In his influencial Abhandlung von der Fuge (1753), Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795) uses the expression per arsin et thesin “to refer to the entrance of a theme (usually a fugue subject) with displaced accents, former strong beats becoming weak and vice versa” (Walker, Arsis, thesis). (Marpurg was a German author, music critic, music theorist and […]
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Sine pausa (without pause) refers to the fact that several voices, which are involved in canonic or stretto constructions, produce a simultaneous start of the same motif, theme or fugal subject, whether or not at different pitch levels, in inversion or including different rhythmic proportions. See also stretto. Select Bibliography Demeyere, Ewald. Johann Sebastian Bach’s
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In music, stretto essentially means the overlapping of the same melodic idea/subject in two or more voices. Stretto can thus be considered a canonic technique, although it is usually applied only to a particular passage or passages within a piece that is not itself a canon. Stretto occurs typically in fugues. Paul Walker gives the
The term disposizione is used in the partimento tradition to refer to a fully written-out realization on as many staves as there are parts (in score) and in the Neapolitan counterpoint tradition to refer to a counterpoint exercise to be worked out in score. See also intavolatura. See also partimento. Select Bibliography Fenaroli, Fedele. METODO PER
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The term intavolatura is used in the partimento tradition to refer to a fully written-out keyboard realization (on two staves). An important collection of intavolature is the so-called Parma Manuscript. It contains 24 keyboard realizations from the third book of partimenti by Fedele Fenaroli (1730–1818). See also disposizione. See also partimento. Select Bibliography Fenaroli, Fedele. METODO
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In his book The Art of Partimento, Giorgio Sanguinetti gives the following general definition: “a partimento is a sketch, written on a single staff, whose main purpose is to be a guide for improvisation of a composition at the keyboard”(Sanguinetti (2012), p. 14). It can be provided with or without thoroughbass figures. See also partimento
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A partimento diminuito is a partimento for which the composer provided one or more models/suggestions of how it can be realized. Those models were incipits —and thus quite short— and not necessarily referring to the first bar(s). The term first appears in the pedagogical oeuvre of the Neapolitan maestro Francesco Durante (1684–1755). In turn, one
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Although metre is often considered a synonym for time signature, e.g. 4/4 or 6/8, its real meaning is more subtle. Metre could be defined as the hierarchical organization of bars, of beats and of subdivisions of beats in such a way that, with respect to time, a regular pattern appears that can be recognized as
A voice overlap occurs when two parts proceed to their next note and when that note of the lower part is higher than the previous note of the higher part, or —as is the case on the downbeat of bars 2 and 3 in the example below— when that note of the higher part is
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An anticipation is a non-chord note on a weak beat or part of a beat that anticipates the first note of the next chord. This type of embellishment occurs frequently in cadences. Select Bibliography Kennan, Kent. Counterpoint Based on Eighteenth-Century Practice — Fourth Edition (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1999). Schubert, Peter & Christoph Neidhöfer. Baroque Counterpoint (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice
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