Excerpt from D. Ortiz, Libro de le Glose (1553), for MuseScore VERSION 2.0

Ok, the work is well known and there is plenty of editions, transcriptions, and so on.

However, I still have to find a really satisfactory version; even the glorious Bärenreiter edition (the 'green Ortiz') is here and there unclear about small details and even suffers from occasional mistakes (it is also based on the Spanish print; I thought to use the Italian print as a source instead). So, I thought there is room for another Ortiz edition.

General background for non-initiated to 'early music':

Diego Ortiz' Libro nel quale si tratta de le Glosse... in la Musica del Violone... ("Book which deals with Diminutions... in the Playing of Viol..."), published in Rome by Valerio Dorico, 1553 is one of the primary sources for the Renaissance improvisation practice, either in the form of diminuzione in which individual longer notes of a (pre-existent) melody are replaced each by several shorter (diminutae) notes or in the form of improvising an entirely new melodic line on an existent bass or tenor, to which the excerpt presented here actually refers.

Ortiz' Libro is not the only source, other exist and are perhaps more evolved (Bassano's Ricercate, passaggi et cadentie (1585) or Rognoni's Selva di vari passaggi (1602) are surely much more virtuosistic than Ortiz'); however it is one of oldest and one of the few which deals with the second form of improvisation.

After the mandatory first part which, as a catalogue, lists ways and ways to fill each possible interval (how to rise by a second, a third, ... how to descend by a second, a third, ...) , a second part gives practical examples of these techniques: examples of what one could improvise over given tenores (the section transcribed here), how one could make diminutions on one or the other voice of a given madrigal and so on.

Today's custom is mostly to play Ortiz examples as 'finished pieces' and some of them even stand this test; however, in origin they were simply meant as examples, possibly simplistic, possibly accumulating exempli gratia multiple improvisative devices and tricks (not necessarily meant to stay together in a real performance) and so on.

The Edition

The attached excerpt is for MUSESCORE VERSION 2.0 ONLY; it can't be read with the current stable version (1.3).

It comes in two versions: one with original clefs and one with 'standard' viol clef(s). Except for the clefs, both versions are identical. The source is the exemplar in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

The source has no concept of a score format: the excerpt attached here had the tenor and the solo notated in sequence: they have been rendered in score format for clarity.

For the rest, the edition attempts to give the reader / player an idea as clear and as faithful as possible of the original: time signatures, note values, accidentals, etc. are as in the source (accidentals above the staff are editorial).

Even bar line vagaries are reproduced: the use of Mensurstriche (bar lines between the staves rather than across them, to allow for note values to cross the measure boundary) permits to keep the original note values in all cases, without splitting them into several tied notes, as it is unfortunately common in Renaissance music transcriptions.

Occasionally, the source has 'real' bar lines across the solo part: they too have been rendered by extending the individual Mensurstrich into the solo staff or by adding non-measure bar lines. This accounts for the 'creative' bar lining of the result!

The recent integration of SMuFL permitted to use the not-so-common time signature used in the tenor of the fifth and sixth recercata, while playing with note heads allowed to fully render their mensural relationship between the solo and the tenor (tenor notes are actually semibreves, but edited to display as breves!).

'Funny' time signatures, Mensurstrich and 'creative' bar lines are among the innovations made possible with the forthcoming MuseScore VERSION 2.0.

Note: as all my scores, this scores too use the Linux Libertine font for all textual elements: if you do not have it installed, you'll see whatever font your operating system replaces for it instead. It can be freely downloaded here (use the non-G, TTF version!).

Enjoy! Comments, suggestions and criticisms are aways welcome.

M.