Augusta Campagne, Markus Grassl ‘Quae dum manibus agitantur, universum rei harmonicae concentum absolvunt’ – when operated with the hands, they produce the complete sound of a harmony, i.e. of a polyphonic setting. It was with these words that Othmar Luscinius, in his Musurgia seu praxis musicae of 1536, expressed what he apparently considered to be the most striking, even defining, …

Towards Ideals of Perception and Performance in Sixteenth-Century Keyboard Music Catalina Vicens Background Since the beginning of the early music movement, Renaissance keyboard music has attracted performers and audiences. At the turn of the mid-20th century, pioneering recordings like those of Ralph Kirkpatrick with his 16th Century Harpsichord Music by Cabecon, Byrd, Gibbons, Bull, Sweelinck set the tone for a …

John Griffiths Sources are one of the fundamental pillars of any kind of historical performance practice of music. Particularly for those of us who play polyphonic instruments, reading from the same pages that were used by players in the 16th century – for the purposes of the present study – draws us closer to the essence of the music we …

Italian Keyboard Intavolatura and Scribal Habit Ian Pritchard Dedicated to the memory of Liuwe Tamminga (1953–2021) Due to the fact that the notational signs used in Italian keyboard intavolatura are derived from mensural notation, the functional ‘identity’ of intavolatura as a species of tablature is grounded in notational convention – that is, the ways in which the notation ‘behaves’ on …

Practising with Tomás de Santa María August Valentin Rabe The Most Important Source for Practising in the Sixteenth Century How did people practise at the keyboard instrument in the 16th century and how might attempting to answer this question help us with practising and teaching today? As neither historical musicology nor music pedagogy has yet addressed this research question, the …

Instances in Sixteenth-Century Keyboard Music Where Ornamentation and Changing Note Values Might Induce the Player to Vary the Beat Domen Marinčič Several sources from the second half of the 16th century mention changing the measure or varying the beat within pieces. One of the best known is Nicola Vicentino’s book of 1555 with its reference to vocal ensembles changing the …

Fabio Antonio Falcone This article proposes a hypothetical way to conceive the interconnection between music and text in specific cases where the text is missing, such as in Andrea Antico’s Frottole intabulate da sonare organi, libro primo (1517). First, I will present the subject and the research questions. Second, I will illustrate the methodology employed for the analysis of the …

Hand Position and Fingering on Keyboards in Italian Iconographical Sources of the Renaissance Maria Luisa Baldassari (Musical examples by Maria Luisa Baldassari and Augusta Campagne) The subject of fingering and hand position in Renaissance and Baroque keyboard music has been debated for many years, and the few extant theoretical and practical sources have been thoroughly studied and discussed. Important contributions …

Renaissance Keyboards in the Christian Kingdom of Sixteenth-Century Ethiopia1 Janie Cole Keyboards served as essential commodities in early modern European overseas exploration and expansion, and circulated as a motivation of colonial, diplomatic, commercial and religious interests. The presence of Western keyboard instruments in the Far East can be traced back to the 13th century, with an organ being sent from …