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Bernardo Storace
Bernardo Storace (fl. 1664) was an Italian composer. Almost nothing is known about his life; his only surviving collection of music contains numerous variation sets and represents a transitory stage between the time of Girolamo Frescobaldi and that of Bernardo Pasquini. Life Very little is known about his life, except that in 1664 he served as Vice-''Maestro di cappella'' to the senate of Messina. This fact is mentioned on the title page of ''Selva di varie compositioni d'intavolatura per cimbalo ed organo'', the single surviving collection of Storace's music, which is also the only source of information on the composer. Messina was twice devastated by earthquakes, in 1783 and in 1908, so archival research is impossible. Given that ''Selva di varie compositioni'' was published in Venice and the music is stylistically somewhat more related to that of northern Italian composers, it is possible that Storace was originally from the north of Italy. Works Storace's main interest in ...
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Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico anno 2013, datISTAT/ref> Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered by many academics to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, becoming a major artistic, cultural, commercial, political, economic and financial center. During this time, Florence rose to a position of enormous influence in Italy, Europe, and beyond. Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throug ...
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Pedal Note
In music, a pedal point (also pedal note, organ point, pedal tone, or pedal) is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign (i.e. dissonant) harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes functions as a " non-chord tone", placing it in the categories alongside suspensions, retardations, and passing tones. However, the pedal point is unique among non-chord tones, "in that it begins on a consonance, sustains (or repeats) through another chord as a dissonance until the harmony", not the non-chord tone, "resolves back to a consonance".Frank, Robert J. (2000)"Non-Chord Tones" , ''Theory on the Web'', Southern Methodist University. Pedal points "have a strong tonal effect, 'pulling' the harmony back to its root". Pedal points can also build drama or intensity and expectation. When a pedal point occurs in a voice other than the bass, it is usually referred to as an inverted pedal pointBenward & Saker (2003). ''Music: In Theory and P ...
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Fiori Musicali
''Fiori musicali'' ("''Musical Flowers''") is a collection of liturgical organ music by Girolamo Frescobaldi, first published in 1635. It contains three organ masses and two secular capriccios. Generally acknowledged as one of Frescobaldi's greatest works, ''Fiori musicali'' influenced composers during at least two centuries. Johann Sebastian Bach was among its admirers, and parts of it were included in the celebrated ''Gradus ad parnassum'', a highly influential 1725 treatise by Johann Joseph Fux which was in use even in the 19th century. History ''Fiori musicali'' was first published in Venice in 1635, when Frescobaldi was working as organist of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, under the patronage of Pope Urban VIII and his nephew Cardinal Francesco Barberini. It may have been conceived as music for St Mark's Basilica or a similarly important church. The collection was printed by Giacomo Vincenti (a celebrated publisher who had previously published reprints of Frescobaldi's c ...
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Fugue
In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the course of the composition. It is not to be confused with a '' fuguing tune'', which is a style of song popularized by and mostly limited to early American (i.e. shape note or "Sacred Harp") music and West Gallery music. A fugue usually has three main sections: an exposition, a development and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key. Some fugues have a recapitulation. In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th century, the term ''fugue'' has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint. Most fugues open with a short m ...
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Ricercar
A ricercar ( , ) or ricercare ( , ) is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term ''ricercar'' derives from the Italian verb which means 'to search out; to seek'; many ricercars serve a preludial function to "search out" the key or mode of a following piece. A ricercar may explore the permutations of a given motif, and in that regard may follow the piece used as illustration. The term is also used to designate an etude or study that explores a technical device in playing an instrument, or singing. In its most common contemporary usage, it refers to an early kind of fugue, particularly one of a serious character in which the subject uses long note values. However, the term has a considerably more varied historical usage. Among the best-known ricercars are — for harpsichord — the two contained in Bach's '' Musical Offering'', and Domenico Gabrielli's set of seven for solo cello. The latter set contains what are considered to be ...
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Toccata
Toccata (from Italian ''toccare'', literally, "to touch", with "toccata" being the action of touching) is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments (the opening of Claudio Monteverdi's opera '' L'Orfeo'' being a notable example). History Renaissance The form first appeared in the late Renaissance period. It originated in northern Italy. Several publications of the 1590s include toccatas, by composers such as Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Adriano Banchieri, and Luzzasco Luzzaschi. These are keyboard compositions in which one hand, and then the other, performs virtuosic runs and brilliant cascading passages against a chordal accompaniment in the other hand ...
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Courante
The ''courante'', ''corrente'', ''coranto'' and ''corant'' are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era. In a Baroque dance suite an Italian or French courante is typically paired with a preceding allemande, making it the second movement of the suite or the third if there is a prelude. Types ''Courante'' literally means "running", and in the later Renaissance the courante was danced with fast running and jumping steps, as described by Thoinot Arbeau. But the courante commonly used in the baroque period was described by Johann Mattheson in ''Der vollkommene Capellmeister'' (Hamburg, 1739) as "chiefly characterized by the passion or mood of sweet expectation. For there is something heartfelt, something longing and also gratifying, in this melody: clearly music on which hopes are built."Quoted in Alfred Dürr, preface to Johann Sebastian Bach, ''Französische Suiten: die verzierte Fassung / The French Suites: Em ...
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Galliard
The ''galliard'' (; french: gaillarde; it, gagliarda) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance form The ''galliard'' is not an improvised dance, but rather, it consists of choreographed patterns of steps, which occupy one or more measures of music. In one measure, a galliard typically has five steps; in French such a basic step is called a ''cinq pas'' and in Italy, ''cinque passi''. This is sometimes written in English sources as ''sinkapace''. These steps are: right, left, right, left, cadence. The galliard is an athletic dance, characterised by leaps, jumps, hops and other similar figures. The main feature that defines a galliard step is a large jump, after which the dancer lands with one leg ahead of the other. This jump is called a ''cadence,'' and the final landing is called the ''posture.'' The cadence is typically preceded by ...
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Passamezzo Antico
The passamezzo antico is a ground bass or chord progression that was popular during the Italian Renaissance and known throughout Europe in the 16th century. van der Merwe, Peter. 1989. ''Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music'', p.207. Oxford: Clarendon Press. . The progression is a variant of the double tonic: its major mode variant is known as the passamezzo moderno. The sequence consists of two phrases as follows: ''(For an explanation of this notation see Chord progression)'' Though usually in the key of G minor, in the key of A minor this gives: The romanesca is a variant of the passamezzo antico, where the first chord is the III (e.g., a C major chord in A minor). A famous example is "Greensleeves". The passamezzo antico chord changes are found, knowingly or not, in modern popular music culture: Carrie Underwood's debut album ''Some Hearts ''Some Hearts'' is the debut studio album by American singer and songwriter Carrie ...
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Passamezzo Moderno
The passamezzo moderno ("modern half step"; also quadran, quadrant, or quadro pavan), or Gregory Walker was "one of the most popular harmonic formulae in the Renaissance period, divid nginto two complementary strains thus:" For example, in C major the progression is as follows: : The progression or ground bass, the major mode variation of the passamezzo antico, originated in Italian and French dance music during the first half of the 16th century, where it was often used with a contrasting progression or section known as ''ripresi''. Though one of Thomas Morley's characters in ''Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'' denigrates the Gregory Walker, comparing unskilled singing to its sound, it was popular in both pop/popular/folk and classical musics through 1700. Its popularity was revived in the mid 19th century, and the American variant (below) evolved into the twelve bar blues. Examples Listed in : *several in ''The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book'' *"Up and Wa ...
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