Renaissance and Early Baroque
From Silvestro Ganassi’s treatise in 1535 we have instruction and examples of how musicians of renaissance and early baroque decorated their music with improvised ornaments. Michael Praetorius spoke warmly of musicians’ "sundry good and merry pranks with little runs/leaps".
Until the last decade of the 16th century the emphasis is on divisions, also known as diminutions, passaggi (in Italian), gorgia ("throat", first used as a term for vocal ornamentation by Nicola Vicentino in 1555), or glosas (by Ortiz, in both Spanish and Italian) – a way to decorate a simple cadence or interval with extra shorter notes. These start as simple passing notes, progress to step-wise additions and in the most complicated cases are rapid passages of equal valued notes – virtuosic flourishes. There are rules for designing them, to make sure that the original structure of the music is left intact. Towards the end of this period the divisions detailed in the treatises contain more dotted and other uneven rhythms and leaps of more than one step at a time.
Starting with Archilei (1589), the treatises bring in a new set of expressive devices called graces alongside the divisions. These have a lot more rhythmic interest and are filled with affect as composers took much more interest in text portrayal. It starts with the trillo and cascate, and by the time we reach Francesco Rognoni (1620) we are also told about fashionable ornaments: portar la voce, accento, tremolo, gruppo, esclamatione and intonatio.
Key treatises detailing ornamentation:
- Silvestro Ganassi dal Fontego Opera intitulata Fontegara …, Venice 1535
- Adrian Petit Coclico Compendium musices Nuremberg, 1552
- Diego Ortiz Tratado de glosas sobre clausulas …, Rome, 1553
- Juan Bermudo El libro llamado declaracion de instrumentos musicales, Ossuna, 1555
- Hermann Finck Pratica musica, Wittenberg, 1556
- Tomás de Sancta Maria Libro llamado arte de tañer fantasia, 1565
- Girolamo Dalla Casa Il vero modo diminuir..., Venice, 1584
- Giovanni Bassano Ricercate, passaggi et cadentie …, Venice 1585
- Giovanni Bassano Motetti, madrigali et canzoni francesi … diminuiti, Venice 1591
- Riccardo Rognoni Passaggi per potersi essercitare nel diminuire, Venice 1592
- Lodovico Zacconi Prattica di musica, Venice, 1592
- Giovanni Luca Conforto Breve et facile maniera … a far passaggi, Rome 1593
- Girolamo Diruta Il transylvano, 1593
- Giovanni Battista Bovicelli Regole, passaggi di musica, madrigali e motetti passaggiati, Venice 1594
- Aurelio Virgiliano Il Dolcimelo, MS, c.1600
- Giulio Caccini Le nuove musiche, 1602
- Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, Libro primo di mottetti passeggiati à una voce, Rome, 1612
- Francesco Rognoni Selva de varii passaggi..., 1620
- Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, Libro secondo d'arie à una e piu voci, Rome, 1623
- Giovanni Battista Spadi da Faenza Libro de passaggi ascendenti e descendenti, Venice, 1624
Read more about this topic: Ornament (music)
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