Agostino Agazzari ( Italian: Agostino Agazzari ; December 2, 1578 , Siena - April 10, 1640 , ibid.) - Italian composer, music theorist, organist.
| Agostino Agazzari | |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | |
| Place of Birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
| Professions | , , , |
| Instruments | |
Content
Essay on Biography and Creativity
Studied in Siena. In 1597–1602, the organist in the Siena Cathedral . In 1602-07 he worked mainly in Rome, where in 1602-03 he directed the music of the German College , and in 1606-07 - the Roman seminary . In 1607 he returned to Siena, where until the end of his life he served as bandmaster in Siena Cathedral.
Agazzari's composer heritage is vocal church and secular music in a new homophonic style (using basso continuo ). Agazzari published 3 collections (3 “books”) of madrigals (1596, 1600, 1606), 2 books of spiritual madrigals (called “madrigaletti”; 1607) and a large number of motets, including 6 collections entitled “Sacred songs” ( Sacrae cantiones ; 1602, 1603, 1606, 1607 [2], 1615), a collection of 18 motets “Sertum roseum ex plantis Hiericho” (“Pink garland from Jericho plants”, 1611), a collection of 9 motets “Dialogici concentus” (1613), psalms texts, magnificates , litany , a collection (of four) of mass and other church music.
Agazzari entered the history of music as the author of a small manual “On how to play the bass” (Siena, 1607, many reprints) [3] , whose task was to teach the reader a new technique of polyphonic composition in a homophonic stock - accompaniment on digital bass (basso continuo mainly with the use of an organ) and ornamental variation in texture (with emphasis on a lute ).
Agatstsari speaks extremely negatively about the “slurred” imitation polyphony that used to dominate the music of the Catholic Church, and, as if confirming the decisive turn of the composers to the new warehouse, tells the story of how Mass of Pope Marcello Palestrina “saved” church polyphony from the imminent papal ban:
If someone objects to me that the [digitalized] bass is not enough to perform old compositions full of fugue and counterpoint, I will answer that such compositions are no longer used - because of the mishmash and verbal porridge that is generated by long and intricate fugues, and from - due to the fact that there is no grace in them: when they sing all at once, neither the form nor the sense that the fugue prevents is felt. And besides, each voice at the same time has its own text, different from the text of another voice, and this annoys connoisseurs and connoisseurs. For this reason, the music of the Holy Church was almost forbidden by the supreme pontiff, if Giovanni Palestrina had not saved her with his Mass of Pope Marcello, whom he had proved that these were vices and sins not of music as such, but of composers.
- Del sonare sopra'l basso , p.11 [4]
This story, which modern science considers fictitious (since it is not supported by any documents), gained immense popularity in the 18th-19th centuries and is still reproduced in popular science essays on Western church music in general and Palestine in particular.
The book “Church Music”, published by Agazzar in Siena in 1638 [5] , as well as the general bass manual, has a clearly didactic focus and does not claim to be conceptual. Most of Agagzari’s spiritual works were created in the progressive style of the early Baroque, using the continuo bass, on the other hand his few secular music was all created in the outdated polyphonic Renaissance style, the situation is almost unique among the early Baroque composers. [6]
An important source for an authentic understanding of early Baroque music is the numerous preface of Aggatsari to his collections, where the author discusses the tempo, ornamentation, strokes and other subtleties of instrumental performance.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 International Music Score Library Project - 2006.
- ↑ Del sonare sopra'l basso con tutti li stromenti e dell'uso loro nel conserto ("How to play the bass with all the instruments and their use in the ensemble"). English translation by Oliver Stranka in the book: Source readings in music history. Revised edition. New York; London, 1998, p. 621-628.
- ↑ Ma se alcuno mi dicesse, che à suonar l'opere antiche piene di fughe e coptrapunti, non è bastevole il basso; à sit rispondo non esser in uso piu simul cantilene, per la confusione, e zurra delle parole, che dalle fughe lunghe ed intrecciate nascono: ed anso perche non hanno vaghezza: poiche cantandosi a tutte le voci, non si sen neo period : essendo ré le fughe interotto, e sopraposto, anzi nel medesimo tempo ogni vose santa parole differenti dall 'altro: il che à gl' huomini iptendenti e giudiciosi dispiace: e roso mancò, che per questa cagione non fosse sbandita la Chiesa da un Sommo Pontefice, se da Giovan Palestrino non fosse stato preso riparo, mostrando d'esser vitio ed errore de 'componitori, e non della musica; ed à confermatione di questo fece la Messa iptitolata Missa Rarae Marcelli.
- ↑ La musica ecclesiastica dove si contiene la vera diffinitione della musica come scienza, non più veduta, e sua nobiltà (“Church music - a book that gives a true definition of music as a (not too famous) science and tells about its nobility”).
- ↑ Agostino Agazzari . www.clasmusic.ru. Date accessed August 26, 2019.
Literature
- Barblan G. Contributo a una biografia critica di Agostino Agazzari // Collectanea historiae musicae 2 (1956–7), pp. 33–63.
- Johnson MF Agostino Agazzari: the motets for one to four voices. Diss., Tulane Univ., 1972.
- Dixon G. Agostino Agazzari: the theoretical writings // Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 20 (1986–87), p. 39-52.
- Reardon C. Agostino Agazzari and music at Siena Cathedral, 1597–1641. Oxford, 1993.
- Reardon C. Agazzari // The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . New York; London, 2001.
Links
- Intravital editions of music and works on Agazzari music
- Agazzari // Musical dictionary : in 3 volumes / comp. H. Riemann ; add. Russian department with staff. P. Weimarn and others; per. and all ext. under the editorship of Yu. D. Engel . - Per. from the 5th of it. ed. - Moscow — Leipzig: ed. B.P. Jurgenson , 1904 .