Fantinella [fantina]

(It.).

A musical scheme for songs and dances during the 16th and early 17th centuries in Italy. The version in ex.1 for the five-course guitar shows the basic harmonic framework, which is related to that of the Romanesca. At the end are two standard riprese or ritornellos (see Ripresa, ex.1b), which, like the main scheme itself, suggest a hemiola alternation between 3/2 and 6/4.

The earliest extant example, the keyboard Fantina gagliarda from the Intabolatura nova (1551; CEKM, viii, 1965), shows each of the two phrases of the opening section (corresponding to bars 1–4 and 5–8 of ex.1) with the progression III–VI–VII–III and the opening half of the second section (bars 9–12) sustaining a VII chord instead of moving on to III. The Fugger Lutebook (1562) contains a piece called La fantina (DTÖ, xxxvii, Jg.xviii/2, 1911, p.115), which presents the main framework of ex.1 without the riprese. Antonio di Becchi’s Fantinella aria da cantar (1568) for lute (printed in G. Lefkoff, Five Sixteenth Century Venetian Lute Books, Washington DC, 1960, p.142) uses slower note values for the main music, which would actually accompany a singer, and faster values for the riprese between stanzas. Other chordal guitar accompaniments similar to ex.1 appear in printed sources by Milanuzzi (1625) and Millioni (1627) and in certain manuscripts (I-Fn Magl.XIX 143, Fr 2951 and Rsc A 247).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Hudson: The Concept of Mode in Italian Guitar Music during the First Half of the 17th Century’, AcM, xliii (1970), 163–83

RICHARD HUDSON