Author: Girolamo Diruta, introduction by Edward J. Soehnlen and Muray C. Bradshaw

Publisher/Date: The Netherlands: Frits Knuf (1983) Issued at $80.00; facsimile

Format/Condition: Hardcover, new old stock [NOS]. Measures 6” X 9”. Majority of text is in English. Photos. Approx. 175 pages.

Description: This is volume 44 in a series of facsimiles of rare books on organs and organbuilding.

From Chapter 1: Girolamo Diruta (ca. 1561-after 1613) first published his IL Transilvano in 1593, following it with a Seconda parte del Transilvano in 1609. Subsequent editions of the first part appeared in 1597, 1612, and 1625, and of the second part in 1622. Nothing substantial was left out of any of these later editions, nor were any essential changes made. The reader can be certain, then, that this facsimile publication of the first editions of 1593 and 1609 offers him everything that is found in all the other editions of the same text.

Despite its importance, complete editions or translations of IL Transilvano were for many years non-existent. Only recently has a complete English translation become available, one with an extensive introduction and notes as well as concordances and transcriptions of all musical compositions and examples.2 The present facsimile edition is the first complete reprinting of Diruta’s treatise since the last original prints of 1622 and 1625.

IL Transilvano remains a significant work for many reasons. It is the first treatise in Italian to deal exclusively with keyboard music, the first to differentiate between the style of harpsichord and organ playing, and the first to give an inclusive picture of the 16th-century Venetian school of keyboard composition. It treats a multitude of topics in the most practical of terms. These range from mensural note values, clefs, and mutation, through keyboard technique and embellishments, to intabulation, counterpoint, modes, transposition, alternatim practice, basso generale, and organ stops.

The musical compositions represent the work of virtually all the major figures of the Venetian orbit —Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Gioseffo Guami, and many others. The various genres include the toccata, ricercar, canzona, verset, and bicinum. In its comprehensiveness, IL Transilvano is similar to an earlier treatise, Tomas de Santa Maria’s Libro Ilamado arte do tafterfantasfa (Valladolid, 1565); in the directness of its dialogue format, it is like many of the other Renaissance treatises that capitalized on this device— such as those by Zarlino, Galilei, or Morley.

Secondaparte del Transilvano, Book I, begins with a study of making an intabulation (a keyboard score) from a partitura (an open score), and considers the five varieties of embellishment which may decorate an intabulation. Diruta presents his intabulated versions of Giovanni Gabrieli’s ‘La Spiritata ‘(I, 14) and Antonio Mortaro’s ‘L ‘Albergona’ (I, 18) as models of embellished intabulation.

Book II continues with a practical exposition of species and imitative counterpoint. It concludes with Gabriel Fattorini’s cadences and then twelve ricercars, one on each of the tones written by Luzzaschi, Pichi, Fattorini, and Banchieri, as well as by Diruta (II, 24-36).

In Book III Diruta considers the system of ecclesiastical modes or tones. Unlike Zarlino he begins them on D-Dorian and not C-Jonian. He follows this with a discussion of the various species of diapente, diatessaron, and diapason, and of the authentic and plagal tones, the regular and irregular cadences, and finally of the transposition of tones (illustrated by twelve bicinia). He concludes Book III with a ‘Discourse on the melodic motion of the tones’.

In Book IV Diruta takes up one of the more important skills an organist had to cultivate, namely the improvising of imitative versets for altornatim use with the choir. He gives brief, skeletal hymn models (IV, 1-6) and Magnificats (IV, 7-15) based on the most frequently used plainsong melodies and arranged according to the modes. The Magnificat versets are all accompanied by transpositions, as were the bicinia in Book III (within a third up and down, sometimes a fourth and fifth). He briefly takes up the use of ‘imperfect’ leading tones and split keys in the transpositions, as well as the subject of basso generate (IV, 16).

Diruta presents a catalogue of plainsong themes to be used in the versets (three Mass ordinaries, hymns, psalm tones, four Marian antiphons, and the solemn Te Deum — IV, 16-21). Another ‘discourse’ follows, this time ‘on combining the ranks of the organ’, a most important source of information on the early use of stops in the Italian organ (IV, 22). Here, too, Diruta speaks of modal effetti because it is this concept that determines his choice of organ stops. Diruta’s language parallels that of Zarlino who discussed the ‘affects’ generated by the harmonies of the ecclesiastical modes in Le 1st/tnt/on!, Part IV (Venice, 1573).” The concluding section of Book IV is concerned with the art of singing and with musical rhythm.