(from Sp. entrada).
An instrumental piece, generally for an ensemble, used to announce or accompany an entrance, to inaugurate some festive event, or to begin a suite. Intradas were also sometimes found within suites followed by a courante or a galliard, and Kirchen-Intraden served as intonations for choral pieces (e.g. those by Michael Altenburg, 1620). The term seems first to have been used in the sense of a contrapuntal entry, as in Valderrábano’s Fantasia sobre la entrada de una baxa (Silva de sirenas, 1547), but shortly afterwards it is found with the meaning of a polyphonic prelude in Venegas de Henestrosa’s Libro de cifra nueva (1557).
The term was also used for the stock piece that preceded and concluded the performance of a trumpet ensemble sonata during the 16th and early 17th centuries in Italy, the Holy Roman Empire and Scandinavia, as well as for a monophonic piece otherwise known as a toccata (see Signal (i) and Tuck, tucket). The trumpet ensemble equivalent of the instrumental intrada appeared towards the end of the 16th century but was known as the Aufzug (See Aufzug (i). The influence of the Aufzug is seen in a collection consisting exclusively of five- and six-part intradas published in Helmstaedt in 1597 by Alessandro Orologio, an Italian trumpeter active in various German cities. Reimann divided the secular intrada as cultivated in 17th-century Germany into four types: a processional type in march rhythm with fanfare motifs and repeated notes; a slower and more solemn pavan type; a faster dance type in triple metre; and a song type, homophonic and of a popular cast. Intradas are found later in collections of orchestral suites. Related types occur in Italy, France and England in connection with ballet and ballroom dances (Purcell’s ‘entry-tunes’ and ‘trumpet tunes’, Italian balli, and the entrées of the French ballet de cour). The intrada went out of fashion towards the end of the 17th century, though the term continued to be applied sporadically by such composers as Gluck (Alceste), Mozart (Bastien und Bastienne) and Beethoven (op.25).
MGG2 (W. Braun)
M. Reimann: ‘Materialien zu einer Definition des Terminus und des Begriffs der Intrada’, Mf, x (1957), 337–64
R. Flotzinger: ‘Alessandro Orologio und seine Intraden (1597)’, DAM, xvii (1986), 53–64
P. Downey: ‘Fantini and Mersenne: some Additions to Recent Controversies’, Historic Brass Society Journal, vi (1994), 355–62
DAVID FULLER/PETER DOWNEY