Abstract
<jats:p>The article introduces the reader to the treatise of the Stuttgart composer, organist and court vicekapellmeister Johann Christoph Stierlein Trifolium musicale consistens in Musica Theorica, Practica & Poetica (Stuttgart, 1691), which for the first time became the object of special research in musicology. Due to the small circulation and inaccessibility of this source, it was practically not taken into account by foreign specialists in the discourse on lists of musical figures similar to rhetorical ones. It is also noteworthy that the list of figures, partially borrowed by Stierlein from the work of Christoph Bernhard Ausführlicher Bericht vom Gebrauchen Conund Dissonantien, the Stuttgart vice-kapellmeister places not in the section Musica Poetica, as, at first glance, one would expect, but in the section Musica Theorica. This circumstance gives reason to reflect on the dynamics in the interpretation of “theoretical music” in the Italian musical theory of the 17th century, which influenced Germany, where, as German researcher R. Groth observes, there was a gradual turn towards the meanings of teoria della musica pratica and teoria della composizione. On the one hand, this brings the updated interpretation of musica theorica closer to the “Protestant” musica poetica, and on the other hand, it allows Stierlein to demonstrate his commitment to both Italian tendencies in line with the binary classification of music, and German ones, given the presence of the third part of the treatise – Musica Poetica, which does not, however, contain a list of figures.</jats:p>