Introduction

Augusta Campagne, Markus Grassl

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‘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, characteristic of stringed keyboard instruments such as the clavichord, the virginal, the clavicitherium and the clavicimbalum.¹ As is well known, this salient feature of being a ‘strumento perfetto’ was repeatedly emphasised by Renaissance authors. It is precisely this very quality which lies at the heart of the reasons for the increasing significance of keyboard instruments in general and the harpsichord in particular during already the 15th and especially the 16th centuries. In a number of respects keyboard instruments and instrumental culture underwent a dynamic development during this period. To mention only the most important points in our context: stringed keyboard instruments in general, and the harpsichord in particular, spread throughout Europe and sometimes even beyond; this process was accompanied by regional diversification, not least in harpsichord building. Due to their capability of rendering virtually every kind of music, stringed keyboard instruments acquired manifold functions in musical and cultural life. They were played both by professionals and, increasingly, by amateurs, both as solo instruments as well as in various ensembles, especially in an accompanying role (which eventually led to the development of basso continuo and its respective precursors); they were used as a means for both improvising as well as for performing written music, be it pieces originally conceived for keyboard, or intabulations or arrangements of vocal and instrumental ensemble music. At the same time the 16th century is the period, from which we have the first substantial body of notated keyboard music.

These few keywords alone indicate the broad range of issues which is involved in dealing with the harpsichord in the 16th century – issues that range from the cultural significance of keyboard instruments and keyboard playing to organology, notation, repertoire and in particular the question whether specific repertoires for the individual types of keyboard instruments can be defined. Of course, many of these questions have been addressed by scholars in recent times. Likewise, the interest of performers in stringed keyboard instruments from 1500 to 1600, as well as their repertoire and relevant aspects of performance practices, has increased considerably in recent decades. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the subject is far from fully explored. Numerous research questions have either remained unsolved or newly emerged. In addition, much of the engagement with this music is limited to a specific repertoire and/or to individual performers and researchers within specific countries. Finally, it can be observed that despite all these endeavours, to a certain extent the keyboard music of the 16th century still appears to be somewhat overshadowed by later music: even today it is sometimes viewed not as significant in its own right, but just as a preliminary stage to the richness of baroque keyboard music; it only plays a minor role within the harpsichord and organ curricula at universities and conservatories; its performance is typically approached both aesthetically as well as technically from a point of view shaped by experience with the 17th and 18th century repertoires.

These observations led to the idea of organising a conference devoted specifically to the harpsichord and its music from c. 1500 to 1600. This eventually took place at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) from the 20th to 22nd of April 2021 (due to Corona-related restrictions imposed earlier this year, the event had to be held online). The primary goal was to provide a forum for exchanging experiences, insights and findings, with participants from different fields – musicologists, scholar-performers, instrument builders – in order to gain a broad as possible perspective. Accordingly, the event consisted of different formats – papers, lecture-recitals and masterclasses for the students of mdw.² The present publication includes the majority of the papers, all having been revised by the authors for the published version.

It was evident from the beginning that the close connections between the harpsichord and other keyboard instruments during this period, would prompt several papers that would address various questions related to keyboard music and playing in general. Likewise, it is self-evident that a three-day conference and its report cannot cover the subject exhaustively. Nevertheless, the aim was to bring up as many diverse issues as possible, at least within the confines of exemplary case studies. Furthermore, the topic of the 16th-century harpsichord was also revisited at a further conference in Bologna in November 2023 with a special focus on Italy.

In her fundamental article Catalina Vicens highlights the need for a more comprehensive approach to achieve an appropriate practical realisation of keyboard music of the 16th century. As the author points out, modern performances of this repertoire would fall short, if they restricted themselves to merely executing precepts drawn from the realm of historically informed performance practice. Rather, embedding this music into a broader understanding of how it was perceived and aesthetically conceived by composers, performers and listeners during the 16th century appears to be necessary. Vicens’ article proposes the concept of ‘sweetness’ as a key concept, from which to start such an investigation into the contemporary musical experience. ‘Sweetness’ represents a notion, which not only surfaces again and again in descriptions of musical performances and the perception of sound, but was also specifically associated with the harpsichord. Moreover, this concept was discussed, sometimes at length, in writings concerning rhetoric and poetics. Based on a reconstruction of the multifaceted meaning of ‘sweetness’, a number of questions arise which shed new light on a wide range of performance issues including ‘classical’ aspects such as ornamentation, fingering, the shaping of tempo and so forth.

The following two chapters address an equally central topic, whose significance for the historiography of 16th-century musical culture was, however, often overlooked in former research: tablature and intabulation. John Griffiths specifically examines the tablatures used in the Iberian Peninsula after providing a general clarification of the essential features and functions of tablature notation, which went far beyond its practical use by amateurs. In particular, this chapter raises the question of whether the subtitle ‘for keyboard, harp, and vihuela’ found in several prints from the second half of the 16th century should be accepted at face value, which is the assumption made in most literature. A detailed analysis of the prefaces and contextual information on the printing process indicates that Venega de Henestrosa in his Libro de cifra nueva (1557) actually aimed at a kind of ‘universal’ notation for all solo instruments. Consequently, he presented a repertoire that is suitable for keyboard, harp and vihuela alike. In contrast, Hernando de Cabezón’s publication of his father’s Obras de música (1578) consisted exclusively of music intended for keyboard. The subtitle was only added during the final phase of the printing process, presumably for commercial reasons.

Ian Pritchard’s contribution demonstrates that a close examination of the sources can still provide new insights into the notation system of tablatures and the musical thought processes underlying them. Given that the Italian intavolatura was a notation that included elements of a ‘Griffschrift’, a set of conventions can be deduced. These were followed with great consistency in the intabulations of polyphonic (vocal) pieces, which involves the translation of the original polyphonic fabric into an idiomatic keyboard texture. These conventions appear to have operated on an unconscious or semiconscious level. Interestingly, they become particularly visible in those brief instances, when the scribes exceptionally deviated from them, either because of the limitations of the printing technology or in order to consciously preserve certain details of the original polyphonic structure.

Inspired by the relatively new yet markedly developing field of historically informed teaching practice, August Valentin Rabe draws attention to Tomás de Santa María’s Arte de tañer Fantasia (1565), the most informative source on how keyboard playing was taught and practised in the 16th century. As Rabe shows, Santa María envisaged a multilayered didactic, the main idea of which was to combine various ways of dealing with musical material, such as reading, studying and analysing (the structure of pieces written in mensural notation), writing, memorising, singing and playing.

With tempo and fingering, the next three chapters take up typical questions of historically informed performance practice. They also address individual aspects that have been little or not at all explored up to now, or propose new solutions based on a re-evaluation of the sources.

As is well known, since the late 16th century, several authors have discussed the need to vary the beat in the course of a performance. These tempo modifications are mainly seen as a means of expressing the text, and are therefore primarily associated with vocal music. However, Domen Marinčič argues that, based on criteria such as the density of ornamentation, the thematic structure, or the use of different note values in different sources of one and the same piece, varying the beat between individual sections of a composition may also have occurred in keyboard music. As several examples show, this practice seems to have been applied not only to intabulations of vocal works, but also to ‘pure‘ instrumental genres such as toccatas, ricercars and canzonas.

Fabio Antonio Falcone raises the question of whether the performance of frottole, i.e. of vocal music, on the keyboard should take into account the text, which is then only ‘implicit’. An essential feature of the vast repertoire of frottole is the existence of stereotyped melodic models, which could be, and often were, applied to numerous different texts. As a result, discrepancies of the metrical and rhythmical structure of the lyrics and the music respectively occurred quite often. In a vocal performance a singer could easily have counterbalanced such ‘mismatches’ by an appropriate articulation of the text, by emphasising strong syllables or by appropriate phrasing or rhythmic shaping. As Falcone demonstrates with pieces taken from Andrea Anticos famous collection of frottole 1517, an analogous approach can be taken to solo keyboard performance of this repertoire.

Fingering is an issue that historical performance practice has naturally been dealing with for a long time. Previous research on fingering has relied primarily on information from contemporary treatises and has tended to regard iconographic sources as of only limited reliability. However, as Maria Luisa Baldassari demonstrates, a careful and thorough interpretation of pictorial sources, combined with written information and practical experimentation, can provide valuable insights, into both fingering and hand position, as well as related topics such as touch, key control, motor function of the hand, and so on.

The last two articles could be grouped under the heading ‘mobility’, as they both deal with the transmission of keyboard instruments and their music, albeit in very different cases. Janie Cole uncovers the fascinating story of the early appearance of Western keyboards in Africa. In 1520, a Portuguese embassy presented a stringed keyboard instrument to the royal court in Ethiopia – the first documented instance of such an instrument being used in diplomacy. During the second half of the 16th century organs, harpsichords and clavichords also played an important role in the musical practice of the Jesuit missionaries in Ethiopia. Both phenomena allow us to highlight specific cultural functions of keyboard instruments, as a means of establishing diplomatic contacts and as an evangelical and pedagogical tool respectively, and thus to integrate the history of musical instruments into the broader context of Afro-European encounters. Andrés Cea Galán’s article focuses on one of the most famous keyboard composers of the 16th century: Antonio de Cabezón. During his 40 years at the Spanish court, Cabezón travelled extensively, visiting almost all the major cultural centres in Central and Western Europe. Based on recent biographical research, Cea Galán examines Cabezón’s trans-European contacts, the possible influences that emanated from them, and points out elements in Cabezón’s music that seem to anticipate stylistic and compositional developments to be found in the works of later European composers.

It goes without saying, that a project like this would not have been possible without the support and involvement of numerous institutions and individuals. We are very grateful to the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, in particular the Rectorate, the Departments of Musicology and Performance Studies, and the Department of Early Music, for providing rooms and instruments and for bearing the costs of the conference as well as the publication. We would also like to thank the many members of staff in these and other departments of the University, who assisted in the organisation and running of the event, namely Alexander Flor, Martina Parapatits, Jürgen Polak (Department of Musicology and Performance Practice), Berta Gutmann, Marco Primultini (Department of Early Music), Claudia Schacher (Department of Event Management) and the helping hands of the Information Technology Department, who provided and operated the elaborate technical equipment necessary to bring the conference online. Our specials thanks go to the students of the mdw, whose participation allowed for the success of the workshops. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to all those who have helped us to produce this volume: Marc Brooks and Gwendolyn Toth for the translation and the editing of articles written by non-native speakers, Ivan Kitanović, Martin Rainer and Vijay Gupta for their photographs, videos and audio recordings, and the board and staff of mdwPress, in particular Max Bergmann, for their cooperation in the publishing process.

Markus Grassl / Augusta Campagne
Vienna, August 2023

Endnotes

Augusta Campagne, Conference in Vienna; ‘The Harpsichord in the 16th century’, in: Sounding Board 17 (Dec. 2021), 41–5, <https://www.harpsichord.org.uk/sounding-board-archive/>

Luscinius Othmar, Musurgia seu praxis musicae (Strasbourg: Johann Schott, 1536), <https://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/details:bsb10164954>