The Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online

Definitions and Abbreviations

Browse: The Browse screen takes you to lists of all records, presented in groups of 25 (or as many as you specify in the Display dropdown menu). A larger number of records will slow down the search, however.

Canonical Publications (Frescobaldi’s Canonical Keyboard Publications): The Frescobaldi’s Canonical Keyboard Publications are a series of editions of Frescobaldi’s keyboard music published between 1608 and 1645.
With the exception of Canzoni (1645), all were prepared by Frescobaldi or his assistants, and played an important part in the dissemination of his music and reputation. Many exemplars of these prints survive in libraries throughout the world. The publications are called “canonical” here because they contain the keyboard works that, at least until the later twentieth century, were the most frequently studied, published, and performed. Over forty manuscripts dating from before c. 1800 are related to the Canonical Publications (see also Related Canonical Publications), and the large majority of these are appear to be copied from them. Many of Frescobaldi’s non-keyboard works were also published during his lifetime, but since there are almost no known manuscript copies from any of those publications, they have not been included among the Canonical Publications.

Compositions (or Sources) Found returns you to the list of records produced by the last search (after, for example, looking at an individual record).

F (or F Number): See F numbers.

Full Citation (of Sources): For manuscripts these are in the form of: city, library, call number. For printed sources, they are in the form of: composer (or editor in the case of an anthology), title, city, publisher, year of publication.
Very long titles have been shortened, and other information appearing on the title page, such as the name of the dedicatee or of the partbook (e.g., Canto) have not been included.

Genre: In most cases the genre designation is based on the title. The field was included to facilitate certain searches.

Incipit: See Thematic Incipit.

Instrumentation:
Bc (basso continuo) is indicated even if the part is designated as basso, organo, basso ad organo, or cembalo, but the original designation will be noted with the source information.
C (canto, cantus, soprano), A, T, and B are indicated for both vocal and unspecified instrumental parts.
Keyboard is indicated even if the source states cembalo or organo, but the original designation will be noted with the source information.
Vn: violin

Key/Signature: The major and minor keys of later common practice are not suitable for describing the tonalities of most of Frescobaldi’s works. Instead, the tonalities are designated here by the pitch of their final chords and by the accidentals in their key signatures.
Authentic Frescobaldi works have either a single flat signature or no key signature (shown by a natural sign). Any other signature is indicative of later editorial intervention. No distinction is made between major or minor (the final chord is generally major), although some pitch/signature combinations are roughly equivalent to major or minor keys. For example G / flat = G minor, and G / natural = G major. However, both F / flat and F / natural correspond roughly to F major; and D / flat and D /natural to D minor. Compositions in F minor or D major are not encountered among the authentic Frescobaldi works. For more on tonality in Frescobaldi, see Silbiger (1986)

Main Source: To each composition a “Main Source” has been assigned in the form of the Short Title of one of the sources––when there is more than one source, the “Main Source” usually corresponds to the earliest source..

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OC: Opere Complete, the edition of the complete works of Frescobaldi that was initiated in 1975 under the auspices of the Società Italiana di Musicologia, and that is still in progress.

Pp. in Source: Opening and closing page or folio numbers for the composition in the source. Note the following:

• Numbers preceded by the letter f refer to folio numbers; without a preceding letter they refer to page numbers.
• The letter v following a number (in line) signifies verso.
• A subscript attached to a number indicates the system on the page (only provided when several compositions share a page.)
• Some manuscripts provide neither page nor folio numbers but only order numbers; in that case the number is preceded by the letter n.
• In the case of ensemble music published or copied as a set of separate parts, the page numbers are those of the continuo (or organ) part.

Provenance and Date (of Sources): As given in the source or according to estimates given in the literature.

Related Canonical Publications (in View Source screen): Canonical publications that contain all or part of the content of the source.
See also: Related Sources.

Related Sources (in Frescobaldi’s Canonical Keyboard Publications – Details): Manuscripts and prints from before c. 1800 that contain all or part of the contents of the particular publication.
In most cases the works were copied from the publication, either directly or through intermediate sources, the exception being a few manuscripts that contain what are believed to be earlier versions or sketches for the published work.

RISM ID (of Sources): The number assigned by the international source-cataloguing project Répertoire International des Sources Musicale.
This number will help locate the source in the RISM database, parts of which are accessible online. At this time the majority of manuscripts included in the FTCO have not yet been entered in the RISM database, but that situation should change in the coming years. As the RISM IDs become available, they will be entered here.

Scribes: The copyist of a manuscript or composition is frequently identified in the Notes.
For many compositions the identity of the scribe has been invoked to support the claim for Frescobaldi’s authorship. Such is especially the case when the scribe is the composer himself, but also when the hands belong to one of Frescobaldi’s assistants, in particular Nicolò Borboni (c. 1591-1641) or Leonardo Castellano (c. 1610-1667). Other hands encountered in Roman manuscripts associated with Frescobaldi are Jeanneret’s “hand O” (possibly Tomaso Bartolucci) and “hand P” (as yet unidentified). Much information on these hands is provided in Jeanneret (2009).

Search: See the instructions on the Search page.

Short Title (of Editions): Generally the short title of an edition is the name of the editor. For multivolume editions the editor’s name is followed by the volume number.

Short Title (of Literature item): The short title of a literature item usually corresponds to the author followed by the year of publication. When several items by the author were published in the same year, they are distinguished by a number following a dash, as in Annibaldi (1998-2).

Short Title (of Sources): A short title has been defined for each source. The short title of a manuscript often consists of its location and all or part of its call number (e.g., Berlin 6612). The short title of a printed source usually consists of one or more words from its title followed by its year of publication.
Many of these short titles have been in use for years among scholars working on the music of Frescobaldi and his contemporaries, and are found, for instance, in Silbiger (1980-1) and Jeanneret (2009).

Sources: When the sources include Canonic Publications, no other sources are listed unless they provide significantly different readings.

Thematic Incipit: (Lat.: It begins) The opening measures of a work.
The excerpts were drawn by the FTCO staff, and either transcribed directly from the Main Source or from the OC with consultation of the source. The primary aim was to have the incipit provide a faithful reflection of the source, but at the same time be intelligible to a present-day non-specialist musician. The incipits should be regarded neither as critical nor as performing editions. In general the following policies were observed in the transcriptions (not necessarily with absolute consistency):

• Unlike some thematic catalogues, the incipits in the FTCO are not just the opening melodies or “themes,” but show all parts in full or keyboard score. Although a single musical line might be adequate for some imitative works or dances, it would provide a less useful representation for, say, many toccatas and polyphonic madrigals.
• Keyboard music is shown in keyboard score even if the source uses open score.
• Vocal and instrumental ensemble works are shown in open score, except for double-choir pieces in eight parts, in which the two adjacent voices have been combined on a single staff.
• When a partbook is missing, the part is shown as an empty stave.
• Modern clefs are used, including alto clef for instrumental alto parts.
• Key signatures follow the source (except of the suppression of octave duplication of accidentals).
• Accidentals generally follow the source, but are always placed to the left of a note. Naturals rather than flats or sharps are used to cancel prior accidentals. Accidentals not shown in the sources appear in small type above or below the note, regardless of whether they are cautionaries, editorial emendations, or editorial suggestions. Since this is not a critical or performing edition, there is no need to distinguish various types of added accidentals. However, both cautionary accidentals and editorial suggestions (“musica ficta”) were added when they were believed to be necessary for musical intelligibility of the text. Cautionary accidentals are not used to cancel accidentals in previous measures or in other voices or registers.
• Note values are those of the source. In a few incipits black notation is used. Black notation generally appears in triple patterns, with black semibreves (stemless whole notes) having the value of a minim (half note), and black minims having the value of a semiminim (quarter note). Although a black minim looks identical to a semiminim, it usually is encountered only when preceding a stemless black semibreve (in a short-long triple pattern), which helps to distinguish it. (The original purpose of blackening in the short-long pattern was to prevent the application of an ancient mensuration rule, according to which a semibreve was to be lengthened by one-half [i.e., dotted or “perfected”] if followed by by another semibreve; however, by the seventeenth century short-long patterns are sometimes blackened even even when no second semibreve follows.)
• In sources in which short note values are beamed, beaming generally follows the source. When note values are not beamed in the source (e.g., in music set with movable type) modern conventions are followed.
• Barlines generally follow the source, with the occasional addition of a dotted barline for clarification. In excerpts from ensemble partbooks (which do not provide barlines), full barlines have been added according to the model of Frescobaldi’s own open-score editions, such as Canzoni (Robletti, 1628).
• In texted vocal parts, the text has been modernized.

Title (of Compositions): Modernized uniform title of the work. For works published in the OC, it corresponds to the title assigned there.

Title in Source: The title as it appears in the sources, including original case (capitalization), spellings, and abbreviations. Here, as elsewhere in the FTCO, archaic use of V in stead of U and of I instead of J have been modernized.

Title 2 in Source: Used for double titles, very long titles, or alternative titles in the ToC.

Time Frame (for Source): The 50-year period or (after 1700) 100-year period within which the source is known, or believed, to have originated.
The Time Frame is believed to be a more useful search criterion than the exact date because many sources, even if they contain some dates, were compiled over a period time. Even with printed sources a date on the title page might represent neither the time of composition, which may have been considerably earlier, nor the time of printing, which (especially in the case of printing from engraved copper plates) may have been years later.

ToC: Table of Contents in the source
Many printed sources and even a few manuscripts contain a Table of Contents or Tavola. The titles of works in the ToC sometimes differ from those appearing above the compositions. In those cases the title in the ToC is given in the Title in Source 2 field, preceded by “ToC:”.