Valente (Antonio): Romanesca con cinque mutanze

Antonio Valente ‘cieco’ (blind) – date of birth/death unknown, flourished between 1570-1580 – was a Neapolitan musician, and organist in Sant’Angelo a Nilo in Naples. He is known for his two volumes of keyboard music: lntavolatura de cimbalo… libro primo printed by Giuseppe Cacchio in 1576.1(secular music) and Versi spirituali published in 1580 (religious music – his ‘libro secundo’).

The Intavolatura de cimbalo presents different genres of music: a fantasia, six ricercatas, a Salve Regina on a cantus firmus, four vocal chansons intabulated for keyboard with more or less diminutions, and nine dances, variations and dance/variations on long-living tenors (bass patterns) like the Romanesca or Zefiro (torna). A sort of compendium of the keyboard genres of the period.

The Romanesca theme (sequence / tenor) is treated in full by Elam Rotem on youtube: https://youtu.be/esObNllIA14?si=zkjheEDtBDC9rqA3

From the many performances, I prefer this one:

An image of the original publication. In those days title pages were descriptive, almost a table of content.

  1. full title: Intavolatura de cimbalo recercate fantasie et canzoni francese desminvite con alcuni tenori balli et varie sorte de contraponti. Libro primo de m. Antonio Valente cieco, organista della venerabile chiesa di Sant’Angelo a Nido di Napoli, da lui composte, intavolate, et poste in luce