In stile passeggiato – The Art of Diminution.
Diminution, or the substitution of a large musical value with an equivalent quantity of smaller values, is a practice that can be traced back to numerous treatises of the 16th and 17th centuries. These treatises teach this technique through the presentation of numerous diminished passages and examples of entire musical pieces. The treatise by Christoph Bernhard (1628-1692) is one of the most valuable sources for understanding the art of diminution in 17th-century Italy. He writes “The manner of singing passeggiato or alla Lombarda is a manner in which one does not remain on the notes that are encountered, but rather changes them with diminutions or coloraturas. (…) Diminution is when a note, in the correct respect of the beat, is divided; that is, a note that is worth half a beat is divided into four fuse, 8 semifuse, or 16 subsemifuse, without remaining fixed on the note but in an elegant manner running over it.” This recording aims to be a tribute to this artistic technique, which marks an important step in the development of instrumental music for the violin and a testing ground for composers to experiment with new writing techniques.
The project takes its cue from the study of fundamental texts on the technique of diminution by Rognoni (Ricardo and Francesco), Dalla Casa, Bassani, Ortiz, and others, as well as the study of the improvisational style of authors such as Giovanni Battista Fontana and Marco Uccellini. For the original compositions written ex novo on existing madrigals, we sought to find a middle ground between the written tradition of the treatises and the freedom of writing. In the playlist, the alternation of repertoire pieces and others written as if by composers of the time aims to be a virtual embrace of the times, a combination of nostalgia for the past and the taste of creativity.
Dario Castello (Venice, 1602 – Venice, 1631), who lived in the first half of the 17th century, was a violinist at St. Mark’s, where Monteverdi was Maestro di Cappella. His collections of sonatas, in Stil Moderno, are fundamental in the musical literature of the time and had a significant diffusion. Castello was widely influenced in his instrumental music by the revolutionary wave of Monteverdi’s music, with whom he worked closely. Monteverdi’s music of the Seconda Prattica aimed to utilize every musical means to emphasize the emotional content of the dramatic text, in order to move the listener, using alternating genres of music, rhetorical elements, dissonances, and unbridled use of alterations. All these elements can be found in Dario Castello’s music. In particular, we note how in the toccata sections of his sonatas, a flourished art of diminution typical of vocal music and the technique of cantare passeggiato is explicitly displayed.
Girolamo Frescobaldi (Ferrara, 1583 – Rome, 1643) was a composer, organist, and harpsichordist considered one of the greatest composers for harpsichord and organ of the 17th century. The style of Frescobaldi’s instrumental music aims to evoke emotions through sound, emulating the techniques of the Seconda Prattica that characterized the vocal music of the time. The Toccata for Spinetta and Violin is unique in its genre, featuring the violin and harpsichord together, sometimes pursuing each other in fugal imitations and other times as soloists in lyrical sections.
Marco Uccellini (Forlimpopoli 1603 (or 1610) – Forlì, 1680) was a virtuoso violinist and explorer of the technical and expressive means of his instrument, whose musical inventions, combining contrapuntal style with improvisational style, often present daring and extreme musical solutions, a natural development of Monteverdi’s ideas in purely instrumental music.
Francesco Rognoni Taeggio (Milan, second half of the 16th century – after 1626) is best known for his work “Selva de varii passaggi”, a treasure trove of information for the study of both vocal and instrumental music, and one of the leading treatises on the technique of diminution. It contains entire polyphonic pieces – motets and madrigals by authors such as Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso – diminished for various instruments.
In the music of Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli (Montepulciano, 1624 – c.1687), lyrical sections alternate with dance sections. The latter provide a suitable scenario for virtuosos to showcase their improvisational skills, while the lyrical sections abound with diminutions, which, with the development of instrumental technique becoming increasingly idiomatic, break free from the limits of vocality in favor of daring and fast figurations.
The Sonata Prima by Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani (Florence, July 15, 1638 – Pistoia, … after 1692) is a work in which the technique of diminution finds free expression. The lyrical and toccata sections that open and close the sonata, with their diminutions now tight and now cantabile, provide a framework for the extensive variation section, where the composer showcases his creative and technical skill.
The disk concludes with the Sonata IV by Arcangelo Corelli (Fusignano, February 17, 1653 – Rome, January 8, 1713). Estienne Roger and John Walsh published the diminutions of the Adagi in 1710, claiming they were based on Corelli’s own performances. Following a study of Corelli’s various techniques, we wanted to add our own diminutions to the two Adagi of the Sonata IV, just as a performer of the time would have done.”
Gabriele Marzella © 2025