IMSLP Forums

I am trying to give the Merulo canzonas a clean up (contents/links/tags), but I am running into a confusion.

Grove Music says "Merulo’s ambitions for the printshop clearly envisioned a burgeoning market for keyboard music, however, for in his Ricercari d’intavolatura d’organo, libro primo (1567) he outlined the titles and contents of 12 prospective volumes of intabulated organ works, the ricercares being the first of the series" and the canzonas are mentioned later in the same paragraph.

However, in the works list, the ''Canzoni d'intavolatura d'organo'' are listed as for 4 voices, as indeed it says on the front cover.

Can an intabulated organ work be for 4 voices (2 hands, 2 feet?) Can somebody clarify this for me?

At Merulo's time, it'd be unlikely that organs have pedals (or at least with complete playable notes, basically having keys which served to change the registers). And of course, an intabulated piece - to be played solo - can be for 4 voices, or even more. All Ricercari d’intavolatura d’organo pieces are also for 4 voices.

So he also intended them as instrumental pieces, for example, for 4 viols or other instruments?

In terms of tagging, no doubts that it needs to be assigned only as "org". But regarding the practice of instrumental renaissance music, it can be played by viols, flutes, recorders, etc, or even voices. The paradigm of composition is the vocal repertoire, the ''media'' of the interpretation, or which instruments to play, was not a matter of the composition itself. The concern of timbre in the composition was emerging in the 16th century, even in Baroque we have a lot of pieces with open instrumentation. The vocal tradition was so strong that even as organ work, as suggested by the title, the pieces are called "canzoni" (some times also as "canzoni per sonare" and latter just as "sonata").

OK, if it's "org" only, then the collection page is correct, but many of the individual pages have been tagged for 4 voices. As I do the links, I will change those. Thanks.