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Capriccio Stravagante, Canto part, mm. 74-82. SLUB Dresden, Mus.1510.N.1, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id326018611.
Source publication
Carlo Farina’s 1627 Capriccio Stravagante uses four violin-family instruments (violin, two violas, and a violoncello-range instrument) to mimic other instruments such as trumpets, shawms, organs, and guitars. This investigation seeks to equip the modern performer by framing the piece in the context of contemporary understandings and techniques. Car...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... quandary, with perhaps more relevance for the performer, is how to interpret the printed slurs that appear in several sections of the piece. These slurs are placed cryptically in relation to the notes (see fig. 6 and 8, below), and any attempt to render them "faithfully," according to Farina's intentions, may be less than straightforward. These curved lines are symbols, and it is worthwhile to ask ourselves not only, "How do we translate these symbols into more legible and functional symbols," but "What do these symbols signify?" The pursuit of ...
Context 2
... method was letterpress printing, using movable type. In music printing, minute sections of five-line staff were cast, each with a note of a different pitch and duration, and these could be assembled side by side to (ideally) create the illusion of a continuous staff (the gaps between the sections can be seen clearly at the ends of the lines in figs. 6 and 8). The creator of the set of type, or "fount," would of course cast more than one copy of each unique note, as there would be, for instance, more than one c" quarter note on a given page. The slurs as well had to be cast as pieces of type, and in the example below it appears that only one character for a slur was cast; all the slurs are ...
Context 3
... these slur marks as simply indicating that the passages in question "are slurred," and to construct the bowing in the most logical and informed manner possible. After all, on close inspection, the slurs appear to simply be spaced roughly equidistantly across the affected lines (see, in particular, the middle line of fig. 8 or the final line of fig. ...
Context 4
... for greater numbers). 283 They also typically went hand in hand with kettledrums (even when mounted on horseback 284 ), and Farina marks the Basso part as such in m. 169 ("Gnachere" and "Heerpaucken," both typically indicating paired, pitched kettledrums), and restricts it to rhythmic iterations of the first and fifth scale degrees (see fig. 16). These trumpet and kettledrum ensembles were explicitly connected with military use and with royalty, to the point that legal decrees (and even more forcible social pressures) restricted their use to the nobility, as we will see in more detail below. by range. The terminology he uses most consistently is, from lowest to highest, ...
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