Dale Carr | Fantasia nona sopra trè soggetti, by Frescobaldi, performed by Dale Carr on 22 May, 1993 @dalecarr6361 | Uploaded April 2021 | Updated October 2024, 39 minutes ago.
Fantasia nona sopra trè soggetti, in a, from Frescobaldi's primo libro delle Fantasie, 1608, performed by Dale Carr in the church in Nieuw Scheemda on 22 May, 1993, on a harpsichord made in 1975 by Hendrik Broekman, patterned on an instrument by Michel Richard {1688}
How do we know what the subjects {soggetti} are? The composer leaves the answer to this question to the student, divulging only how many soggetti there are in each fantasia. In many of the fantasiæ the identity of the soggetti is made fairly clear at the beginning, as when the second voice enters with a second soggetto. In this fantasia it's not made clear at all, but the listener can find various reasons to label a group of notes as a soggetto. The most valuable of these is that after a rest in polyphonic music, the rested voice generally enters with a subject.
This has led me to the following provisional identification:
1st subject = e-f-g, the 1st 3 notes of the piece;
2nd subject = a-b-g-a, the next 4 notes of the piece;
3rd subject = b-c-b-a-g-f-e, the following 7 notes of the piece. The 2nd voice enters with the 1st subject simultaneously with the c of this subect.
The subjects are used more in the fashion of what we might call motives, by which I mean that they are found woven through the texture, not only after rests but also as continuations of a line {as at the beginning}. The rhythms are often changed, or the whole- and half-steps altered.
But the piece is interesting also for its total structure, not only for its manipulation of soggetti. In the whole of the 1st section Frescobaldi avoids the use of sharpened and flattened notes absolutely ; until measure 35, the last measure before the 2nd section. In this 2nd section the subjects are still more or less easily identifiable, but all the Fs and Cs have # signs. It's a remarkable harmonic change that should strike even an inexperienced listener. The Gs are fence-sitters, some with a # and some without.
From measure 64, c-natural and f-natural reappear, though not to the exclusion of c# and f#, and develop into a chromatically entended variant of the 1st subject; the 2nd subject is also occasionally varied by putting its last note up a 3rd.
Fantasia nona sopra trè soggetti, in a, from Frescobaldi's primo libro delle Fantasie, 1608, performed by Dale Carr in the church in Nieuw Scheemda on 22 May, 1993, on a harpsichord made in 1975 by Hendrik Broekman, patterned on an instrument by Michel Richard {1688}
How do we know what the subjects {soggetti} are? The composer leaves the answer to this question to the student, divulging only how many soggetti there are in each fantasia. In many of the fantasiæ the identity of the soggetti is made fairly clear at the beginning, as when the second voice enters with a second soggetto. In this fantasia it's not made clear at all, but the listener can find various reasons to label a group of notes as a soggetto. The most valuable of these is that after a rest in polyphonic music, the rested voice generally enters with a subject.
This has led me to the following provisional identification:
1st subject = e-f-g, the 1st 3 notes of the piece;
2nd subject = a-b-g-a, the next 4 notes of the piece;
3rd subject = b-c-b-a-g-f-e, the following 7 notes of the piece. The 2nd voice enters with the 1st subject simultaneously with the c of this subect.
The subjects are used more in the fashion of what we might call motives, by which I mean that they are found woven through the texture, not only after rests but also as continuations of a line {as at the beginning}. The rhythms are often changed, or the whole- and half-steps altered.
But the piece is interesting also for its total structure, not only for its manipulation of soggetti. In the whole of the 1st section Frescobaldi avoids the use of sharpened and flattened notes absolutely ; until measure 35, the last measure before the 2nd section. In this 2nd section the subjects are still more or less easily identifiable, but all the Fs and Cs have # signs. It's a remarkable harmonic change that should strike even an inexperienced listener. The Gs are fence-sitters, some with a # and some without.
From measure 64, c-natural and f-natural reappear, though not to the exclusion of c# and f#, and develop into a chromatically entended variant of the 1st subject; the 2nd subject is also occasionally varied by putting its last note up a 3rd.
