Leseprobe_Anklaenge 2020-2021

Introduction
19
filling, as a kind of an ornamento, i.e. enriched with ornamentation and contrapuntal
voices, and to what extent can we reckon with a ‘dynamic’ realization, made more
flexible, for example, by changing the number of voices or the registration.
This discussion of fundamental stylistic questions is followed by two contributions
that focus on specific types of sources and aim at the concrete design of the
accompanying texture.
Augusta Campagne deals with lute intabulations as a point of reference for
continuo performance on the harpsichord (especially for secular polyphonic music).
It is obvious that solutions found in lute intabulations cannot be transferred directly to
the keyboard instrument, but require a translation, as it were, because of the different
technical and idiomatic conditions and possibilities. In order to trace the (often subtle)
differences as well as the parallels, which exist between the accompaniment on the lute
and that on the harpsichord, an analysis of prints by Simone Verovio is appropriate.
Some of these prints provide both a lute and a harpsichord accompaniment to threeand
four-part secular and sacred canzonettas. They allow a comparison of lute and
harpsichord accompaniment practice under a variety of aspects (whether all or only
certain voices of the vocal texture were doubled, whether diminutions, passaggi, or
short imitations were added, wether notes that had been tied over were restarted,
whether cadences were supplemented, etc.)
Thérèse de Goede devotes her essay to the problem of the performance of
continuo parts that were – especially during the earlier 17th century – still not
figured. Of fundamental importance is the insight that an understanding of the
early basso continuo based on ‘modern’ harmonic tonality is misguided. Rather, the
continuing validity of the principles of modal counterpoint must be assumed, in
which accidentals were still thought to be independent of the key and the decision as
to the raising or lowering of a tone resulted rather from the respective contrapuntal
constellation. What the early basso continuo treatises accomplish is to be understood as
an application of the traditional rules of voice leading to playing over a bass, whereby
the instructions formulated in this context can be applied to any style, in particular
also to the ‘modern’ expressive stile recitativo. Based on this, answers to the question
of the use of accidentals are discussed in several ‘problematic’ passages in pieces by
Sigismondo D’India.
Luciano Contini equally makes a strong case for the connection between the older
and the ‘new’ music around 1600. His contribution emphasizes that the composition
of the seconda pratica was contemporarily conceptualized in the categories of traditional
counterpoint and that, in this respect, an unbroken continuity with the prima pratica
can be assumed. The expression-related deviations from the rules of contrapuntal
setting in ‘modern’ music do not throw them overboard, but are to be understood as
licenze; however, as such they presuppose the traditional, unchanged older system.