Harpsichord; Early Music
SKU: UT.HS-307
Composed by Antonio
Valente. Edited by Maria
Luisa Baldassari.
Paperback (Soft Cover).
Classical. Ut Orpheus #HS
307. Published by Ut
Orpheus (UT.HS-307).
ISBN 9790215327146. 9
x 12
inches.
Antonio
Valente blind,
Neapolitan since a
long time according
to the list of Neapolitan
musicians by Scipione
Cerreto and organist in
S. Angelo a Nilo in
Naples, is known in
modern times for his two
volumes of keyboard
music: Versi
spirituali published
in 1580 and, some years
before, the volume here
in transcription,
Intavolatura de
cimbalo, printed by
Giuseppe Cacchio in
1576.
This volume has
many original features:
first keyboard tablature
ever printed in Naples,
itâ??s not written in
musical characters but in
a number-based system
never met, according to
the current studies, in
any other print or
manuscript both in and
outside Italy. The
dedication letter,
written by Fraâ??
Alberto Mazza, praises
Valente as the inventor
of this writing method,
so easy and effective
that everybody, even
uncouth youths that did
not know music and
keyboard, could attain
the result of playing
from it in two
months.
The
Intavolatura presents
different genres of
music: a fantasia, six
ricercatas, a Salve
Regina on a cantus
firmus, four vocal
chansons
intabulated for keyboard
with more or less
diminutions,and nine
dances, variations and
dance/variations on
long-living tenors like
Romanesca or
Zefiro. There are
no liturgical
compositions, both
because unsuitable in a
collection for amateurs
and because Valente will
publish a new book of
sacred music in a few
years.
The book is a
sort of compendium of the
keyboard genres of the
period, similar to some
older Spanish
publications and to the
later Neapolitan ones by
Trabaci and Majone. Other
contemporary volumes on
the contrary choose to
present a single type of
composition: this is the
case of the
Versetti by
Valente and the
Ricercate by Rocco
Rodio.
antonio-valente
