Saturday, June 3, 2017

Praetorius, Terpsichore

IMSLP recently added a file with the part-books for Michael Praetorius' Terpsichore (1612) (link). In celebration of that event, here are three examples. The pieces (in score) are discussed, along with many others, in my essay Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century (link). Edited versions of the text are given here along with a facsimile of the cantus part.

Number 35 is the first of the more than 160 courantes in the volume. In the second strain the range F4-C5 is established firmly at the beginning, C5 held, then a partial descent occurs midway, and the pattern is repeated, at which point the range F4-C5 is covered yet again and expanded by one for the cadence on D. (Note: The score in modern notation was transposed up a fifth.)

n147: "Incerti" = author of the melody is unknown. This is one in a series of courantes in once-transposed Dorian mode (final G; one flat in the signature). In the first strain see a simple linear ascent to the cadence on D5. In the second strain, the figure in part or whole occurs four times in a row, leading to G5 in the end.


n265 is a three-strain ballet, without notated repeats. The first strain ends with the long note in the middle of the third system. The second strain ends with the last long note in the fourth system. 

In effect this ballet is really two strains, as the third is a close variation of the second. The point of interest is in the cadences for the second and third strains: the first of these cadences lies (and is somewhat buried) in the lower register, ending on F4, but the second is made very prominent by transposition up the octave, ending on the same F5 that started the strain.