Two-part didactic music in printed Italian collections of the ...

Chapter 1 7
purchase the ‘Duo del Ian Gero’ (1540) and Metallo’s collection (ante 1591). 17 Furthermore,
the same catalogues suggest that all these textless duos should be sung, since all the collections
cited above were listed under rubrics like ‘Madrigali, duetti, solfeggi e cantate a più voci’. 18
This last fact demonstrates that the old collections were still considered effective and useful for
teaching purposes in the late Baroque: hence there was a continuity with the didactic tradition of
the early Renaissance.
This history begins before 1521 and continues after 1744. The didactic duo already
existed in the second half of the fifteenth century, though no consistent collections have
survived, only more or less consistent groups of samples in a few manuscripts. 19 At its other
end, in the first years of the eighteenth century the monodic solfeggio and the duetto, both with
continuo, had already begun to displace the duo from its didactic function. Outside Italy, the
instrumental duo without continuo remained in fashion: I am thinking of the collections by
Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Mattheson in Germany and that by William Croft in
England. All this music was conceived for flute or recorder, instruments generally played by
amateurs. 20 Without doubt this genre originated from the didactic duo, but is actually another
thing altogether: since the instrumental duetto was meant for two flutes, it lost that ambiguity
between vocal and instrumental performance that is typical of the Italian didactic duo. It is
probably not by chance that instrumental duetto collections never became fashionable in Italy
during the first half of the eighteenth century.
1.4. WHEN AND WHY WERE DUO COLLECTIONS FIRST PRINTED?
One of the most likely reasons that prompted the production of Renaissance duo
collections was the changing relationship between music and emergent social classes in the first
half of the sixteenth century. 21 Earlier, professional musicians were not allowed to manage a
public of wealthy amateurs; music was taught within chapels and the direct relationship between
teacher and pupil would not have justified a massive publishing of didactic material. The
changed requirements of the Renaissance, mainly due to the emergence of the bourgeoisie and
to a better appreciation of musicians and musical practice, triggered a great demand for didactic
music in the first decades of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, the first generation of Italian
17 Cf. Mischiati, Indici, pp. 264-337.
18 Ibidem.
19 On duos in early manuscripts, cf. Chap. 2 of the thesis, ‘The Early Duo’.
20 Telemann composed a considerable number of duets, a few of them lost, for various instruments. For a
complete list cf. the entry ‘Telemann, Georg Philipp’, DEUMM, Biografie, VII, p. 729. Mattheson composed 12
Sonates à 2 & 3 flutes sans basse (Amsterdam, 1708); Croft, 6 Sonatas of two parts for 2 flutes (London, 1710).
21 Cf. Kämper, La musica strumentale, p. 24.