Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo's Italy

Curious & Modern Inventions

Curious & Modern Inventions

Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy

Rebecca Cypess

The University of Chicago Press

CHICAGO AND LONDON

REBECCA CYPESS is assistant professor of music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She is coeditor of the two-volume collection Word, Image, and Song.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2016 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2016.

Printed in the United States of America

25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-31944-5 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-31958-2 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226319582.001.0001

This book has been supported by the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cypess, Rebecca, author.

Curious and modern inventions : instrumental music as discovery in Galileo’s Italy / Rebecca Cypess.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-31944-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-31958-2 (e-book) 1. Instrumental music—Italy—17th century—History and criticism. 2. Music—Italy—17th century—History and criticism. 3. Marini, Biagio, 1597?–1665. Affetti musicali. 4. Farina, Carlo, approximately 1600–approximately 1640. 5. Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 1583–1643. 6. Castello, Dario, active 1621–1644. I. Title.

ML503.2.C96 2016

784.0945′09032—dc23

2015024768

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This book is dedicated to Josh, Ben, Joey, and Sally, with thanks and love.

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Editorial Principles

Introduction

CHAPTER 1. The Paradox of Instrumentality

The Material and the Ephemeral in Early Modern Instrumental Music

CHAPTER 2. Instruments of the Affetti

Biagio Marini’s Affetti musicali (1617)

CHAPTER 3. Portraiture in Motion

Instrumental Music and the Representation of the Affetti

CHAPTER 4. Curiose e moderne inventioni

Biagio Marini’s Sonate (1626) and Carlo Farina’s Capriccio stravagante (1627) as Collections of Curiosities

CHAPTER 5. Instruments of Timekeeping

The Case of Frescobaldi’s Toccate e partite . . . libro primo

CHAPTER 6. The stile moderno and the Art of History

Artisanship and Historical Consciousness in the Works of Dario Castello

Conclusion

Notes

Musical Works Cited

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Musical Examples

EX. 1.1. Biagio Marini, Sonata semplice, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 1–16

EX. 1.2. Marini, Sonata d’invenzione, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 26–56

EX. 1.3. Marini, Sonata per sonar variate, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 39–50

EX. 1.4. Marini, Sonata per sonar variate, mm. 1–24

EX. 1.5. Marini, Sonata per sonar con due corde, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 1–20

EX. 1.6A. Marini, Sonata per sonar con due corde, mm. 120–23

EX. 1.6B. Marini, Sonata per sonar con due corde, mm. 62–67

EX. 1.6C. Marini, Sonata per sonar con due corde, mm. 95–101

EX. 1.6D. Marini, Sonata per sonar con due corde, mm. 62–82

EX. 1.7. Marini, Capriccio per sonar tre parti con il violino solo a modo di lira, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 1–19

EX. 2.1. Marini, La Foscarina, from Affetti musicali, mm. 71–80

EX. 2.2. Marini, La Bemba, from Affetti musicali, mm. 57–81

EX. 2.3A. Marini, La Martinenga, from Affetti musicali, mm. 1–6

EX. 2.3B. Marini, La Martinenga, mm. 15–19

EX. 2.4. Marini, Il Zontino, from Affetti musicali, mm. 1–20

EX. 2.5A. Marini, La Orlandina, from Affetti musicali, mm. 1–5

EX. 2.5B. Marini, La Orlandina, mm. 40–44

EX. 2.6. Marini, Il Vendramino, from Affetti musicali, mm. 13–28

EX. 2.7. Marini, La Foscarina, mm. 1–4

EX. 3.1. Salamone Rossi, Gagliarda quarta detta la disperata, from Il terzo libro de varie sonate, mm. 20–end

EX. 3.2. Rossi, Gagliarda settima detta l’ingrata, from Il quarto libro de varie sonate, mm. 11–17

EX. 3.3A. Rossi, Sonata prima detta la moderna, from Il terzo libro de varie sonate, mm. 1–10

EX. 3.3B. Giulio Caccini, Amarilli, mia bella, from Le nuove musiche, mm. 1–10

EX. 3.4. Rossi, Sonata prima detta la moderna, mm. 25–37

EX. 3.5. Carlo Farina, Sonata prima detta la semplisa, from Fünffter Theil / Newer / Pavanen / Gagliarden, Brand: Mascharaden, Balletten, Sonaten, mm. 1–12

EX. 3.6. Farina, Sonata prima detta la semplisa, mm. 49–55

EX. 3.7. Farina, Sonata seconda detta la desperata, from Fünffter Theil / Newer / Pavanen / Gagliarden, Brand: Mascharaden, Balletten, Sonaten, mm. 190–223

EX. 3.8. Farina, Sonata seconda detta la desperata, mm. 1–14

EX. 3.9. Farina, Sonata seconda detta la desperata, mm. 30–35

EX. 3.10. Farina, Sonata seconda detta la desperata, mm. 76–86

EX. 3.11. Farina, Sonata seconda detta la desperata, mm. 165–75

EX. 4.1. Marini, Sonata in ecco, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 23–31

EX. 4.2. Marini, Sonata in ecco, mm. 37–44

EX. 4.3. Marini, Sonata in ecco, mm. 62–74

EX. 4.4. Marini, Capriccio che due violini sonano quattro parti, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 1–15

EX. 4.5. Marini, Capriccio che due violini sonano quattro parti, mm. 20–30

EX. 4.6. Farina, La lira / Die Leyer, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 67–74. From Carlo Farina, Ander Theil newer Paduanen, Gagliarden, Couranten, Frantzösischen Arien, benebenst einem kurtzweiligen Quodlibet / von allerhand seltzamen Inventionen

EX. 4.7. Farina, La trombetta, Il clarino, Le gnachere, / Die Trommeten, Das Clarin, Die Heerpaucken, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 168–76

EX. 4.8. Farina, Fifferino della soldadesca, Il tamburo / Das Soldaten Pfeifgen, Die Paucken oder Soldaten Trommel, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 274–75

EX. 4.9A. Farina, Il pifferino / Das kleine Schalmeygen, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 75–78

EX. 4.9B. Farina, Il flautino pian piano / Die Flöten still stille, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 197–99

EX. 4.10. Farina, Il gatto / Die Katze, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 288–95

EX. 4.11. Farina, La gallina, Il gallo / Die Henne, Der Han, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 181–87

EX. 4.12. Farina, Qui si bate con il legno del archetto sopra le corde / Hier schlegt man mit dem Holtze des Bogens, from Capriccio stravagante, mm. 103–11

EX. 4.13A. Marini, Sonata senza cadenza, from Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli, mm. 1–9

EX. 4.13B. Marini, Sonata senza cadenza, mm. 23–31

EX. 5.1. Girolamo Frescobaldi, Toccata settima, from Toccate e partite . . . libro primo

EX. 6.1. Giovanni Gabrieli, Canzon septimi toni a 8 C171, from Sacrae symphoniae, m. 1–downbeat of m. 8

EX. 6.2. Gabrieli, Canzon septimi toni a 8, mm. 35–39

EX. 6.3. Gabrieli, Canzon septimi toni a 8, mm. 45–51

EX. 6.4. Gabrieli, Canzon septimi toni a 8, mm. 145–54

EX. 6.5. Gabrieli, Canzon septimi toni a 8, mm. 65–downbeat of 70

EX. 6.6A. Gabrieli, La spiritata, from Alessandro Raverii, ed., Canzoni per sonare con ogni sorte di stromenti, mm. 50–55

EX. 6.6B. Gabrieli, La spiritata in the intabulation in Girolamo Diruta, Il transilvano, mm. 50–55

EX. 6.7. Dario Castello, Terza sonata à 2, from Sonate concertate in stil moderno . . . libro primo, mm. 1–9

EX. 6.8. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 47–51

EX. 6.9. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 100–105

EX. 6.10. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 113–22

EX. 6.11. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 65–70

EX. 6.12. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 35–downbeat of 42

EX. 6.13. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 15–22

EX. 6.14. Castello, Terza sonata à 2, mm. 77–99

EX. 6.15. Castello, Sonata decima quinta à 4, from Sonate concertate in stil moderno . . . libro secondo, mm. 1–12

EX. 6.16. Castello, Sonata decima quinta à 4, mm. 21–41

EX. 6.17. Castello, Sonata decima sesta à 4, from Sonate concertate in stil moderno . . . libro secondo, mm. 34–42

EX. 6.18. Castello, Sonata decima sesta à 4, mm. 100–103

EX. 6.19. Castello, Sonata decima settima à 4, from Sonate concertate in stil moderno . . . libro secondo, mm. 1–12

EX. 6.20. Castello, Sonata decima settima à 4, mm. 52–65

EX. 6.21. Castello, Sonata decima settima à 4, mm. 90–109

Figures

FIG. 0.1. Title page of Biagio Marini, Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli / 2

FIG. 1.1. Agostino Ramelli, Le diverse et artificiose machine . . . nellequali si contengono varij et industriosi movimenti, degni digrandißima speculatione, per cavarne beneficio infinito in ogni sorte d’operatione, plate 187

FIG. 1.2. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne

FIG. 1.3. Excerpt from the tavola of Marini, Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli

FIG. 1.4. Depiction of a lutenist and a theorbist from Giovanni Battista Braccelli, Figure con instrumenti musicali e boscarecci

FIG. 1.5. Depiction of the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Braccelli, Bizzarie di varie figure

FIG. 1.6. Depiction of earth and air from Braccelli, Bizzarie di varie figure

FIG. 1.7. Depiction of a knife sharpener and a bell ringer from Braccelli, Bizzarie di varie figure

FIG. 1.8. Depiction of a husband and wife composed of household utensils from Braccelli, Bizzarie di varie figure

FIG. 2.1. La Soranza, from Marini, Affetti musicali

FIG. 3.1. Sketches of portraits by Titian, Bellini, and Giorgione in Andrea Vendramin’s catalog De picturis

FIG. 3.2. Sketches of paintings from Vendramin’s catalog De picturis

FIG. 3.3. Sketches of paintings from Vendramin’s catalog De picturis

FIG. 3.4. Sketches of paintings from Vendramin’s catalog De picturis

FIG. 3.5. Sketches of paintings from Vendramin’s catalog De picturis

FIG. 3.6. Fabritio Caroso, engraving and opening choreography of Amor costante, from Nobiltà di dame, 210–11

FIG. 4.1. Marini, Sonata in ecco, from canto secondo partbook of Biagio Marini, Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli

FIG. 4.2. Nautilus-shell cups in the shape of a rooster and hen, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

FIG. 4.3. Close-up view of a turned-ivory pyramid, at the base of which are mechanical musicians playing trumpets and kettledrums, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

FIG. 5.1. Prelatura, from Cesare Ripa, Della novissima iconologia . . . parte prima

Plates

PLATE 1. Tiziano Vecellio, The Flaying of Marsyas

PLATE 2. Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, Allegory of Hearing

PLATE 3. Hieronymous Francken the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector’s Cabinet

PLATE 4. Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, Allegory of Sight

Tables

TABLE 2.1. Contents of Marini, Affetti musicali

TABLE 4.1. The curiose e moderne inventioni in Biagio Marini, Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass'emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli

TABLE 4.2. Representational sections of the Capriccio stravagante, in order of appearance in the composition

TABLE 5.1. Style and tactus in the Toccata settima from the Toccate e partite . . . libro primo

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the aid of numerous institutions and individuals who supported me throughout its production. The first and most pronounced debt that I owe is to my parents, Dr. David Lewis Schaefer and Dr. Roberta Rubel Schaefer, who instilled in me a love of learning and saw me through the twenty-five years of education that preceded my first professional position. Without their example—and their unconditional support and love—I would never have pursued the career path that I chose. I am deeply grateful for their encouragement throughout my life and during the writing of this book.

Ellen Rosand has been a model and a mentor to me for over a decade. She has watched this project develop through numerous stages, and she has punctuated this development with probing and insightful questions that have led to the growth of my work in new directions. Her warmth and humanity, her clear thinking, and her passion and respect for the music have guided me as a teacher and a writer. I wish to acknowledge, too, the hand of her husband, David Rosand, in my work. He is sorely missed by Ellen’s students as well as his own.

I thank the many others who have encouraged me to think, listen, and perform critically, including Malcolm Bilson, Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Donald Irving, Kristina Muxfeldt, James Webster, and Neal Zaslaw. Robert Holzer has been willing, since my years as a graduate student, to share his astonishing command of music and musicological literature with me, and I am grateful for his reactions to various projects that fed into this book. Others have assumed the role of mentor without any obligation to me and have been remarkably generous with their time, advice, and constructive reactions to my work; foremost among these is Andrew Dell’Antonio, who has spent many hours speaking and corresponding with me about this book. I am deeply grateful for his advice and collaborative spirit. Gregory Barnett has also offered ample constructive feedback and encouragement, as have Beth L. Glixon, Jonathan E. Glixon, and many of the members of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music—an organization noteworthy for its encouragement of emerging scholars.

I have been fortunate to teach seminars at both the New England Conservatory and Rutgers University on the music that lies at the heart of this study, and my students have left an indelible mark on my work. I am thankful to all of them, but I would like to mention in particular Gabriel Alfieri, Cristina Altamura, Bryan Burns, Sarah Darling, Patrick Durek, Hilary Jones, Michael Goetjen, Taylor Myers, Benjamin Shute, Sean Smither, Martha Sullivan, and Chuck Wilson, all of whom participated in these seminars with enthusiasm and insight. I owe a special debt to Lynette Bowring, who has not only helped me to hear this music in new ways, but also contributed significantly to this book by typesetting all of the musical examples in her characteristically careful, efficient, and elegant manner.

My colleagues at NEC and Rutgers have also provided both logistical and moral support; I thank in particular Robert Aldridge, Julianne Baird, Floyd Grave, Helen Greenwald, Anne Hallmark, Rufus Hallmark, Eduardo Herrera, Douglas Johnson, Steven Kemper, Robert Labaree, Katarina Markovic, Christa Patton, Nancy Rao, Gregory Smith, and Frederick Urrey. Two librarians at NEC deserve special mention: Maria-Jane Loizou and Jean Morrow were tireless in providing assistance at the early stages of this project. I am grateful, too, for the help of the librarians at Rutgers–New Brunswick, in particular Jonathan Sauceda, Performing Arts Librarian.

At various stages of this project, I have benefited from the guidance of numerous other scholars, and I wish to thank them for generously taking the time to respond to my queries and requests for advice; they include Mario Biagioli, Eric Bianchi, Maurice Finocchiaro, Mary Frandsen, Wendy Heller, Rebecca Herissone, Jeffery Kite-Powell, Nathan Link, Martina Minning, Margaret Murata, Eileen Reeves, Stephen Rose, Bettina Varwig, and Ian Woodfield.

Librarians in the United States and Europe have helped me to track down resources for citation and reproduction in this volume; these include the Library of Congress, the University Library of Wroclaw, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale of France, and others. I am particularly grateful to the staff of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden for providing advance access to their publications and even for offering feedback on the early stages of my work on chapter 4. More generally, as a working mother, I am intensely aware of the debt that I owe to the organizations and institutions that are digitizing their collections, thus making knowledge more widely accessible. The effects of Google Books, Early English Books Online, Archive.org, the Petrucci Music Library (imslp.org), and other digitized repositories of primary sources are everywhere in my work, and my career as a whole would be impossible without them.

I am honored and grateful to have received a Summer/Short-Term Research Publication Grant from the American Association of University Women, which supported me during the final stages of manuscript preparation and editing. The Office of the Dean, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University provided a subvention to offset some of the cost of publication of this book. I thank Dean George B. Stauffer for providing this assistance.

I am obliged to Marta Tonegutti of the University of Chicago Press, who provided strong encouragement throughout the writing of this book, while prompting me to refine my ideas and style of presentation. Evan White and the rest of the editorial and production staff at the press have been extremely helpful and patient throughout this process. My work has benefited greatly from the copy editing of Barbara Norton, and I am grateful for the care that she took with this project. The anonymous readers who commented on earlier drafts of this book helped me to improve every facet of it, from the minutiae of translation to much larger questions of structure, style, and content. In addition, Bonnie Blackburn commented on the entire manuscript, and I thank her for her insightful remarks and meticulous reading. I am deeply grateful to Lynette Bowring, Rachel Horner, Solomon Guhl-Miller, and Douglas Johnson for their generous assistance with proofreading. It goes without saying that remaining flaws are entirely my own.

For the past thirteen years my parents-in-law, Dr. Raymond H. Cypess and Dr. Sandra Messinger Cypess, have treated me as their own daughter, showering me with love, encouragement, intellectual stimulation, and logistical support. It is my great fortune to be part of their family.

Above all, my work bears the imprint of my husband, Joshua Cypess, and our children, Benjamin, Joseph, and Sarah. Josh’s willingness to talk with me about my work is boundless, and this book reflects only one part of what I hope will be our lifelong discussion of ideas. As our children grow, learn, and develop their own interests, I feel that they have given new meaning to the phrase curious and modern inventions. To Josh and to our children I dedicate this book with love and thanks.

Rebecca Cypess

June 2015

Highland Park, New Jersey

Editorial Principles

The musical examples in this book have been based on printed editions of music from the seventeenth century, but they have been brought into conformity with modern conventions of notation in several respects. Measure lines and note beams have been standardized wherever possible. Names of instruments are editorial, but they reflect information gleaned from the title pages, tables of contents, and partbooks of the early editions, as well as circumstantial evidence about instrument usage during this period. Slurs and rubrics have been retained from the originals, but in cases where rubrics are replicated in all instrument parts, these examples condense them into one. In some cases, the imprecise printing of slurs in seventeenth-century editions has necessitated editorial decisions based on musical phrasing and other contextual factors. When I have consulted other modern editions, I have listed them in the footnotes and bibliography. Spellings in seventeenth-century sources have been retained; the only changes made silently are to us that function as vs.

Introduction

When the violinist and composer Biagio Marini published his monumental opus 8 collection of instrumental music, most likely in 1626, he bestowed upon it an equally monumental title: Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli a 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. & 6. voci, per ogni sorte d’instrumenti. Un capriccio per sonar due violini quatro parti. Un ecco per tre violini, & alcune sonate capriciose per sonar due è tre parti con il violino solo, con altre curiose & moderne inventioni. Although Marini suggested that these works could be played by any sort of instrument, he made special mention of those that included virtuosic violin techniques: a capriccio in which two violins play four parts, an echo for three violins, and some other capricious sonatas in which a single violin plays two or three parts, with other curious and modern inventions (fig. 0.1).¹ The phrase curious and modern inventions appears in fine print, and it may be understood in a narrow sense, referring strictly to the virtuosic novelties that the book contains: double and triple stops, scordatura, echo effects, and calls for the violin to imitate other instruments.

FIGURE 0.1. Title page of Biagio Marini, Sonate, symphonie, canzoni, pass’emezzi, baletti, corenti, gagliarde, & retornelli (1626). Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wrocław, shelf mark 50089 Muz. Reproduced by permission of the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wrocław.

Yet the phrase curiose e moderne inventioni hints at broader questions as well, and it is these questions that form the basis of this book. While Marini surely had practical motivations in advertising the novelty of his compositions, it is worth asking first what he meant when he described his music as modern. How did Marini’s conception of modern instrumental music, and that of other instrumental composers of his day, relate to the early seventeenth-century polemics about the prima and seconda prattica, and about vocal music written in the so-called stile moderno? The descriptor curious introduces new problems. How can music behave in a curious way? Or, understood differently, how can music constitute a curiosity capable of arousing a sense of curiosity in the listener?

The most confounding questions, however, arise with respect to the term invention. Inventio was a component of classical rhetoric, and the term was widely used to refer to any original line of thought.² Yet Marini applied this term in a more specific sense—namely, in the sense of masquerade. In these works, one violin poses as two, two violins pose as four, and three violins assume the pretense of an echo. The violinistic masquerade that pervades Carlo Farina’s famous Capriccio stravagante (1627), which Farina likewise described as containing curious inventions, provides further evidence that Marini’s inventions were those in which the instrument presents a theatrical conceit, akin to the inventio of an opera libretto.

This rhetorical or theatrical interpretation of Marini’s term inventioni is plausible; it is an interpretation that I have explored in other contexts, and one that I expand in chapter 4 of this study.³ But it is not the only one. The decades around the turn of the seventeenth century were, after all, years of invention. The high-powered telescope that Galileo Galilei trained on the heavens in 1610 is only the most famous example. This was an era in which every tool, every instrument, every machine could become what Jonathan Sawday has called an engine of the imagination.⁴

Instruments stood at the center of seismic developments in systems of knowledge in the early modern era. The telescope, the clock, the barometer, the pen—these were the tools of the natural philosopher, the collector, the patron, the early modern thinker. Recent work in the history of science by Jean-François Gauvin and others has shown that in the early years of the seventeenth century, the very notion of an instrument—what it was, what it could do—changed dramatically.⁵ No longer merely tools used to make an object, or to repeat a process already known, instruments were now increasingly seen as tools for open-ended inquiry, for exploration of the world that would lead to new knowledge. It was during this period that Francis Bacon developed his novum organum—his new instrument—a system of methodical, logical study that would replace the old organon of Aristotle. By definition, instruments became catalysts of discovery.

This new conception of instruments as a broad category, encompassing tools of all kinds that were used in the pursuit of knowledge, forms the basis of my study. It is no coincidence, I argue, that this period saw the rise of the first substantial published body of independent, idiomatic instrumental music in the European tradition. Starting around 1610, composers using the so-called stile moderno—a term applied by Giulio Caccini in his Nuove musiche of 1602 but taken over by instrumental composers shortly thereafter—experimented with a wide array of genres and forms, with the technical capacities of performers and their instruments, and with the potential of instrumental music, unfettered by text, to serve as a mediator between listeners and their environments, and between nature and artifice. As I will argue, this music, played by artisans on instruments, operated as a vehicle for contemplation and discovery.

In this volume I present an answer to a fundamental question that has not been adequately addressed in the literature so far: what prompted this first, dramatic turn toward extended instrumental composition? I argue that the driving force behind the new instrumental music was the overarching preoccupation with instruments—with the new vistas they could open and the new knowledge they could create. Musical instruments, like telescopes, clocks, and the painter’s brush, functioned as tools in the quest to understand the individual’s place in social and natural history. The artisanal cultures of instrumental performance helped to shape understandings of the early modern world.

The instrumental repertoire of circa 1610–30 has long been recognized as foundational to the instrumental canon of Western music, and I draw on a number of scholars who have dealt with it in various ways in the past. The life-and-works narratives by authors such as Peter Allsop, Aurelio Bianco, and Don Harrán; genre studies by Allsop, Sandra Mangsen, and, earlier, Willi Apel and William Newman; treatments of music within particular civic traditions by writers like Eleanor Selfridge-Field⁶—these have helped us to understand what the stile moderno instrumental repertoire was like: how it worked internally, and how it may have been put to use in various social, academic, and religious contexts. Often, however, these studies seem constrained by the scope of the field as it already stands. They become caught up in questions of genre, or in surface descriptions of the music; they adhere, by and large, to the disciplinary boundaries established in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rather than considering how the music might have been situated in the landscape of the arts and sciences in a predisciplinary intellectual world.

In addition, the study of music of the early seicento has been dominated by developments in contemporaneous vocal genres, including the rise of solo song and the birth of opera. This circumstance is easy to understand: numerous composers and theorists—including the towering figure of the age, Claudio Monteverdi, who left no known independent instrumental compositions—justified their musical innovations through reference to text. As Andrew Dell’Antonio has observed, however, this rhetorical reliance on textual considerations in the defense of the new style is misleading, even with respect to vocal music:

The ability of music to express affetti on its own is not remarked upon by the proponents of the seconda prattica because of their eagerness to privilege the written and spoken word. This logocentrism is inherited from the fascination of sixteenth-century humanists with poetry and the verbal arts over all the other arts. . . . While it is easy for us to accept contemporary writers’ neglect of instrumental music as a sign that such music was not held in high esteem, it is also crucial to analyze the musical roots of the seconda prattica, to understand how the theories relate to actual compositional praxis.⁷

I have also written in the past about the numerous points of intersection between Italian vocal and instrumental music in the early seventeenth century,⁸ and it is certainly not my purpose to deny those points here. However, I agree with Dell’Antonio that the motivating forces behind this revolution in instrumental composition have never been fully understood. As a remedy, I propose to move the conversation away from the relatively narrow framework within which I think it has operated thus far.

On one side, my approach will undertake a close reading of a limited number of instrumental compositions from the first decades of the seventeenth century, thus answering Dell’Antonio’s call to consider the music’s compositional praxis. I will deal with only a handful of composers, neglecting, as it were, such important instrumental composers of this age as Tarquinio Merula, Francesco Turini, and Stefano Bernardi—and also composers of the following generation, including Marco Uccellini and others. However, this seemingly narrow focus on only a few composers and a limited quantity of music enables me to expand the understanding of instrumental music during this period in other ways. Specifically, I will broaden the discussion about this repertoire beyond a strictly musical perspective, engaging with overlapping work in the history of science, literature, and the arts; in sum, I offer a perspective on this music as a manifestation of the broader cultural practices and concerns of its day.

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Attention to these broader cultural practices necessitates a brief overview of the central topics and concerns that, as I will show, may be traced in music as well as in other fields. With the new conception of instruments that emerged in the early modern era came increased attention to the work of artisans—the skilled practitioners who knew how to manage them. By and large, theorists and philosophers of earlier centuries had viewed artisanship with skepticism, and this line of thought continued in the work of some notable philosophers of the seventeenth century. Still, as art historians and historians of science have shown, the boundaries between theory and practice—between philosophy and practical experience—became increasingly permeable. The figure of Galileo Galilei provides perhaps the clearest example of the negotiation of these boundaries by a single early modern individual, and the work of Mario Biagioli, Horst Bredekamp, David Freedberg, Eileen Reeves, and others highlights the extent to which Galileo’s artisanal training and work with instruments continued to inform his thinking and his activities throughout his career.⁹ The groundbreaking work of Pamela H. Smith has tracked this relationship between the visual arts and knowledge of the natural world, which, as she demonstrates, worked in both directions: theorists relied on the experience of artisans as much as the reverse.¹⁰

My work draws on these theories of artisanship, most importantly through consideration of the concept of artisanal habitus—the artisan’s intimate knowledge of the instrument, which enables dexterity in its manipulation and leads to certain kinds of exploration of the instrument’s physical properties and construction. It is commonly known that many of the composers of this age were also active performers—a circumstance often reflected in their idiomatic approach to instruments. Just as artisans operating scientific instruments could, in the view of early modern philosophers, participate in the creation of knowledge, these artisanal musical performers were able to present listeners with new musical means of understanding the world around them, probing, among other things, the boundary between natural and artificial sound.

As with the artisanal operation of scientific instruments, musical artisanship with instruments required negotiation of the complex systems of patronage and commerce. Scholars dealing with instruments in the early modern era have noted the role played by patrons of various sorts in the cultivation of the new ideas of instruments and their role in the creation of knowledge. Members of the nobility, as well as progressive and wealthy citizens, clerics, and academicians, became fascinated with the potential of machinery and instruments to act upon the world and transform the individual’s perception of it. Their collections of art and curiosities included instruments—both those that required a human agent to operate them and those that, through some man-made engine, operated independently—that facilitated an interaction between collectors and their social and natural worlds.¹¹ Joining in the process of creation, both the artisan and the patron could observe and even alter the course of the natural world, and perception through artistic and artisanal instruments and processes constituted an essential means of experiencing and knowing the world in the early modern era.¹² As studies by Jessica Wolfe and Adam Max Cohen have demonstrated, instruments became a potent and widely used metaphor for courtly behavior, political authority, and the formation and representation of the self.¹³ Andrew Dell’Antonio’s recent application of these ideas to the practice of listening in the early seicento has served as a catalyst for my own work; Dell’Antonio argues that the act of listening presented a means for patrons to participate in music without crossing the social boundary into artisanship, and that musical experiences could be collected, much like physical artifacts.¹⁴ The collection of curiosities of nature and art became a mark of erudition among the nobility and the intelligentsia across Europe, and within these collections, theorists and collectors organized, classified, and contemplated the various categories and intersections of nature and art. Academies in Italy and beyond approached the study of the natural world with a new sense of discipline and purpose, recording their findings and using them as the basis of new systems for the organization of knowledge. The study of humanity assumed new parameters of organization as well: the discipline of history, for example, became systematized and subjected to rigorous empirical standards.

Some aspects of the place of musical instruments within this emerging culture of instrumentality have been explored in the past. The important work of Claude V. Palisca in musicology and Stillman Drake in the history of science has demonstrated an integral link between the emergent scientific method and musical instruments; this link is clearest in the transmission of knowledge from Vincenzo Galilei, a lutenist and composer who was among the most important music theorists of