet-composer Thomas Campion (1567 – 1620) combined verbal accent with syllable and note duration in his compositions. He also fervently denied the use of rhetoric figures. In his treatise ‘A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counter-point, by a most Familiar, and Infallible Rule’ Campion presents a revolutionary method of composing in which the upper parts in a four-part texture are determined by the bass line through a mathematical rotation of the intervals of a third, fifth, and octave. In this way the parts are created simultaneously, instead of using the successive technique. Examination of Campion’s ‘Two Books of Ayres’ reveals that the composer sets his theme in the bass, which actively shapes the treble through the former’s disjunct movement. But Campion deviates from the rules set out in his treatise by inserting chords with a doubled third or fifth in order to secure the free melodic movement in the upper parts. All of these characteristics define Campion’s compositional style.

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