The Fugal Canzona of the Late Renaissance

Not until the 1580s did composers begin to establish the canzona alla francese as an instrumental counterpart to, rather than an intabulation of, the French chanson. The center of this activity was Brescia, and imitation played a surprisingly important role. Despite the rather light, playful manner of its earliest manifestations, the genre had by century’s end begun to acquire serious contrapuntal rigor at the hands of Giovanni de Macque and others. This chapter concludes with a consideration of the fugal works of Giovanni Gabrieli, in which one begins to see the breakdown of division between ricercar and canzona through hybrid thematic material and stylistic fluidity.

Art · Art history · Imitation · Literature · The Renaissance · Diverse Musicological Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Psychology