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Literally "feigned music" — the Renaissance practice of raising or lowering a note by an accidental that the score does not write out, supplied by the performer according to convention. Its most important use is at the cadence: in Dorian, Aeolian, and Mixolydian the seventh degree is raised so the penultimate sonority pulls into the final like a leading tone. Renaissance sources, Palestrina’s among them, leave many of these accidentals unwritten, trusting the singers to complete the rest.
When writing in the modes, raise the cadential seventh (C to C-sharp before a D final, F to F-sharp before a G final) even where no accidental is printed, and indicate only what you are certain of — the score is a schematic the performer completes.
At the close of a Dorian piece on D, the singer sharps the C so the C-sharp rises to D — a leading-tone pull created by musica ficta, not by the written notes.
Musica Ficta is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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