TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Sets of Variations in Italian Ensemble Sonatas of the first half of the
Seventeenth Century
Peter Allsop
Among the most important legacies bequeathed to the emerging ensemble sonata
in Italy were the techniques of improvised embellishment and variation
as expounded in the diminution manuals of the sixteenth century.
Standard bass patterns such as the Ruggiero and Romanesca, already present
in such didactic treatises as Diego Ortiz’s Tratado de glosas (Rome,
1553), offered a framework for extensive instrumental compositions for
over 100 years. Yet if the contents of printed collections are at
all a reliable guide, in the first half of the seventeenth century sets
of variations on basses or popular tunes were much more the domain of keyboards
and plucked instruments than of instrumental ensembles. In fact,
just three composers—Salamon Rossi, Giovanni Battista Buonamente, and Marco
Uccellini— together produced 37 sets between 1613 and 1645 accounting for
at least 95% of the surviving repertory during this period, a vigorous
line of development over three generations which inexplicably failed to
survive past the mid-century. These works constitute some of the
most substantial and technically impressive compositions for instrumental
ensembles of the entire century, and moreover provide abundant stylistic
evidence of a master/pupil relationship between these instrumentalists.
Last updated on 21 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita