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

Chapter 1 11
Serenissimo Granduca di Toscana’. In all these cases we are confronted by a different didactic
function of the duo: the composition exercise. Quite often we find a few duos composed by a
pupil in his teacher’s collection. The collection by Il Verso (1596) contains a duo by his pupil
Antonio Formica, then ten years old; in Calì’s collection (1605) there is a duo by Giuseppe
Palazzotti, who was another of Il Verso’s pupils.
The earliest Italian treatises do not pay particular attention to the duo as composition
exercise. It is true that in Tinctoris’s Liber de arte contrapuncti (c. 1475) we find two-part
examples that illustrate contrapuntal technique, but they coexist with three- and four-part
examples. The same happens in the first printed treatises: for instance, Gaffurius, Practica
musice (1496), Aron, Toscanello (1529), Lanfranco, Scintille di musica (1533). The first
treatise to build all its commentary on counterpoint and modal theory on two-part examples is
Zarlino’s Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558); this practice was followed by most subsequent
treatises.
Unfortunately, Zarlino does not give us any hint about the relationship between his way
of didactic thinking and the actual duo collections, which were plentiful in Venice in his day.
We have to wait for Banchieri’s Cartella (1614) to be given an exhaustive picture of the didactic
function of the duo as composition exercise. Banchieri’s treatise contains precise information
about the way of using famous composers’ music for learning how to compose first duos, and
then any type of music. Banchieri differs from Scaletta, then, in fixing the target of his treatise
beyond purely vocal and instrumental practice, instead aiming to prepare a complete composer.
According to Banchieri, the most important duo collections could be used by the young pupil as
worthy examples of composition. 34 Though Banchieri codified this didactic praxis quite late in
the history of the duo, he gave us several hints that it belonged to a noble and old tradition,
especially when he cited his composition teacher Giuseppe Guami, who almost certainly taught
Banchieri the two-part composition technique that he claimed to have practised in his youth. In
particular, in a letter addressed to Guami himself, a sort of dedication to Cartella musicale, 35
Banchieri acknowledges the debt towards his teacher:
34 Cf. App. E, 12, Banchieri (1614), 5.
35 This letter is included in Lettere armoniche intrecciate in sei capi: Di dedicatione, ragguaglio,
congratulazione, buone feste, ringraziamento, piacevolezza (Bologna: Girolamo Mascheroni, 1628). Facs: BMB,
V, 21 (1968), p. 90. Its contents are similar to the dedication of the 1609 reprint of Cartella, and probably
derives from it.