Esordio: On the Ideal of Variety in the Italian Harpsichord Repertory

Harpsichords were everywhere in early modern Italy: in church, at court, in the theater and the opera house, in the homes of patricians and aristocrats, and, from the turn of the early eighteenth century, in the homes of the nascent middle class. Cultivated in independent city-states ruled by wealthy and despotic families, in the cosmopolitan trade center of Venice, and in the courts of cardinals in Rome, harpsichords were as varied as the venues in which they were found: from small spinets to long, wing-shaped instruments; some with a normal twelve-note subdivision of the octave and others with split keys to accommodate more nuanced systems of temperament and intonation; those with metal strings and those strung with gut; some plain in appearance and some lavishly decorated.

This variety in instrument construction and social usage was matched by the diverse genres and styles that composers employed in writing for them. The Neapolitan composer Giovanni Maria Trabaci (1575–1647) considered the harpsichord capable of practically anything. Introducing his set of variations on the theme known as the “Zefiro,” Trabaci indicated that even those variations not designated expressly for the harpsichord could still be played on that instrument. As he wrote, “let it be known that although some items in this book are labeled for the harp, the harpsichord should not be excluded, for the harpsichord is the lord of all the instruments in the world, and with it one can play everything with ease.”¹

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the versatility of the harpsichord observed by Trabaci allowed for the flourishing of a great variety of genres – dance pieces, contrapuntal and imitative works, variation sets, and works that mimic or demand improvisation. While the early eighteenth century witnessed a consolidation of these genres, the new galant style that emerged at that point embraced an overall aesthetic of variety, thus perpetuating the characterization, articulated by Trabaci, of the harpsichord’s versatility and flexibility.

It is partly as a result of these characteristics that the construction of a history of Italian harpsichord music presents special challenges. Precisely because harpsichords were seen as capable of rendering music in such a wide range of genres and styles, the harpsichord repertory overlaps with that of other instruments – especially, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with that of the organ. Clavichords were also found in Italy throughout the early modern era, and the emergence of the Cristofori piano in 1700 means that repertory for that new instrument – conceived of as an adaptation of the harpsichord – intersects with that of the harpsichord.

In this chapter, I construct a history of harpsichord music in Italy that oscillates between the general and the specific. I rely on the conceit of a rhetorical presentation (a model in line with musical thought of early modern Italy) to expound on issues related to the sound of the instruments, notated texts, genres, and specific examples.² My introduction (esordio) is followed by a section on the harpsichord’s elocuzione – the definition and articulation of the instrument’s voice by composers and performers, which may allow us to define the harpsichord repertory in contrast to that of the organ in the years prior to 1700. I then discuss a series of invenzioni (inventions, ideas), by which I mean the genres that defined the compositional and performative roles before the late seventeenth century. If these discussions of genre offer a bird’s-eye view of the development of the harpsichord repertory, they are also necessarily incomplete. I therefore supplement this general overview with a series of esemplari – case studies in the repertory that bring individual works into focus.³ My discussion of the galant sonata in the early eighteenth century takes the form of an invenzione con figure, in which I identify some of the main tropes and gestures incorporated into the harpsichord sonata in the eighteenth century. (The music of Domenico Scarlatti will be discussed in this volume in Chapter 10.) My preludio and perorazione frame the story of the harpsichord repertory in Italy by exploring its outer reaches in the medieval era and in the age of the nascent pianoforte.

Elocuzione: Locating an Italian Harpsichord Repertory Before 1700

Past histories of keyboard music in early modern Italy have tended to conflate the harpsichord repertory with that of the organ. To some extent, this is reasonable: professional players in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were expected to be flexible, rendering music on whatever instrument was in front of them. (The distinction between harpsichords and pianos in the eighteenth century is less problematic, since the sound qualities of the two instruments were quite similar; this is a point to which I shall return). Nevertheless, there is much to be gained by attempting to locate a repertory that was ideally suited to (rather than merely “playable on”) the harpsichord. As Alexander Silbiger has written:

Distinctions between the harpsichord repertory and that of other instruments may be discerned through a variety of criteria. Il Transilvano, a monumental treatise on organ playing by Girolamo Diruta (1595–1647) issued in two parts in 1593 and 1609, respectively, devotes only a few pages to the harpsichord, but these are illuminating. One hint about the harpsichord repertory appears in Diruta’s discussion of genre: “The sacred Council of Trent has prohibited the playing of passamezzi and other dances, and also lascivious and indecent songs on church organs. It is not fitting to mix the profane with the sacred.”⁵ Diruta goes on to explain that dance music of this sort is best suited to the “istrumenti da penna” (quilled instruments – i.e., harpsichords).⁶ Moreover, harpsichords were considerably more likely than organs to be found in the homes of the aristocracy. As a result, dances and settings of secular songs are overall more likely to have been written with harpsichords in mind. This may be true even in cases where the title page of a given volume calls for performance on organo. For example, the Frottole intabulate da sonare organi (1517) compiled by Andrea Antico (1480–1538), which consists of keyboard intabulations (idiomatically embellished arrangements) of secular songs, bears a frontispiece that shows a player at the harpsichord, not the organ. If the famous Libro del cortegiano (Book of the Courtier) of Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529) celebrated the “most perfect consonance” and “harmony” afforded by “all keyed instruments” (tutti gl’instrumenti da tasti), the frontispiece of Antico’s collection links both the repertory and the ideal of courtly sociability with the harpsichord.⁷

Other criteria that may guide us in identifying music designed primarily for the harpsichord relate to the idiomatic treatment of the instrument – a factor that became increasingly important at the start of the seventeenth century.⁸ Diruta again provides an important description: In answer to the question, “Why is it that many organists do not succeed in playing serious music on quilled instruments as well as they do on the organ?,” he addresses the idiomatic properties of the harpsichord – especially its quickly decaying sound:

The toccatas included in Diruta’s treatise (including some by the author and some by other composers) provide a testing ground for keyboardists to adapt their performance practices to suit both organs and harpsichords. However, the first editions of the toccatas of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643), which will be discussed further below, specify the harpsichord as the intended medium, and Frescobaldi provided guidelines for their performance that echo Diruta’s approach to harpsichord playing.¹⁰ The toccatas of Frescobaldi and his successors consist primarily of elaborations of schematic chordal frameworks, often with idiomatic figuration; this style offers an opportunity to exploit the harpsichord’s capacity for lush arpeggiation – something impossible on the organ.

Another feature of composition that seems closely linked to the harpsichord is the use of angular or irregular rhythms, syncopations, and other surprising rhythmic effects. The clear articulation of the harpsichord was, until the late eighteenth century, considered one of its great advantages, making it well suited to the accompaniment of dance and operatic recitative, and rendering it an ideal medium for the organization of an ensemble. While organists could also, obviously, play rhythmically irregular passages, these generally emerge more clearly on the harpsichord and may serve as an indicator that the latter instrument was the intended medium of a given piece of music.

The criteria that I have suggested here for locating an Italian harpsichord repertory apply until the last quarter of the seventeenth century, when composers began to focus their attentions to a greater extent on amateur musicians who would play in domestic settings; at that point, a clearer distinction grew between the harpsichord repertory and that of the organ. Moreover, even in the period before ca. 1675, these criteria are not definitive. A sense of idiomatic harpsichord writing emerges from an extended relationship with both the instruments and the music.

Preludio: Imagining the Earliest Harpsichord Music in Italy

Stringed keyboard instruments had a long history in Europe, and it is therefore difficult to arrive at a clear starting point for the history of Italian harpsichord music. The earliest-known written reference to a “clavicembalum” (the Latin equivalent of “harpsichord”) appears in a Paduan source in 1397.¹¹ A detailed diagram and description survive in the manuscript of the Franco-Flemish physician Arnaut de Zwolle (late 14th/early 15th century–1466, treatise ca. 1440), and David Catalunya and Paul Poletti have shown that by the time of Arnaut’s writing, stringed keyboard instruments were in widespread use across the continent, including in Italy.¹² Catalunya has argued for the performance of Italian repertory – in particular, compositions preserved in the so-called Faenza codex – on reconstructions of the stringed keyboard instruments in Arnaut’s manuscript. In particular, the articulate attack of the stringed instruments renders clearly the complex rhythms of the Faenza repertory – rhythmic patterns characteristic of the Italian Trecento (1300s). Thus, despite the recent claim that the Faenza repertory was intended solely for organ, the possibility of performance on ancestors of the harpsichord cannot be ruled out.¹³

Invenzione: Contrapuntal Genres

Perhaps more than any other instrument category, keyboard instruments were valued for their capacity to coordinate and embody multiple voices. To judge from the surviving repertory of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this was a highly prized compositional and performative skill. Organists would have studied counterpoint and contrapuntal composition as part of their early training.¹⁴ Perhaps because of this association between counterpoint and musicians educated within the church, or perhaps because of the later association of counterpoint with an “austere” or “churchly” style, it would be easy to assume that contrapuntal genres writ large were intended for the organ rather than the harpsichord. While such works played a significant role in liturgical situations, counterpoint was also an important part of the harpsichordist’s art. Genres such as the ricercare, fantasia, canzona, and capriccio allowed both composers and performers to display their artistry and ingenuity, and these ideals found their place as much in homes or academies – settings in which harpsichords were likely to be found – as they did in church.

From around the middle of the sixteenth century, the ricercare was treated as a thoroughly contrapuntal genre, and, as Robert Judd has observed, “ricercars are among the first Western art music to eschew reference to words and to rely entirely on sound.”¹⁵ Without words as a structuring device, composers such as Andrea Gabrieli (1532/3?–1585) used a variety of contrapuntal techniques, including inversion, augmentation, and stretto, to endow their ricercares with a sense of variety and flexibility. In addition, these works are sometimes heavily decorated in the “diminution” style, in which long notes are subdivided into shorter ornamental figures of varying melodic and rhythmic content; this figuration can occur in every voice in the texture and sounds very much at home on the harpsichord.¹⁶ Posthumous collections of Gabrieli’s music, including settings of secular songs, indicate that they could be executed on “ogni sorte di stromenti da tasti” (any type of keyboard instrument).

The canzona, sometimes called canzona francese, began as an adaptation of the polyphonic Franco-Flemish chanson, but, by the late sixteenth century, it diverged from this vocal model. Instead, Italian composers for keyboard and other instruments used aspects of these chansons to create new works in the same style. Features that were taken over into the independent instrumental canzona include the opening dactylic rhythmic motto ♩♩♩ and a sectional organization that alternates between counterpoint and homophony, often with light, triple-meter sections included for contrast with stately duple-meter opening and closing sections.¹⁷ While canzonas were often published by professional instrumentalists employed in churches, their basis in secular chansons – and, in many cases, their adherence to the chanson as a model – suggests that performance on harpsichord was at least as likely as performance on the organ.¹⁸

The term “fantasia” might seem to imply the utmost freedom of composition, but during this seventeenth century this did not negate the genre’s contrapuntal character. Keyboardists were expected to improvise counterpoint, as noted, for example, by Adriano Banchieri (1568–1634), and their fully-composed fantasias demonstrate their ability to negotiate the boundary between tradition and invention.¹⁹ The capriccio was often characterized by a sectional organization in which the opening contrapuntal material is subjected to variation procedures in successive sections. In its ever-changing treatment of the opening section, it displayed its “capriciousness” while engaging with formal counterpoint.

Girolamo Frescobaldi, a towering figure whose keyboard music dominated Italy throughout the seventeenth century, contributed to all of these contrapuntal genres, and in most cases he printed them in open score. While, in earlier generations, this open-score format might have been used to adapt a contrapuntal piece for instrumental ensemble, by Frescobaldi’s day, its purpose seems to have been the cultivation of an intellectual understanding of the counterpoint. A virtuoso organist, Frescobaldi nevertheless embraced the harpsichord through idiomatic treatment in a number of his works. His prefatory note to the Primo libro delle capricci (1624) includes a recommendation that the player arpeggiate dissonant chords, which suggests that performance on the harpsichord was valid as on the organ. In those works, moreover, he notes that there are sections where the counterpoint breaks down, and where the execution must be governed by the “feeling of that passage” (l’affetto di quel passo).

Since the turn of the seventeenth century, strict counterpoint had been seen as coming into conflict with the looser principles adopted for basso continuo playing and the lighter genres associated with the stile moderno.²⁰ Frescobaldi demonstrated his keen interest in and mastery of contrapuntal styles as well as lighter, less strict genres (including chamber music with basso continuo and the toccata, which will be addressed below). His influence in this respect was lasting.²¹ By the third quarter of the seventeenth century, however, practitioners of strict counterpoint found themselves increasingly overshadowed by composers who embraced the lighter galant style, influenced by the chamber sonatas of Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) and his peers. Luigi Battiferri (b. 1600–1610, d. 1682 or after) lamented the neglect of keyboard counterpoint in open score, writing in frustration that “those who play a simple basso continuo are esteemed valorous; what might be played in the space of an hour serves them for years.” Instead, he argued, keyboardists should attempt to become “immortalized … in particular by attending to the playing of the ricercare, this being the most learned genre of playing.”²² The contrapuntal works of Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710), preserved in an autograph manuscript, are among the most momentous of the late seventeenth century, showing a mastery over contrapuntal devices that Pasquini combines and extends over a long duration.²³ These pieces, however, did not reach publication, and they became overshadowed by public reception of lighter genres in the late seventeenth century. (Pasquini also composed such lighter fare, including suites of dance movements.) Aspects of the contrapuntal genres were folded into the “galant synthesis,” but the heyday of the ricercare for which Battiferri longed had passed.

Esemplare: Claudio Merulo, Ricercari (1567)

The first esemplare to which I turn, which illustrates the Italian contrapuntal genres for harpsichord, reaches back into the sixteenth century. Victor Coelho and Keith Polk have observed a shift in notated music in the latter decades of the sixteenth century. Whereas earlier composers focused predominantly on lute repertory as a medium for expression and musical self-fashioning, the latter half of the sixteenth century saw a new focus on the composition of keyboard music. Coelho and Polk propose the Ricercari of 1567 by Claudio Merulo (1533–1604) as a turning point in the development of keyboard music.²⁴ Merulo was organist at San Marco in Venice, and Girolamo Diruta’s descriptions of his professional role associate him primarily with the organ. Indeed, the organization of many of Merulo’s contrapuntal works according to the church tones suggest that he conceived them with liturgical usage in mind. However, two factors identified by Coelho and Polk suggest that performance on the harpsichord was entirely appropriate, and the works could be adapted to a stringed keyboard instrument without much difficulty. First, they observe the strong relationship between the keyboard ricercare of the later sixteenth century and the lute ricercare of the 1520s onward. The timbre and performance practices of the lute are more closely related to the harpsichord than to the organ. In addition, they note Merulo’s connection to the Venetian aristocracy, suggesting that his music would have been heard in domestic settings as well as churchly ones. While small organs were no doubt found in some homes, as noted above, it is likely that these contrapuntal works were also played on the harpsichord and adapted to suit the harpsichord in performance – especially through the restriking of chords and tied dissonances, and through the execution of idiomatic ornaments. The ricercares in this collection lend themselves to such readings readily, with room for creative arpeggiation, as well as for the addition of ornaments idiomatic to the harpsichord. These pieces are quite substantial in length in comparison to previous essays in the genre.

While these works may certainly be performed on the organ as well as the harpsichord, they underscore the liminal position of contrapuntal music in particular, with its adaptability to various instrumental idioms. If Polk and Coelho are correct in their understanding of this music as having found a place in social environments where the harpsichord flourished, then Merulo’s works underscore his commitment – and that of others of his generation – to creating a harpsichord repertory that matched their conception of the instrument’s import.

Invenzione: Harpsichord Works Based on Vocal Models

Instrumental composers in sixteenth-century Italy frequently drew on vocal compositions as models for their own work. The aesthetic motivations for this link were articulated in numerous sources, among them the treatise Il Fontegara, by Silvestro Ganassi (1492–mid-sixteenth century): “You must know that all musical instruments, in comparison to the human voice, are lacking; therefore we must attempt to learn from it and imitate it.”²⁵

Ganassi was a professional wind player (and also produced an important early treatise on string playing), but manifestations of this principle are evident in the keyboard repertory as well. Like other instrumentalists, keyboardists viewed the imitation of the human voice as an aesthetic ideal, but they adapted vocal works to suit the idiomatic capacities of their instruments. Composers produced keyboard intabulations of madrigals, frottole, and other popular vocal genres, creating a rich texture of arpeggiation and figuration that serves as filigree adorning the original vocal piece. In keyboard intabulations of this period, a consistent four- or five-voice texture would be maintained throughout, and elaboration through diminution can be found in each voice in turn. The association of these intabulations with secular songs suggests that the harpsichord was the intended medium. This conjecture is further supported by the complex rhythmic figuration in works like Claudio Merulo’s setting of Orlando di Lasso’s Susanne un jour, which an intricate rhythmic profile well suited to the harpsichord’s articulate attack.

As new instrumental genres emerged in the seventeenth century and composers began to treat their instruments in more idiomatic ways, their direct reliance on vocal models lessened.²⁶ However, seventeenth-century settings of vocal polyphony still appeared, even if less frequently. These intabulations adopt the textural and expressive vocabulary of music specially designated for the harpsichord. Despite instrumental composers’ decreased reliance on vocal works as direct models for their compositions in the eighteenth century, the overall aesthetic that mandated imitation of the human voice persisted. For much of the seventeenth century, it was the violin that embodied the spirit of the voice; this inspiration can be heard readily in the sonatas and concertos of Corelli and his Bolognese contemporaries in the later decades of the century. As keyboard sonatas began to adopt aspects of these chamber sonatas, they often incorporated the tropes of vocal music.

Esemplare: Three Settings of Arcadelt’s “Ancidetemi pur”

Three seventeenth-century keyboard settings of a madrigal by Jacques Arcadelt (1507–1568) highlight changes in style and aesthetic purpose. Ascanio Mayone (1565–1627) was part of the Neapolitan school active at the turn of the seventeenth century. Like his contemporary Trabaci, he saw the harpsichord as more closely related to the harp or lute than to the organ.²⁷ There can be no question, however, that his intabulation of “Ancidetemi pur” was written with the harpsichord in mind. Mayone used the diminution style to elaborate on the framework of the madrigal, and his setting exploits the full range and capacities of the harpsichord in an idiomatic manner. Of special note are the wide leaps that he undertakes, sometimes with irregular or surprising rhythmic figuration.

Alexander Silbiger has discussed Frescobaldi’s setting of “Ancidetemi pur,” showing that the piece diverges substantially from Arcadelt’s original madrigal. As he writes, “Frescobaldi’s intabulation is essentially a free interpretation of the madrigal, and … an interpretation not only of its notes but also of its words.”²⁸ In contrast to earlier intabulations, which adopt the diminution style of ornamentation, Frescobaldi’s is much closer in style to his revolutionary toccatas (to be addressed below), in which the integrity of the voice leading assumes secondary importance or is abandoned purposefully in favor of idiomatic figuration and the expressive use of dissonance akin to seconda prattica vocal music.²⁹ As Silbiger shows, Frescobaldi used his free ornamental keyboard idiom to differentiate and interpret aspects of the text that are treated in a straightforward manner by Arcadelt himself.

By the time that the setting of “Ancidetemi pur” by Gregorio Strozzi (1615–1687) appeared in print, in 1687, the genre of the madrigal intabulation was archaic, to be sure. He was among the harpsichord composers who continued to display the imprint of Frescobaldi’s work in the latter decades of the seventeenth century, and in some respects his treatment of “Ancidetemi” is an homage to Frescobaldi, especially in its opening trilled gesture. More than Frescobaldi’s setting, which adopts the rhapsodic and capricious manner of his toccatas, Strozzi’s distinguishes each line of the poem with a separate musical style. Thus, despite his reliance on Frescobaldi’s model, Strozzi seems to have been intent on leaving his own mark on Arcadelt’s work.

Invenzione: The Harpsichord Toccata and the Posture of Improvisation

It must be assumed that keyboardists – at least those who were professionally trained or perhaps were highly-skilled amateurs – were engaged in improvisation long before the notation of genres such as the toccata, which seem designed to project aspects of an improvised style through the written or printed medium.

By the late sixteenth century, organs in Venice were apparently used to accompany the practice of polyphonic recitation of chant known as falsobordone.³⁰ In such works, the keyboard takes over the embellishment of a plainchant line in the diminution style from a singer. The Venetian toccata apparently emerged as an independent genre from this medium, and it crystallized as an ornamental elaboration of a schematic harmonic framework. Diruta featured works of this type in Il Transilvano, including some that he had composed himself, as well as others by Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli, and others whose art he admired. The ornamental passagework in the diminution style found in these Venetian toccatas hints at the virtuosity that would become a hallmark of the genre in the hands of Frescobaldi and his successors. In this type of toccata, the voices pass the ornamental role among one another, with each assuming the spotlight in turn; the texture is thus quite similar to that of the madrigal intabulation.

At the same time, an idiom more obviously suited to plucked instruments, including the harpsichord, lute, and harp, was being cultivated among composers in Ferrara and Naples. Of the generation before Frescobaldi, these included Giovanni de Macque (b. 1548–1550, d. 1614) and Ercole Pasquini (b. mid-sixteenth century, d. ca. 1619), whose music Frescobaldi knew but whose toccatas remained unpublished during their lifetimes.³¹ Neapolitan composers including Trabaci and Mayone took a special interest in durezze e ligature (harsh sonorities and suspensions), which embraced heightened chromaticism for expressive purposes. This interest in chromaticism may have been related to the humanist interest in ancient Greek modal theory and the resulting exploration of various systems of tuning and temperament. While the durezze e ligature can sound extremely biting in the meantone system that dominated late-Renaissance Italy, composers such as Mayone also contributed to experiments with split-keyed instruments that enabled differentiation of sharp and flat notes.³² Although not all of these pieces were labeled with the genre title “toccata,” the chromatic explorations of this school had a marked influence on the toccata style of Frescobaldi.

Indeed, Frescobaldi seems to have had all of these models in mind when he composed and published his revolutionary toccatas in lavishly engraved editions for the first time in 1615. This was followed by a second book of toccatas in 1627; both volumes were reprinted multiple times during the seventeenth century.³³ Frescobaldi was aware of the novelty of his toccata style, and this novelty lay in part in his idiomatic treatment of the harpsichord, which was specified (to the exclusion of the organ) on the title page of the first editions of his Tocccate e partite … libro primo.³⁴ As Frescobaldi wrote in the dedicatory letter of his first book, “Having composed my first book of musical compositions upon the keyboard [sopra i tasti], I dedicate it devotedly to you, who in Rome deigned with frequent commands to excite me to the practice of these works, and to show that this style of mine was not unacceptable.”³⁵ The phrase sopra i tasti suggests that Frescobaldi had written down his toccatas as a crystallization of the act of improvisation and also that the act of improvisation was fundamentally tactile, related to the touch and feel of the instrument before him. This idiomatic approach is confirmed in his well-known preface (the expanded version of which appeared in the 1616 edition), where he emphasized the need for performers to respond to the specific properties of the instrument. Echoing Diruta’s statements about performance on the harpsichord as distinct from the organ, Frescobaldi advises harpsichordists on idiomatic execution: “Let the beginnings of the toccatas be done slowly, and arpeggiated: and in the ties, or dissonances, as also in the middle of the work they will be struck together, in order not to leave the instrument empty: which striking will be repeated at the pleasure of the player.”³⁶ Perhaps the most famous aspect of this preface is the composer’s instruction that the toccatas “should not remain subject to the beat, as we see practiced in the modern madrigal.” The flexibility implied by this statement is matched by the capricious nature of the music itself, which moves easily from one texture or pattern of figuration to another. Chord progressions peppered with dissonances give way to fast scalar passages; these are complemented by imitative figures that mimic the vocal ornaments of the stile moderno madrigal. Although carefully planned in their formal design, these compositions assume the pretense of improvisation according to the fantastical imagination of the player.³⁷ Moreover, through his performance instructions, Frescobaldi makes it clear that the notation is insufficient to capture the works’ improvisatory spirit, and players are responsible for elaborating on the score in accordance with their tastes and the responses of the instruments that they are using.

Toccatas published after Frescobaldi’s include works by Michelangelo Rossi (1601/2–1656), Bernardo Storace (fl. mid-seventeenth century), Bernardo Pasquini, and Gregorio Strozzi, among others; Silbiger has explored the manuscript tradition that complements these sources. While these later composers retained essential aspects of Frescobaldi’s style, toward the end of the century, they tended to define the sections of their toccatas more clearly by style, often incorporating a more rigorous contrapuntal approach in some sections than Frescobaldi had done. The idea of the toccata as a vehicle for the exploration of the idiomatic capacities of the harpsichord persisted, and composers after Frescobaldi often incorporated brilliant figuration and virtuosic passagework that emphasize technical skill as much as the improvisatory spirit. The cultivation of ease and virtuosity at the keyboard forms an overt motivation for the toccatas of Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), which had a clear pedagogical purpose. His toccatas are arranged in separate movements including quasi-improvised material, fugal material, and sometimes dance sections.³⁸ In the eighteenth century, the posture of improvisation was incorporated in toccatas, fantasies, and preludes, the last category including opening movements of sonatas.

Esemplare: Bernardo Pasquini’s “Toccata con lo scherzo del cucco”

Both virtuosity and the improvisational posture stand at the center of Bernardo Pasquini’s celebrated “Toccata con lo scherzo del cucco.” Imitations of nature – and birdsong in particular – had been a source of fascination and play by composers across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pasquini’s toccata starts with an off-beat falling-third motive (E–C♯), which imitates the sound of the cuckoo. The motive is imitated in the tenor and bass registers, complemented by sixteenth-note scalic figuration. The cuckoo quickly gives way to an arpeggio section reminiscent of Frescobaldi’s block chords, which are likewise meant to be elaborated by the player. The cuckoo motive returns but is again overtaken by skeletal harmonic progressions that call for arpeggiated elaboration. When the cuckoo returns for a third time, the virtuosity of the accompanimental figuration intensifies, as the player sounds driven to maintain the same patterns for an extended time, propelled by the now obsessive birdsong. The wit in this scene reaches a new level of intensity at the section marked “Duo,” in which two cuckoo birds chirp their minor-third motive around the idiomatic figuration. Finally, the left hand begins to trill on a tenor-range A, while the cuckoos repeat their song; the trill moves up to the right hand, and the toccata ends in a staged scene of chaos, as the cuckoo’s call becomes ever more frequent.

If this toccata, with its representational content, seems to stand apart from other works with the same generic designation, its embrace of virtuosity and the pretense of invention on the spur of the moment – as if the player were being driven forward by an unwieldy chorus of cuckoos – means instead that it forms a delightful manifestation of principles at play in numerous other Italian toccatas.

Example 7.1 Bernardo Pasquini, “Toccata con lo scherzo del cucco,” mm. 85–93

Invenzione: Variations and Dance Pieces

The art of variation on a basic melodic or chordal framework was a skill that professional musicians would have learned through apprenticeship or study. Professional keyboardists trained in church often learned techniques of variation through their simultaneous training as choirboys, though they generally knew how to read music in the sixteenth century at a higher rate than instrumentalists of other sorts, including string and wind players.³⁹ In the sixteenth century, especially the 1580s–1590s, such procedures of variation were notated in the diminution manuals by composer-performers including Ganassi and Diruta, among numerous others.⁴⁰ Among amateur academicians or members of the nobility, such as the characters depicted in the Libro del cortegiano, the ability to vary an instrumental formula or a musical-poetic recitation could be a mark of erudition and accomplishment. Poetry was often recited, with the accompaniment of a lute or viol, to arie (musical “modes,” melodic formulas, or harmonic progressions) such as the romanesca or Ruggiero, or to formulas newly invented for the purpose, and each stanza could be varied through musical embellishment.⁴¹ Thus amateur keyboardists in the sixteenth century might likewise have learned – whether through experience or instruction – to vary the chord progressions that they played. For musicians accompanying dance, progressions such as the folia and the passamezzo (literally, “a step and a half,” named for an aspect of its choreography), as well as folksongs including the “Monica,” would have constituted music for entertainment and dance, and these, too, called for elaboration.

In the sixteenth century and, in greater numbers, in the seventeenth, composers began to notate fully worked-out variation sets in large numbers for the first time. Keyboard composers were among these: Andrea Gabrieli’s extended set of variations on the Passamezzo antico is one example. Frescobaldi included variation sets (partite) in his first and second books of toccatas, as did the many keyboard composers who built on the traditions that he established. At first, both vocal and instrumental composers focused their energies in the composition of variations on progressions such as the romanesca and the Ruggiero; in these, an extended formula (the equivalent of four or eight bars in modern notation) comes to a full cadence before the formula starts again. Later they would turn to the ciaccona and the passacaglia – two genres in which one iteration of the progression elides into the next – of which Frescobaldi provided the first published examples for keyboard. Silbiger has noted that Frescobaldi treated these genres in a manner quite distinct from the approach of composers of vocal settings or settings for instrumental ensemble.⁴² Most obvious in Frescobaldi’s settings is the absence of a true ostinato bass line; instead, each progression occurs without a repeating bass and is, in fact, subject to harmonic digression and other forms of variation. In the monumental Cento partite sopra passacagli, which appeared in the Aggiunta (addendum) to the 1637 reprint of the Secondo libro di toccate, some of the variations are actually labeled “ciaccona,” and Silbiger argues that Frescobaldi purposefully sets the two genres against one another.⁴³ He observes: “the piece is in constant flux. It moves not only through different genres but also through different keys, modes, and tempos … The work ends in a key different from that in which it began; but, after hearing a ‘hundred’ couplets of tonal wandering, who will remember?”⁴⁴

Eliding formulas such as the ciaccona and passacaglia, and to some extent the earlier long forms as well, retained their position as important vehicles for elaboration in later Italian harpsichord music. Beyond Frescobaldi, Bernardo Storace included variations on the romanesca, Ruggiero, and passamezzo, as well as the ciaccona and passacaglia, in his published volume of 1664. Pasquini composed numerous variation sets. Gregorio Strozzi, who, as we have already seen, tended toward conservatism, likewise wrote variations on both long- and short-form progressions. Strozzi’s romanesca variations interpolate short “tenori” and “ritornelli” between iterations of the romanesca formula. While each variation applies diminution-style elaboration to the romanesca progression, these interludes are comprised of block chords that require elaboration in the manner of toccatas.

Variation procedures were, of course, used in a wide array of genres aside from the variation set per se. Canzonas and capriccios often used similar procedures from one section to the next, thus creating a sense of organization through variety and contrast. It is no coincidence that some of the formulas described above also functioned as dance pieces: this was true, for example, of the passamezzo – a kind of pavan. Variation procedures were also applied to other dance genres: throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, balletti, correnti, and gagliarde with skeletal melodies were elaborated through improvised ornamentation in the division style. This practice may be seen in the 1551 collection Intabolatura nova, which is filled with gagliarde, passamezzi, and other dance genres. Although the highest voice is generally more heavily ornamented than the others, there is ample room for elaboration on repeated performance. Frescobaldi elevated individual dances to a new level, endowing them with a craft not seen in previous manifestations of the genre; his dances likewise can accommodate elaboration and variation in repeated sections. The Balli d’arpicordo of Giovanni Picchi (1572–1643), published in 1621, have largely been dismissed in previous literature, but their interesting variations on dance formulas display a level of rhythmic intricacy that may be instructive for the ornamentation of less elaborately notated dances, including the ten short correnti published in a collection by Michelangelo Rossi, likely in the 1630s.⁴⁵

As with other musical genres and procedures of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, aspects of dance genres and variation procedures became part of the Italian galant sonata in the eighteenth century, a point to be pursued further below.

Esemplare: Frescobaldi’s Romanesca Variations

As mentioned above, Frescobaldi’s Toccate e partite … libro primo was issued in two editions in quick succession: the first in 1615 and the second in 1616. Beyond expansion of the preface, the musical composition most heavily revised from the first printing to the second was the variation set on the romanesca. This effect of this revision, as I have argued elsewhere, was to solidify the link between the romanesca variations and the style of the toccatas found in the same volume.⁴⁶ In the original set, the opening few variations seem to place a premium on variety and contrast, while the revised set introduces a clear sense of progression in complexity. The revised fourth variation is quite free in style – evocative of the toccata – while the original fourth variation was more strictly contrapuntal. The fifth through eleventh variations are the same in both versions.

In the original romanesca set, Frescobaldi ended with the twelfth variation, replete with intricate counterpoint, and a monument to the harpsichordist’s ability to coordinate voices, bringing together disparate ideas and melodies into a single, unified whole. In the revised set, however, Frescobaldi changed the twelfth variation to one that represents a pinnacle of the toccata style, with sweeping scales that cover a wide range of the instrument in an impressive display of virtuosity. As in the toccatas, these runs are not supported by intricate contrapuntal motion, but by long notes that provide a harmonic foundation for the rhapsodizing solo voice. In the newly composed thirteenth and fourteenth variations, Frescobaldi backs away from this virtuosic toccata language, reverting instead to the more understated style of the first two variations in the piece. In this reserved ending, the original object – the melodic-harmonic modo of the romanesca – reappears in a form stripped of all virtuosity. The last two variations are characterized by rhythmic displacements that require an affected interpretation; they seem to cast the player as hesitant – reluctant, perhaps, to bring the process of discovery to a close.

Example 7.2 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Variation 14 “Partite sopra l’aria della Romanesca,” revised version (1616)

Invenzione Con Figure: The Eighteenth-Century Sonata and the “Galant Synthesis”

The term “sonata” had been applied to keyboard works prior to the late seventeenth century. As Gregory Barnett has shown, the term was used (usually in the manuscript tradition) in two ways: it could replace a specific genre designation such as “ricercare” or “toccata,” or it could serve as a catch-all for a collection of genres.⁴⁷ Barnett traces the development of the keyboard sonata from its little-known usage in the manuscript context to the exceedingly popular genre that emerged in the early to mid-eighteenth century. At the heart of this story, he shows, is the tension, discussed above, between learned counterpoint and the nascent galant style that found its origins in the age of Corelli.⁴⁸ In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, keyboard composers (usually writing for the harpsichord) began to imitate the multimovement form of sonatas by Corelli and his contemporaries writing for chamber groups, also adopting the light textures, including simplified counterpoint, that those chamber composers applied.

Here we may recall the words of Giovanni Maria Trabaci early in the seventeenth century: the harpsichord, he claimed, was “lord of all the instruments in the world, and with it one can play everything with ease.” This ideal of variety found further realization in the early eighteenth-century harpsichord sonata, which embraces an overall aesthetic of variety, most often packaged neatly in works of technical simplicity that would be widely accessible to amateur players. While Daniel E. Freeman has emphasized that the keyboard sonata was not yet considered a “serious” genre in the early eighteenth century,⁴⁹ Gregory Barnett has, more recently, shown that a compromise was reached between various pulls and contradictions that had defined the keyboard sonata. He has identified the Opus 3 sonatas of Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739) (which may or may not actually have appeared in print during the eighteenth century) as “crucial in the early history of the keyboard sonata in mediating between a series of contrasts during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Frescobaldian tradition versus violin-influenced innovation; counterpoint versus homophony; virtuosity versus accessibility; professional versus recreational use; mostly manuscript versus mostly printed dissemination.”⁵⁰

In any case, the eighteenth-century Italian harpsichord sonata served important social and musical functions, employing both idiomatic harpsichord gestures and references to the nonkeyboard world. Composers such as Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739), Giovanni Benedetto Platti (before 1692–1763), Baldassare Galuppi (1706–1785), Domenico Alberti (1710–1746), and Giovanni Marco Rutini (1723–1797) crafted sonatas to suit these purposes, and their works survive in both printed editions and manuscript. Freeman has emphasized their wide referential frame: “the best Italian composers sought to enhance the expressive range of their keyboard sonatas by adopting the characteristic gestures of the ‘more important’ genres – opera, symphony, concerto – which were associated with public performance, lofty artistic goals, and greater musical virtuosity.”⁵¹ Exploration of some of these references, along with gestures that emerge from the medium of the harpsichord itself, give a sense of how the aesthetic of variety assumed primary importance and manifested itself in ways that Trabaci could hardly have anticipated at the start of the preceding century.

Most eighteenth-century Italian sonatas are made up of two or more movements, the first of which is usually a slow movement. The individual movements of these sonatas are most often in a binary form of one kind or another – either “rhyming” (in which the two halves start in a similar fashion) or “rounded” (involving a recapitulation of themes toward the end).⁵² In any case, it is unhelpful to compare these works with the later Viennese classical sonata; even in the late eighteenth century, the Viennese model was by no means the only one in use. More to the point is to consider what these binary forms accomplished for those who used them; among other things, they provided a sense of motivic unity at the opening of each half, while exploring two alternative methods of continuation. Harmonic and motivic excursions in both halves should be judged by the aesthetic ideal of balance between unity and variety – a yardstick very much at the center of eighteenth-century musical thought.

Figura: The Alberti Bass

Perhaps the most widely known contribution of the Italian keyboard sonata – one later adopted by composers in Paris, Vienna, and indeed, across Europe – is the Alberti bass, named after the composer Domenico Alberti. This method of bass-register arpeggiation essentially forms a written-out realization of harmonies that would, in chamber music of the same period, be realized through use of basso continuo. At the same time, it maintains the polarized soprano–bass texture that was so essential to the galant style. In addition, through its active rhythmic profile, it provides a sense of momentum and energy that balances the sometimes slow harmonic rhythm of the soprano-range melodies. On modern pianos, players are often taught to quiet the Alberti bass so as not to drown out the singing melody, but on harpsichords (as well as eighteenth-century pianos) such a quieting effect is impossible and, in any case, undesirable, as it robs the figuration of its energy.⁵³

Figura: Two First-Movement Topoi: The Toccata and the French Ouverture

Among numerous other types, two marked topoi emerge in first movements of numerous Italian sonata composers of the early eighteenth century. The first, an example of which may be seen in Benedetto Marcello’s Sonata in A minor (S740), is the toccata type. Although it is not marked with that genre designation, this movement employs a quick repeated pattern that runs up and down the keyboard, followed by a section of chords that require an arpeggiando execution. With its characteristic ties and dissonances, this latter section traces its roots to the toccata style of Frescobaldi and altered through the prism of his successors.

Another topos that appears with some frequency in first movements of Italian sonatas of the eighteenth century is the French ouverture, characterized by recurring dotted rhythms and quick, ornamental runs; an example is the extended and interesting opening movement of Galuppi’s Sonata in D major (I31). The incorporation of this trope in the work of Italian composers is a signal of the growing awareness of national styles and the attempt to fuse them into a single “mixed style,” notwithstanding later attempts by German composers to take full credit for that ideal.⁵⁴

Figura: “Light” Counterpoint

As in the chamber works of Corelli, keyboard sonatas did not abandon counterpoint entirely. The counterpoint appears, however, in reduced texture, with fewer voices and less intricacy overall than was found in the works of Pasquini, for example. This thinning out of the contrapuntal texture was fully in keeping with the galant aesthetic, which favored the soprano–bass polarity rather than an equal treatment of voices all across the registers of the keyboard. The same sonata by Marcello (S740) offers an example of this treatment: The third movement, marked “Allegro,” contains a simple but rhythmically active subject stated first in the soprano register and accompanied by a descending bass line; the bass takes over the subject in measure 6 and is accompanied by off-beat motives in the right hand. Nowhere does this “fugue” achieve more than two independent voices, but the effect of a more complex texture is created through the use of sixteenth-note arpeggiated figuration passed between the two hands, as well as countersubjects played occasionally in parallel thirds.

Example 7.3 Benedetto Marcello, Sonata in A minor, S740, third movement, mm. 1–13. The use of countersubjects in parallel thirds is not shown here

Figura: Dance Genres and Variations

Composers of the keyboard sonata in the early eighteenth century continued to incorporate dance genres within their multimovement compositions; in this respect, too, they were in lockstep with composers of chamber sonatas, whose sonate da camera relied heavily on dance. Giovanni Benedetto Platti’s Op. 1, no. 3 incorporates a Sarabanda, Minuet and Trio, and Giga in immediate succession, thus juxtaposing three dances that employ triple or compound meter with different tempos and affects. Whether Platti had this model in mind or not, this choice may be considered analogous to the pairing of dances with different tempos and characters in previous centuries – for example, the balletto and gagliarda.

Variation procedures continued to be applied to dance genres as well as other forms. Benedetto Marcello composed a set of variations on the ciaccona, as did others of his generation. Individual movements – especially dance movements – by composers such as Domenico Alberti and Baldassare Galuppi (for example, his Sonata in D major, I8) often encompassed variazioni on a basic scheme – in this case a minuet. Although apparently far removed from the sixteenth-century origins of the diminution style, these works often involve the same principle: the subdivision of melodies in longer note values into more intricate melodies with shorter note values. In this aspect as well, the Italian keyboard sonata of the eighteenth century mirrored developments in chamber music of other sorts.

Figura: “Concerto-Like” Slow Movements

Slow movements of Italian harpsichord sonatas were often modeled after the slow movements of solo concertos. The middle movement of Platti’s Op. 1, No. 4 is one such example. Its gentle, repeating eighth-note figuration in the left hand is reminiscent of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi that employ the same figuration, and the rhapsodic, expressive right-hand part assumes the role of a solo violinist.

Figura: Light Finales

Eighteenth-century Italian sonatas frequently conclude with a light, quick finale. In some cases, such a movement might be in a dance genre – for example, a minuet or giga. In others, the generic finale is in a light meter such as 3/8 or 2/4. In most cases, composers seem to have been concerned with the project of a sense of contrast with preceding movements.

Perorazione: Lodovico Giustini’s Sonate Da Cimbalo Di Piano E Forte and the “Baroque Piano”

Instrument builders in Italy had long recognized that the harpsichord had limitations. In particular, the harpsichord’s inability to render nuanced dynamic levels that would change with the force of the player’s touch must have been frustrating enough to prompt builders to seek solutions. (Clavichords, of course, can make such dynamic adjustments, but they are significantly quieter than harpsichords.) Thus, in or just before 1700, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1732) invented an action for a pianoforte, advertised in an article by Scipione Maffei in 1711, in which the instrument is called a “gravecembalo col piano e forte” (harpsichord [that plays] loud and soft).⁵⁵ This title suggests that the early pianoforte was considered a subset of the cembalo – a harpsichord with special features, rather than a completely separate instrument category.

In 1732, Lodovico Giustini (1685–1743) published a set of twelve sonatas, each in four or five movements, some comprised of dance genres (in the manner or a sonata da camera) and some of nondance genres (after the sonata da chiesa). While these pieces are peppered with dynamic markings that show the composer’s interest in the instruments of the Cristofori school, the pieces are entirely playable on other types of cembali – that is, on “ordinary” Italian harpsichords. Organologist and instrument builder David Sutherland has suggested that pianos built by Cristofori and his Italian contemporaries were more common in eighteenth-century Italy than is commonly assumed.⁵⁶ Giustini’s sonatas of 1732 were the first and only works designated specifically for the piano until some thirty years later, but the boundaries separating both instruments and repertory remained fluid: Music written for cembalo would have been suitable for gravicembalo col piano e forte, and Giustini’s “piano” sonatas may be executed successfully on an ordinary cembalo.

Therefore, even though it is difficult if not impossible to make a definitive distinction between repertory for the Cristofori piano and Italian harpsichords of the eighteenth century, the practical implications of this problem are quite small. The timbre and rate of decay on the two instruments are similar, meaning that the repertory and performance practices were, in most respects, identical. For our purposes, Giustini’s sonatas and Cristofori’s invention serve as yet another marker of the rich keyboard culture that flourished in Italy for centuries.