Filomena Moretti - J.S.BACH - Suite BWV 1010

The saltarello

The saltarello was a lively, merry dance first mentioned in Naples during the 14th century. The music survives, but no early instructions for the actual dance are known. It was played in a fast triple meter and is named for its peculiar leaping step, after the Italian verb saltare ("to jump").

The saltarello enjoyed great popularity in the courts of medieval Europe. During the 15th century, the word saltarello became the name of a particular dance step (a double with a hop on the final or initial upbeat), and the name of a meter of music (a fast triple), both of which appear in many choreographed dances. Entire dances consisting of only the saltarello step and meter are described as being improvised dances in 15th century Italian dance manuals. (The first dance treatise that dealt with the saltarello was the 1465 work of Antonio Cornazzano.) This step and meter do not appear in 16th century dance manuals, except in passing. During this era, the saltarello was danced by bands of courtesans dressed as men at masquerades. The saltarello gave birth to the quadernaria in Germany, which was then fused into the saltarello tedesco (German saltarello) in Italy.

Saltarello as a folk dance

Although a Neapolitan court dance in origin, the saltarello became the typical Italian folk dance of Ciociaria and a favorite tradition of Rome in the Carnival and vintage festivities of Monte Testaccio. After witnessing the Roman Carnival of 1831, the German composer Felix Mendelssohn incorporated the dance into the finale of one of his masterpieces, the Italian Symphony. The only example of a saltarello in the North is saltarello romagnolo of Romagna.
The saltarello is still a popular folk dance played in the regions of Southern-Central Italy, such as Abruzzo, Molise (but in these two regions the name is female: Saltarella), Lazio and Marche. The dance is usually performed on the zampogna bagpipe or on the organetto, a type of diatonic button accordion, and is accompanied by a tamburello.

Serentina de cantigu a chiterra a s'antiga

ITALIAN MANDOLIN

L'Amor Dona Ch'lo Te Porto

 
Jacopo da Fogliano 

was an Italian composer, organist, harpsichordist, and music teacher of the Renaissance, active mainly in Modena in northern Italy. He was a composer of frottole, the popular vocal form ancestral to the madrigal, and later in his career he also wrote madrigals themselves. He also wrote some sacred music and a few instrumental composition

Giacomo Fogliano was the older brother of Lodovico Fogliano (c. 1475 – 1542). Lodovico, also a composer, was better known as a theorist. Giacomo was born in Modena, where he evidently spent most of his career. Details of his life are sketchy, but most of his years of employment and at least one of his journeys are known. Early in his life he was praised for his mastery of various instruments, particularly the organ and the harpsichord, and in 1479 he became organist at Modena Cathedral – an unusual achievement for a musician of 11. 

The records of the cathedral list him as maestro di cappella (singing master) also starting in that year, ending in 1497, at which time he vanished from the record, reappearing again in 1504, from which year he held the dual post of organist and maestro di cappella until his death in 1548. For the period between 1497 and 1504 he may have been in Siena; a reference to a similarly named individual in the records Siena city archives from 1498 has been tentatively identified as the Fogliano. His first published composition, a frottola in one of Ottaviano Petrucci's earliest prints, dates from 1502 (Venice). 

Among his duties at Modena was teaching, and from 1512 to 1514 he instructed Jiulio Segni on organ and harpsichord. Late in his career, in 1543, he went to Parma to investigate the organ they had installed there. The cathedral in Modena contains a plaque in his honor.

Modena at this time was part of the domain of the House of Este, at that time centered in Ferrara. While the town was not a major center of music-making, as it lacked a local aristocratic court, it still had a substantial cathedral which kept an up-to-date repertory of polyphonic music. Fogliano was maestro di cappella at this institution during the period of its collection, and also during the time when Cardinal Giovanni Morone, one of the principal reformers of the Council of Trent, began the process of simplification of polyphony in order to make the text understandable to listeners. Most of Fogliano's sacred music predates this time

La traviata

Birdwatching in Italia

tenore de orgosolo

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (15 de mayo de 1567, en Cremona - 29 de noviembre de 1643, en Venecia) marcó la transición entre la tradición polifónica y madrigalista del siglo XVI y el nacimiento del drama lírico y de la ópera en el siglo XVII. Es la figura más importante en la transición entre la música del Renacimiento y del Barroco.

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (May 15, 1567 (baptized) – November 29, 1643), was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.
Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the music of the Renaissance to that of the Baroque. Enjoying fame in his lifetime, he wrote one of the earliest operas, L'Orfeo, which is still regularly performed