Browsing by Author "Louw, Zirk Walter Eon"

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    The toccatas in the Italian lute and theorbo repertoires of the early seventeenth century: a contribution to the history of instrumental music in the beginning of the Baroque
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Louw, Zirk Walter Eon; Ludemann, Winfried ; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Science. Department of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Published in 1604, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger’s Libro primo d’intavolatura di chitarone, holds interest not only for being the first printed book of theorbo music, but also for its six toccatas, which are presented at the beginning of the volume. These highly innovative works substituted for the contrapuntal genres, namely the fantasias and the intabulations of vocal music, which traditionally formed the bulk of the non-dance repertoire in lute manuscripts and prints in the sixteenth century. Toccatas are also featured in Kapsperger’s subsequent lute and theorbo prints. Moreover, this genre enjoyed considerable significance in the oeuvre of other seventeenth-century Italian lutenists, too. Yet, the assumption that the toccata was primarily a keyboard genre has meant that the toccatas in the seventeenth-century lute and theorbo repertoires have received little scholarly attention to date. This is exacerbated by the fact that, owing to the disappearance of the lute family in the later eighteenth century, the lute and its repertoire largely remain a rather specialised and obscure tract of scholarly research. This is hardly representative of the prominent position which the instrument enjoyed in Western music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This inquiry provides an overview of the toccatas in the Italian lute and theorbo repertoires of the first half of the seventeenth century, a geographical and periodical focus which reflects the actual concentration of the printed and manuscript sources of lute toccatas. These works present departures from contrapuntal traditions but are also to be understood as derivatives of certain trends which were already present in the sixteenth-century lute repertoire too. The analyses therefore serve to contextualise the toccatas as manifestations of the broader musical milieu of the early Baroque. Cognisance is taken not only of musical-stylistic changes, but also of the increasing idiomaticity in instrumental music, the significant shifts in reception and patronage, as well as of the compositional and performance settings. In order to allow a better evaluation and to facilitate further research, the second volume of this study presents transcriptions from the original tablature into staff musical notation, of a representative selection of toccatas from printed and manuscript sources. This inquiry contributes to an alternative view of the toccata genre and provides new insights into the early Baroque.