Early Keyboard Instruments

En este articulo se presenta el hallazgo y un estudio preliminar de un nuevo libro manuscrito en cifra para órgano de entre fines del siglo XVII y comienzos del XVIII, depositado en el convento de Santa Clara de Monforte de Lemos (Lugo). La portada del libro situa su origen en el monasterio jerónimo de Nuestra Senora de Prado de Valladolid, aunque esa misma portada parece indicar su paso a una institucion jesuítica, probablemente en el propio Monforte. Entre las obras de mayor envergadura del libro se encuentran dos atri- buidas a Pablo Bruna, una de ellas hasta ahora desconocida. Tambien otra atribuida a fray Andres de Urrizola (probablemente un fraile jeronimo) y, al menos, dos anónimas. Ademas el libro contiene pequeñas piezas escritas simultáneamente en cifra y canto de órgano, lo que, junto con otras evidencias, indica una orientación didáctica. El libro no se encuentra en la ac- tualidad disponible a los investigadores, y no se ha podido acceder al total de sus contenidos, no obstante la entidad de lo conocido nos ha movido a comunicar sin más retraso su hallazgo.

In this paper the finding of a new book, dating around the end of the XVIIth or beginning of the XVIIIth century, written in hispanic numeric organ tablature is presented. The book is preserved at the Santa Clara’s convent of Monforte de Lemos (Lugo), although its cover indicates that it was produced in the monastery of Nuestra Señora de Prado in Valladolid (Order of St. Jerome) and that it was binded in a jesuitical institution, probably in Monforte itself. The most notorious facts about this manuscript are the inclusion of two works attributed to Pablo Bruna, one of them unknown until now, and other by fray Andrés de Urrizola (probably a member of the St Jerome order), together with, at least, two ano- nymous pieces. The manuscript also includes a series of short works written simultaneously in numeric tablature and ordinary staves which indicates a didactic aim. The book is not currently available to the researchers, and its full content is still unknown, however the au- thors have decided not to delay anymore the communication of its finding due to the known valuable contents that it has.

(Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft – Serie II, 48)

Open Access:
https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=psm-001%3A2007%3A48

Reviews:
- Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Samstag/Sonntag 13/14 October 2007, p. 52 (tsr).
- Informazione organistica vol. 18 (2007), p. 272–274 (Pier Paolo Donati).
- Schweizer Musikzeitung 13/5 (2010), p. 36 (Bernhard Billetter).

Knowledge and debate in the field of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Venetian music has greatly benefitted in recent decades from studies of major institutions, composers, repertories and sources, as also from investigations of the quantitative aspects of musical life in what was one of the largest, richest and most commercially oriented cities on the Italian peninsula: the Venetian musical phenomenon includes, on the one hand, regular or sporadic musical activities in the city’s many churches and private palaces (activities which provided significant earnings for large numbers of musicians, whether or not salaried members of the ducal cappella) and, on the other, the auxiliary trades of music printing and instrument making. The transmission of the musical repertories has also received notable attention: in particular, the contemporary and later reception of Venetian musical repertories in different political, linguistic and/or confessional areas. Central, too, have been questions of ‘sound’, both with regard to the particular interaction between musical composition, the spatial peculiarities and the specific liturgical and ceremonial traditions of the Venetian ducal chapel, and in the context of music-making at large.

This collection of essays on the life, times and works of a composer who ranks among the most outstanding musical personalities of his day variously unites these strands in an albeit partial attempt to interpret Giovanni Gabrieli’s output and activities in their Venetian context and, at the same time, cast light on their broader historiographical significance: on the one hand Gabrieli as point of synthesis of a complex Venetian musical tradition, on the other his interaction with and impact on contemporary musical life, his influence on later generations of composers both at home and abroad, the rediscovery of his achievements by nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians and performers, the revisitations of his music by twentieth-century composers.

Reviews:
– Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 53 (2018), p. 285–291 (Michelangelo Gabbrielli)
– Early Music 46 (2018), p. 167–169 (Eleanor Selfridge-Field); reply: Early Music 46 (2018), p. 367–368
– Renaissance Quarterly 71 (2018), p. 776–777 (Tim Shephard)
– Music & Letters 100 (2019), p. 543–546 (Tim Carter)

The paper here described focuses on the conservation treatment and reconstruction of a muselaar virginal, built in 1640 by the famous Ioannes Ruckers of Antwerp, which is preserved at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The ongoing Ruckers Muselaar Project aims to develop a new approach to the eternal problem of balancing the three goals of understanding the instrument's original state, of determining how to preserve it better, and of finding a way to give its original function as a musical instrument new life without compromising its preservation.